LONG READ: What we can all learn from the #GrabBag hashtag blow back

In late 2019, we live in interesting times.

So far this year we’ve had flooding, extreme heat and dams that almost collapse.

In the rest of the year we have the prospect of snow, ice and the impact of a possible ‘no deal’ Brexit with government modelling of food shortages, medicine shortages 

Trust is low with around a third of us trusting government officials and journalists with politicians generally trusted by a fifth of the population.

So, how do you get across the need to prepare for possible future emergency?

With great difficulty it seems.

A tweet from Police Scotland appeared to set off a mix of alarm and mirth with the  #GrabBag hashtag trending and BBC News picking up the baton online and in broadcast.

A number of police and councils have also used the hashtag along with #30days30ways to ask people to get ready in peacetime ahead of any emergencies ahead.

The aim is positive but in an atmosphere of mistrust, it can very easily go off target.

With some possible alarming days ahead its worth taking a pause to reflect on how we can pull this stuff off. It’s long been a frustration of mine that emergency planning is always 9th on the ‘to do’ list, never rises above that and gets ignored until its too late.

The #GrabBag content

Here’s a quick look at the content in and around the #GrabBag hashtag.

And also…

And…

But any good analysis should look at the data, too.

So…

The #Grabbag numbers

Using Ritetag analysis, the hashtag had reached large numbers with almost 4,000 tweets.

The hashtag had also spiked impressively in the analysis.

However, the big problem with hashtag analysis is drilling down into sentiment. The US-based algorithm is incapable as yet of spotting sarcasm leading to a manual analysis of what people were really saying.

It’s safe to say the hashtag didn’t really perform as intended.

Sarcasm, worry and brand jacking emerged, the analysis suggests, and the original purpose of the hashtag was obscured.

The #Grabbag key words

The most frequently used positive terms were fine…

The most frequently used negative ones less so…

But what were the trends to a UK audience? I went through and counted a cross-section of around 150 to give a snapshot of the underlying sentiment.

The #Grabbag sentiment

Counting through the content, the sentiment was overwhelmingly parody with supportive tweets being outscored four to one.

The original tweets with the original purpose had been swamped by people who were either pouring scorn or were entertained by the idea of a #grabbag full of gin. Hey! Big LOLs! There’s an argument that any publicity is good publicity. I’m not convinced by that argument.

But there was also a more worrying undertow, too. Did the Police know something they didn’t? Shouldn’t people be more responsible? Who was responsible for all this? This is 2019, we’re talking about. There was even a flavour of newsjacking with big brands trying to cash-in.

Conclusions

So, armed with all this, what does it tell you?

Well, first up, I’m not going to suggest anything stupid like stopping tweeting. Police and local government people who tweet have my undying admiration. I used to be one. Whoever launched the hashtag should be applauded for trying to tackle a serious issue. But the episode does provide some teachable moments that we can learn from.

The public sector should still tackle the big issues

The temptation after adverse publicity is to go into a bunker and maybe delete your account. ‘No,’ and ‘no’ to that. There is a need to communicate in the places where people are. Besides, its a legal obligation for the public sector to warn and inform.

When things go awry I think Cadbury’s and Easter

Every year the meme re-surfaces that Cadbury’s have banned the word ‘Easter’ from their Easter eggs. It spreads across the internet like wildfire. It’s political correctness gone mad. Angry people bombard Cadbury’s with messages to say how outraged they are.

The only thing is that Cadbury’s haven’t banned Easter at all.

The chocolate manufacturer when this first happened where faced with a choice. Either ignore it or talk back. They chose talk back. Like a giant version of whack-a-mole their team mans the ramparts to try and tweet back to people who complain online.

Active rebuttal in the manner of Cadbury’s when things have gone a bit awry is something to deploy. If the message out there is that the police want you to pack your bags because… something BAD is about to happen that feels like something to address.

Equally, it wouldn’t go amiss to respond to some of the parody tweets with a degree of wit and humour.

Yes, this means more resources.

Yes, it helps to direct people towards your message.

Get by with a little help from your friends

The public sector is great but often vital campaigns are launched in a corner of the internet. With #GrabBag, I didn’t see the combined might of the public sector combining. It would have been good to see partners, friends and the rest of the organisation come to the fore to amplify any explainer tweets.

Tapping into your internal comms and companies

If we don’t trust government officials, who do we trust?

Well, it turns out we trust our employers far more. Perhaps surprisingly, even those who think the system is failing them put their trust in their employers. The Edelman Trust Barometer puts 69 per cent of those with a cynical outlook as still trusting their employer.

