Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest rebuttal to an inaccurate story by a public sector body.
This week there was an incident in a theatre in Birmingham city centre. Equipment malfunctioned during a performance and there was an explosion backstage. There were no injuries. As a precaution the theatre evacuated.
This translated to this on The Sun newspaper Twitter:
In the old way of doing things there would have been a phone call to the newsdesk. There would have been tooing and frowing and maybe the newspaper would have got round to correcting it.
But probably not.
Instead West Midlands Police took to Twitter with a direct rebuttal within EIGHT minutes:
We didn’t. The theatre quite rightly initiated their emergency plans and evacuated. Diversions are in place but all other businesses are open. Birmingham is NOT closed following this technical fault in the basement. No casualties.
If you find someone questioning why frontline people should have access to social media show them this video.
Two officers return to the home of a 93-year-old crime victim to check on how he is.
They’ve listened to his stories of the war, heard how he got his pilots wings and his sadness on losing his wife one Christmas Eve a few years before. One officer spots the sheet music on the piano. This was his grandmother’s favourite too. So he gets up and plays it. A colleague decides to record it. A spontaneous use of a mobile to record what was happening. Not scripted. Not staged.
The identity of the old man is preserved but you can see his hands playing along and the delighted clapping of his hands.
This is beautiful.
It should be shown to officers to remind them of why they do they job they do. This is not CSI Miami this is PC Mansfield and it just works.
For a Facebook video this is far longer than the 21 seconds which is optimum. It is also shaky, not polished and you don’t see the people involved. But that’s part of the reason why this works.
For me, a good police social media account must mirror a beat constable
Sometimes personable, sometimes serioes they must navigate the gears depending on the issue.
A good beat bobby must do all of these in a day. So must a good police comms team.
This tweeted Hampshire Police video talking about equalities was a departure from the serious and