That’s a massively powerful figure and one that invites a real re-calibration your message. Have a loudhailer. But add companies’ internal comms channels to your loudhailer. It’s also enlisting your own internal comms too for public sector organisations are not just big employers but they’re big local employers.

Thanks for reading. You can find me @danslee on Twitter and dan@danslee.co.uk by email.

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SHOT LIST: 8 key lessons on how to make engaging video from joe.co.uk

A while back I sat next to a journalist from joe.co.uk and the conversation turned to video.

Video was a central plank in how journalists reach an audience and good images made a story, he said.

Crucially, good images at the start of the video were crucial, he added. That’s something that I wholeheartedly agreed with and it was good to hear it from a journalist, too.

This week, I saw a joe.co.uk video that really brings strands together. It looks into how a no deal Brexit will affect Northern Ireland. The video is longer than you’d think it would be. It rolls on for more than nine minutes but doesn’t have slack.

It has an audience of 1.6 million on Twitter.

Whoever you are, take inspiration from where you can find it.

News organisations online are giving you a free lesson in how to assemble good content.

Social media video best practice

Put the most arresting clip right at the start

In training, we often talk about putting the exploding helicopter in the first three seconds.

In other words, put a clip of the strongest footage in the first three seconds to grab attention and stop people from scrolling on.

In this clip, the quote from one man: “Ten of my friends were shot beside me.”

That would stop anyone in their tracks. Why? How? When? What happened? Your interest is piqued and you want to carry on watching. While visually not arresting the strong line coming from a kindly-looking old man certainly is.

Leave the office, find the real people and talk to them

Real people can be far more interesting that a politician reciting lines to take or trying to make them up on the spot.

Real people also have more friends on Facebook who are more likely to view and share the content. It also shows that real people are affected by decisions made by politicians.

Add a logo in the corner

Some people are wedded to the idea of having three seconds of logo to act as a kind of MGM Lion roaring into your consciousness.

The problem with this approach is that this doesn’t meet social media’s scrolling and goldfish-lite attention span. The way round that is to add a logo in a corner in the style of Channel Five’s football coverage.

Add a title to each interviewee

So, as each interviewee is introduced, they have their own title to display their name.

Joe.co.uk use black on yellow for titles – in other words people’s names – to introduce them to the viewer. The title sits above the sub-title which is what the person is saying. It puts them into context.

Add sub-titles into the video itself

When you burn the sub-titles into the footage you don’t have to worry about whether or not the viewer has switched settings to allow sub-titles on Facebook.

Subtitles are the text of what the interviewer, interviewee or narrator is saying. By using sub-titles you are reaching a wider audience. Not just by making it accessible to those who have hearing difficulties but also making it accessible to people who are second screening at work, on the bus or while on on the sofa while their partner watching Eastenders.

Use cutaways

Cutaways are shots which add colour and context. They make the video more interesting.

So, shots of road signs, the garage and the countryside show the Northern Irish community that will be affected by a Brexit ‘no deal’. The fact that they look ordinary and every day reinforces the message of concern from those interviewed. This is not Beirut or Kosovo. This looks like many parts of the Brritish Isles and island of Ireland.

Build a story

The video builds a narrative. The story is of a journalist who voted for ‘Leave’ in the EU Referendum in 2016 but is now having misgivings.

He returns to Northern Ireland where he has worked as a journalist before to ask how people there feel. He asks what the town was like during the Troubles from the late 1960s to the large 1990s. The people who lived there were often anxious and there was a large police presence, he is told.

He finds disquiet amongst people that a hard Brexit may see a return to the bad old ways and his final interviewee recalls how he was dragged off a bus with 10 workmates by terrorists who shot them leaving him as the only survivor. That’s a powerful story. But as we’ve seen the stand-out quote has been pulled out to form the first four or five seconds to draw the viewer in.

Put your logo at the end

The Joe logo animates into the screen right at the end. It;s the full stop to the video.

The video shot list

1.Opening shot. Interviewee: “Ten of my friends were shot dead beside me.”

2. Journalist Peter Oborne talks of how he voted remain but he now thinks he didn’t have enough information on how it will affect Northern Ireland where he worked during his career.

3. Cutaways: The Irish countryside and road signs in Bessbrook. Armagh, Northern Ireland.

4. Bessbrook resident Ray Collins: It was scary in The Troubles with a strong Army presence and the risk of murder by the UVF.

5. Bessbook resident Tracey Feehan: Wants the British government to get real.

6. Bessbrook resident Joe McGivern: We’re in limbo here.

7. Bessbrook resident Alan Black: Ten of my friends were shot dead beside me.

8. Journalist Peter Oborne: His reaction to the interviewees.

9. Danny Kennedy, Ulster Unionist Party: When the Referendum was fought there was little attention to how it would affect Northern Ireland.

10. Jarlath Burns, Principal of St Paul’s High School in conversation with Peter Oborne: The Referendum was an English Referendum and English people didn’t fully realise there was a land border, Jarlath says. Peter accepts that.

11. Cutaways: the car journey to Dublin and Dublin landmarks.

12. Journalist Peter Oborne, reacts to his Northern Ireland visit.

13. Senator Neale Richmond, a member of the Irish Dail.  The border issue didn’t arise during the Referendum but it is an issue to the PSNI.

14. Montage of candid clips of interviewees.

15. Journalist Peter Oborne: conclusions.

Conclusion

Overall, the joe.co.uk video is an engaging video on what could be a dry topic. The backstop for Irish border arrangements is not the most engaging content on the face of it. They’ve made it interesting by talking to the real people. They’ve made sure it reaches a wider audience by including titles and sub-titles.

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POWER STICKER: A simple comms lesson from the last chapter of the Yugoslavian civil war

 

It’s always amazing where you can find inspiration but I never thought it would be the last stages of Yugoslavia’s civil war.

I found the lesson in ‘Shadowplay’ by Tim Marshall a memoir of his reporting for Sky News in the former Yugoslavia.

By 1997, Slobodan Milosevic remained impregnable as President of Serbia after presiding over four lost wars and tens of thousands of deaths.

A NATO bombing campaign helped avert bloodshed in Kosovo but only cemented his position as the traditional wagons of Serbian society circled in support against foreign aggression.

It became clear that where bombs failed something else was needed.

The book talks of how there was no Serbian Vaclav Havel or Nelson Mandela ready to press for power. But there was a grassroots Serbian called ‘Otpor’ meaning resistance in Serbian.

As the British and Americans informally met the group it became clear that what was needed was something that would burst the balloon of popular feeling that Milosevic would never be removed from power.

The answer was simple.

The resistance slogan ‘Gotov je’ or ‘He’s finished’ emerged as the simple message.

If that could be painted or stuck across Serbia it would chip away at the castle.

So, the British and Americans simply helped smuggle the tools to spread this slogan on walls and buildings and on t-shirts. A radio station was funded and other tools bought and smuggled into Serbia.

“Each time a sticker, poster or spray-painted ‘Gotov je’ was seen another grain of sand fell away from Milosevic’s sandcastle. Almost three million stickers were produced.”

As the tide was turned, attention could be turned on who could be swept to power by the popular campaign of street protest unimaginable before the ‘Gotov je’ campaign.

The lesson is this. For good communications, it is not always remote power that is the answer but listening to people on the ground.  Here, it was the subtle wit of a sticker that helped turn the impossible to the inevitable.

Tim Marshall’s ‘Shadowplay: The Inside Story of Europe’s Last War’ is available on amazon here and from bookshops. 

Picture credit: PetarM – Own work, CC BY 4.0.

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SHORT VIDEO: TikTok and how the public sector can approach it… and a health warning

Here we go again… something has come along to shift the comms landscape again.

Yes, yes, I can hear the Statler and Waldorf comments complaining about things changing yet again.

What now?

This post is about the video creating and sharing app TikTok and I’m blogging because its formed a serious chunk of the digital landscape.

What is TikTok?

TikTok is a Chinese-owned platform whose servers are outside China itself to allow for a little more freedom. It’s a fast growing app that is now used by 500 million globally with no readily available UK user stats.

It’s for younger people. Users globally are 41 per cent aged 16 to 24-year-old.

The platform works by allowing you the option to drop music tracks through the TikTok app into your video. The standard video length is 15-seconds but you can make that as long as 60 seconds or as little as three seconds.

What the app is doing is giving younger people the tools to create and edit content with text in the app. Short stories and gags with set-ups and punchlines are achievable by a 10-year-old. Or younger.

Hashtags work really well with content created around topics. Like, #petbff that celebrates pets, #ukcomedy, #ukfood or #noodledance. The issue of climate change works really well. Would green messages work? With some thought behind them, yes.

Here’s an example of content…

And also from Liverpool FC…

The orientation of video is upright rather like Snapchat. It is the opposite of the more common landscape video used by TV and much of the internet.

Who is using TikTok?

More than 500 million users are claimed. Lots of young people. The demographic is much younger than other platforms although some organisations such as Liverpool FC are experimenting with it with 600,000 people following their account while 165,000 follow BBC Radio 1 and 88,000 following the Washington Post.

Health warning #1 China

It’s Chinese-owned. Which shouldn’t be a problem unless you are looking to set state secrets to 15-second videos backed by K-Pop.

Health warning #2 GDPR

But there is a far bigger red flag health warning. The Information Commissioners Office are investigating the platform for a suspicion that it is not keeping to GDPR legislation. In addition, there is the suggestion that children can be messaged by adults without there being safeguards in place.

The thrust of the investigation would appear to be into the architecture of the platform rather than each of TikTok’s many users. But such a review should set some alarm bells ringing if you are thinking of embarking on using it.

Health warning #3 Not many examples… yet

The second note of caution is that there are very few public sector organisations using the platform.

Most use is through young people making content for other young people. What there is is more human content from frontline staff such as paramedics who are making short lip-synch videos for fun. Watching them, its hard to get away from the feeling that this is the trendy uncle breakdancing at a wedding.

But don’t be put off. Be your own case study.

Health warning #4 Trendy uncles

Looking at TikTok, there is a strong flavour of Snapchat in that its users are younger than the average comms person. So comms people are likely to be baffled by it. But I’m not sure that young people would follow public sector organisations. The exception to the rule would be the marvellous Caenhill Countryside Centre in Wiltshire that posts a daily video of animals leaving the barn in the morning that is truly magnificent.

Here is one…

In conclusion

Until the GDPR issues are sorted there is an argument to keep a watching brief.

If it is sorted, then an account that creates young-people focussed content may work. Adding music without the risk of legal action is attractive. But a communicator trying to pump out key messages and calls to action feels like the the wrong thing to do here.

Working with young people for them to create their own content to their own networks may be the best way. But until those GDPR issues are sorted its probably not worth looking into.

Picture credit: istock

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LOVE UK: The CIPR is too London-centric which is why I’m voting for Mandy Pearse

Too London-centric.

That’s the verdict of an unscientific poll about the Chartered Institute of Public Relations – the CIPR.

Almost 80 per cent of people in the straw poll in the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group agreed with the idea that the organisation was too capital-focussed.

Only 9 per cent of people disagreed.

Worryingly, 14 per cent voted to say that they didn’t care either way.

 

Of course, it’s easy to disregard the numbers. This is just a group with 3,600 members from the public sector and the industry is bigger than that. But the truth is this reflects scores of conversations I’ve had up and down the country over the past 10 years from people in all sectors.

Data that Peter Holt has put together that shows just one per cent of CIPR money in 2018 was spent outside the capital can’t be so easily dismissed. A glance at the CIPR calender shows that of the next 40 events two thirds are in London.

I’m not alone, surely, in thinking that’s not good enough.

Six years ago, I blogged about how I was not a CIPR member. Inspired by the work of past Presidents Stephen Waddington and Sarah Waddington and many others I joined but the London-centric aspect of the organisation was a barrier for me.

London, I love you.

You’re great.

But so is the Black Country, the West Midlands, the East Midlands, the North West, the North East, East Anglia, Yorkshire, the South West, the South Coast, lowland Scotland, highland and islands Scotland, Northern Ireland. North Wales, mid-Wales, West Wales and South Wales.

To be a truly cutting edge and campaigning voice it needs to represent all corners of the industry and all corners of the country.

A members’ organisation is what members make of it and I take my hat off to the CIPR members who volunteer their time to make the organisation work in their area.

But direction from the top is so important.

This year there are two strong candidates for CIPR President with public sector backgrounds.

I’ve nominated Mandy Pearse in the CIPR President elections and I’ll be voting for her

She is someone who lives and works outside London but knows it. She’s worked in the public sector and she also gets why the industry needs to change and adapt and has done some great work for years within the CIPR.

You can see a summary of both candidates commitments here.

I hope you vote for Mandy too, if you are a member.

Picture credit: istock. 

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NEW SOCIAL VIDEO: What are the optimum video lengths for social media in 2019? UPDATED

 

I’ve mapped optimum video lengths for a few years now and the landscape is often moving across that time.

Earlier in 2019, it was the shift from Facebook to steer people towards three minute videos from the previous optimum of 15 seconds.

Now, looking at it fresh there has been a further tilt. Filling the 15-second void is the Chinese-owned video network TikTok. I’ll blog a quick explainer on how public sector people can approach TikToc as a platform.

Video in the UK remains a key part of a comms strategy

Globally, video consumption over the internet is expected to rise by 13 per cent over the next five years, according to PWC.

With 87 per cent of UK adults using the internet daily or almost daily, according to the ONS internet use is baked in to what we do. It’s no surprise that on a smartphone or a tablet is where a lot of video is going to be consumed.

According to Ofcom, 18 to 34-year-olds are watching more than an hour of YouTube on its own.

But as with everything, video is part of a raft of channels that can be used to the 21st century communicator. The best comms is the right content in the right place at the right time.

Research platform-by-platform

YOUTUBE: The maximum length of 15 minutes can be increased to 12 hours through a straight forward verification step.  Optimum length is much shorter

INSTAGRAM: Maximum length was increased from 15 seconds to 60 seconds with research via Newswhip suggesting a much shorter length. 

TWITTER: Maximum length of 140 seconds is comfortably within Hubspot’s suggested 45 seconds.

SNAPCHAT: Maximum length is a mere 10 seconds but Hootsuite suggest five seconds is the sweet spot.

PERISCOPE: A maximum length and the sky is the limit but there is little research on what the optimum length of a live broadcast is. The average length of top 12 videos on liveomg.com is 18 minutenew video lengths 2019s.

FACEBOOK: Facebook has shifted the algorithm from 15 seconds as optimum length to three minutes.

TIKTOC: This video platform has been storming it in 2019 and the default length is 15 seconds with a maximum of 60 seconds.

FACEBOOK LIVE: Can run for 240 minutes but 19 minutes is best say Buzzsumo.

LINKEDIN is the new kid on the block with native uploaded video. Five minutes is the most you can upload and there is research that the best length is 30 seconds.

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WOOOAH: What 5G will mean for all comms people

‘The future is here,” scifi writer William Gibson once said, “it’s just not evenly distributed.”

It’s a line I thought of while travelling through London this week while looking at an advert for 5G on the back of the Evening Standard.

What is 5G?

In a nutshell, it is the new mobile network that predicts hugely ramped-up connection speeds not just for mobile devices but for all internet connections. It is a UK government target to have the country entirely 5G by 2033. We’re behind on broadband so we’ll catch-up through 5G is the plan.

How fast will 5G be?

To download a full HD film, the timelines are:

  • More than a day at 3G.
  • Seven hours 4G.
  • Four to 40 seconds at 5G.

Of course, what you find  is often slower than what the poster offers. But even so.

This week, I spent a few hours reading-up on 5G and what it may bring. It’s a mistake to think this is just a quick way to watch movies on your phone. It meant reading through a list of new technologies.

The advent of 5G is predicted to lead to massive changes for how organisations operate. There’s a whole new babble of new technologies that 5G can open up. Reading through them is mildly mind blowing.

What’s the upside for comms?

Marketers will love what the platform can do as it will supercharge many of the things they struggle to do. Internal comms will need to understand it so they can explain what’s coming. Comms people will see how they need to adjust their communications.

This isn’t just a quicker way to download blockbusters. This could change a lot of things.

Video gets bigger. Even bigger

As download speeds increase, video becomes an even more important part of the way people consume content. Especially on mobile devices. The kid on the bus heading home can download a feature film in seconds will do so. They’ll also be able to create and post video even faster, too.

A two speed comms strategy short term

If you live in London and key British cities where there’s a patchwork 5G roll-out then you’ll be fine. Outside of those hotspots people will be disadvantaged until they roll out across the whole of the country by 2033. You’ll also need 5G-enabled phones to make the most of it. Short-term while it is tempting to make lots of lovely video content for new 5G areas and their high speeds there may need to be super-aware of audiences.

But that’s just looking at existing comms.

Virtual reality and augmented reality can happen

I’ve blogged before about virtual reality and how comms can make more of it. With the platform to more easily serve it the ability to stream VR content gets easier and it gets more of a proposition. So does augmented reality.

This will lead to innovation… and internal comms

As 5G evolves, what organisations can do with technology will change. Intelligent automation is a phrase you’ll hear more of. What’s this? This is a blend of automation and artificial intelligence. It is software that replaces tasks but it can apply some thinking to those repetitive tasks. Self driving cars is one use. So is voice recognition. But so is a system to serve marketing based on the user’s previous choices.

All of this is going to need communications to explain it to customers, service users and residents as well as the staff who will be deploying it. It will also make for less members of staff. So, it will be useful for comms people to understand exactly what intelligent automation is.

And an end to big rooms with servers in

5G can allow for cloud computing. Cloud computing can do away with traditional networks. So, the organisation can run without rooms full of servers. It’ll take some time for the public sector to feel comfortable with this approach and some parts won’t ever be cool with it. There is a risk the cloud-stored data will be hacked or stolen. But where the technology exists, the carrot of saving money may be enough to shift some organisations. I’m reading that 5G also leads to mobile edge technology. There’s a limit to what you have to know in detail. To a comms person like me it means less servers in the server room.

Prepare for those cloud computing data breach media queries, comms people.

Marketers will love it

Reading through what’s out there I kept reading about ‘closed loop analytics.’  In plain English, this is the ability to see what your customers did before they made that transaction. There’s a handy Hubspot guide here.

Good news, bad news…. comms people will need to read and get up to speed more

In every day use, comms people are plenty busy as they are. Bad news is that they’ll need to keep abreast of the changes. Good news, is that comms people will be key to explaining and exploiting the 5G changes. DCMS are sponsoring a network to encourage innovation and industry which you can join here.

Comms people will need to think through the business case to upgrade their equipment.

And there’s a danger

Working in and around the public sector for the past 14 years I can see there’s a real mile-wide risk. Predictions for what 5G can bring are bold and imaginative. But is there the funding to transform? Not just in communications but across the organisation? I’m not convinced. I’ve seen too many comms people with dated phones to cope with 4G let alone 5G.

Let’s see, shall we?

Picture credit: istock

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ACCOUNT DELETE: A simple-to-follow business case for you not to use fake Facebook accounts

A few days ago I was asked for a business case to show why you shouldn’t use ‘work’ accounts to log into your corporate page.

By ‘work’ accounts I mean those accounts that have been set up back in the day to access Facebook.

You know the kind of thing.

First name: Oxdown Second name: Comms.

Or maybe First name: Dan Second name: Work.

Facebook has a really simple name for these clever accounts. it calls them ‘fake’.

Why?

Because Facebook’s Terms of Service say that you’re allowed one account and that has to be the real you. Anything else is fake. I’ve blogged about this before but here are two links to point at sceptics.

Fake accounts are against Facebook’s rules

If your account isn’t the real you you’re breaking the Terms of Service and you may log on one day and find that it has been deleted without warning. I’ve heard several accounts of teams losing access to pages through this route.

Facebook’s half a billion deleted accounts

As a yardstick of how serious is at this deleting fake accounts caper lets look at their actions.

Data from the company reveal that it deleted almost 600 million accounts in the first quarter of 2019 alone.

So in other words, no, you shouldn’t and yes, they will.

No, you won’t be inundated with alerts

One regular justification for having fake accounts to log in with is because people don’t like the idea of getting notifications from pages in their downtime away from work. I get that. You can disable notifications on the page. Job done.

If that still doesn’t float your boat the answer is don’t be a page admin.

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BE HEALTHY: The CIPR’s mental health guide is a welcome start to the crisis we’re in

There’s a cracking cartoon that tackles the problem of mental health in the workplace.

“We know that mental health is a problem,” the boss says “so we’re changing things.”

“What?” says the worker. “You’re taking on enough people to help me actually do my job without feeling burnt out?”

“No,” the boss replies. “We thought maybe pingpong. Or yoga.”

And that, ladies and gents, provokes guffaws amongst people in a way that you know that’s the truth.

In the CIPR’s recent ‘State of the Profession‘ report, 63 per cent said that they felt workplace stress of at least seven out of 10. Across the UK, 59 per cent suffer stress in the workplace. And 75 per cent of suicides are amongst men under 35 and it is the biggest killer in that demographic.

The data goes on and on.

For communicators it is a problem. I tip my hat to Leanne Ehren who was a lone voice when she started speaking about mental health in the public sector comms community several years ago. It’s encouraging that Leanne’s story is no longer a lone voice. Props too to Paul Sutton for talking about this as an issue in the private sector. The world needs more of these people. It needs fewer people who say the right things and do entirely the opposite. But that’s for another day.

A download is a start of it not the end of it

It is encouraging to see the CIPR return to the mental health issue. They’ve worked with mental health charity MIND to produce the seven-page ‘Understanding Mental Health and Wellbeing Skills Guide’ as a download.

It’s a useful document.

The document gives practical advice to managers and individuals. It’s especially good to see independent practitioners flagged-up. As the document says, a trouble shared really is a trouble halved. For someone working on their own that can be especially hard.

When I first went freelance under the comms2point0 banner five years I’d burn through 100 hour weeks. I didn’t have an off-switch. Now, I use a co-working space or the branch of Costa five minutes away from my front door to give me a block of time when I work. When I’m home I’m home and I can relax more.

You may need someone in your corner

This CIPR document is a valuable contribution to the sector. There are things you can do, the document advises. Buddy up. Switch off social media during a bad day. There are things your employer can do, too like signing the Time to Change pledge and monitor mental health as closely as performance. But one things nags me. Those who get it are probably already doing it. Those employers who don’t care may need more than just a download to effect change and I’m sure the report’s authors absolutely get this.

To use boxing imagery, when you’re on the ropes sometimes you need someone in your corner. This is where the NUJ – the National Union of Journalists come in. I joined as a journalist 24 years ago but it still gives me back-up as a freelance communicator. Being a member of the NUJ also puts someone in my corner. At a time when things are getting on top of you and you’re not sure of yourself let alone yourself that could be invaluable.

The CIPR and the NUJ. I’m proud to be a member of both.

Picture credit: istock

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LONG READ: I read 147 Facebook updates across seven pages to see how the Whaley Bridge dam crisis was communicated on Facebook

Earlier this year a dam burst near the Brazilian town of Belo Horizonte and within minutes 40 were dead and 300 missing buried under thick brown sludge.

In the UK, its been almost 100 years since loss of life from a dam burst from any of our  almost 3,000 dams.

In August 2019, it nearly happened.

Heavy rain at the Toddbrook Reservoir saw the dam overspill and the 170-year-old dam wall start to disintegrate.  There were fears it would lead to the wall collapsing and a million gallons of water flooding down onto the Derbyshire town of Whaley Bridge below.

An emergency operation kicked in with 1,000 people evacuated from the 6,500 population.

The plot was quite simple. Firstly, ump water out of the dam to ease the pressure on the damaged wall. Secondly, repair the damaged wall. So, fire crews crews pumped water out of the reservoir and the RAF brought in a Chinook helicopter to bring in bags of material to help shore-up the crumbling wall.

But how did people stay in touch?

And how did organisations reach people to get a message out in the seven days when the town held its breath?

How was there not mass panic?

The answer was a range of bush telegraph, word-of-mouth, phone, radio, TV and social media.

After seven tense days the dam wall was repaired and the water was pumped out, the was no collapse and the evacuated were allowed home.

Now the dust has settled I took a look at the role Facebook played in the operation to see what lessons I could learn. Turns out there’s a stack.

It was an incident played out on Facebook both corporate pages but also on station accounts and the community-run Whaley Bridge community page whose admin was a vital part of the local news network.

Traditional news sites covered the incident but I focused on fire, police, council, ambulance and the community Facebook page.

Yes, people in an emergency want to be kept updated through the corporate Facebook page

Mapping the main four corporate Facebook pages, Derbyshire Police, Derbyshire Fire and Rescue, Derbyshire County Council and East Midlands Ambulance service there were 147 individual updates which were shared 21,000 times with more than 9,000 comments and shared more than 19,000 times.

Often times, as a trainer of communicators I’m looking at ways to turn heads and get people interested. In this incident, there was no need. There was a captive audience of 6,500 Whaley Bridge people. The challenge was to get information out.

Of the four corporate pages, the most commented, shared and reacted to was the Derbyshire Police corporate page. This was no surprise as they were leading on the evacuation. Throughout the seven days they kept a running commentary with regular updates on the position of the repair and pumping as well as the evacuation plan and reassurance that those evacuated homes were being monitored. Other agencies concentrated on what they were doing and there was a level of sharing the police general updates.

The Derbyshire Police page was an information lifeline

From a distance, there was a number of things that worked.

Time stamping each update worked to build-in obsolescence. So, an update at 3pm was marked as 3pm on the image. In a fast-developing scenario this felt like a useful tactic to do.

Writing in plain English for Facebook. Each update was clear and concise. Each gave  the impression the content had been specially shaped for Facebook. Each had a calm and informative tone of voice. This was not a press release cut and pasted but something for Facebook itself.

Updates had new first-hand content. People wanted to know what the issue was and what success looked like. Knowing that reducing the water levels was all-important images of the water level being reduced were important.

Replying to comments. With more than 7,000 comments over the seven day operation the comms team had their hands full. But commenting helped warn, inform and reassure the public. They were also able to respond warmly to messages of thanks.

Openness made a bank of goodwill. The operation didn’t go smoothly. There was an evacuation of 1,000 people and then the halt to the operation which let some people home to gather pets and medicines. That could have gone badly. What played out on Facebook was praise for the emergency services that helped them.

Updates were in real-time and regular. There was an appetite to update Facebook regularly. The impression given was that Facebook was a prime channel rather than an unmonitored after-thought. When there was an update it was posted. But the gaps were not too long.

 

But some of the best content came from devolved station pages

Sharing the sweets is something I’ve long argued for. By all means have a corporate page giving the official line but if you give the people on the ground the trust and training you’ll be surprised at what you find.

Here, there were two station Facebook pages, the Melbourne On-Call Fire Station page and the Staveley Fire Station page. More than 30 updates were shared from the scene and shared more than 500 times across the community.

This incident confirms the important role a responsible community-run Facebook presence can have as a force for good. It’s a reminder that one of the main places people get local news is local Facebook.

Eye-witness content underpinned the corporate message. Both stations created good eyewitness content at a time when the immediate peril had passed. Images of pumping operations and reduced water levels showed the message in action.

Eye-witness content from the frontline created content for the corporate page. In any incident that spans days people get tired and the thin red line can get tired and thinner. What you’d like to do isn’t always what you can do. So, to have fire crew creating content means you’re able to pull it and post it through the corporate page.

It showed the human face. The tired firefighters that have worked through the night gave an opportunity for the community to thank them for their efforts. What was striking was the messages of thanks and support. That must have had a value to firefighters tired after a long shift.

The Whaley Bridge community page was at the heart of it

The town has 6,500 residents and 5,600 members of the Whaley Bridge page.  So well connected was the page admin was that he was in the room when the decision was taken to evacuate.

Happily, the page admin hung back to first allow the authorities to make the announcement that 1,000 people would have to move out as the dam was at risk of breaking.

The Whaley Bridge page was at the heart of the community network posting 74 times across seven days with 12,622 reactions and 2,180 comments and 2,647 shares. Rather than being a simple sign-posting operation to forward on the official police post the admin worked to reflect the work on the ground. The tenor of the posts was supportive.

It’s possible the task could have been harder if the page admin had had an axe to grind.

This is a reminder that the Facebook admin in the community is just as important as the local reporter. In many ways, they are more important.

It was surprising, given the role that Facebook groups play that there was not an effective Facebook group for the town. But with the page being an effective and well placed source there was no need.

On-the-spot content. The Whaley Bridge page was busily creating its own content from the town and in many cases from close to the dam itself.

Evidence worked. When people wanted to see evidence of progress the pictures that confirmed this did well. While the Chinook shots got lots of attention it was the shots of the water levels being reduced that really engaged with the community.

Re-sharing some corporate content but not all. There was plenty being put out by fire, police, council and ambulance. But only a selection of it was shared.

People responded really well to the people helping them. A blurred shot of a worker making a cup of tea in the requisitioned sailing club house was the most popular piece of content. An expression of gratitude to those who were helping them it is as British as a cup of tea.

They were flooded by journalists. Looking to speak to local people the Facebook page admin was inundated with private messages from reporters. So much so he was telling them to stop messaging. In a crisis, news desk used to despatch a reporter who would be directed to the local shop or pub to gauge community feeling. Now, they also head to the largest community Facebook presence.

Video helped to reassure and scotch rumours

The story boiled down to something straight forward. Namely, that the dam wall will break unless the water level is dropped to relieve pressure and the wall is repaired. So, footage of the water level dropping through pumping and emergency repairs was gold.

The best footage was from the scene. Rather than have a talking head at HQ telling people something was happening they had action shots. This was a brilliant decision and spoke far eloquently than a senior person. ‘Don’t tell us, show us,’ was a well followed mantra in the crisis phase. Drone footage showed this well.

Facebook Live from the residents Q&A. More than 40,000 people watched the session where residents could ask questions. This was a cracking idea and was responded to.

Putting up the senior people. The council had some early sub-titled video of the council Leader while the police and fire service at the end of things wrapped-up with the most senior people they had. As a strategy this was secondary.

In summary

Facebook as the largest social channel is integral to the messaging in an emergency.

Regular and timely updates to fill the vacuum are needed.

Comments need to be responded to.

The idea of don’t just say it, show it works well.

Devolved Facebook presences can come into their own for creating content that can be re-shared by the corporate page.

What came through the more than 170 Facebook posts from the incident was a feeling of community spirit and a collective holding of breath until the danger passed.

Those involved should feel a real sense of pride.

I help deliver Facebook training for people in the public sector. More here. If you’d like help give me a shout dan@danslee.co.uk.

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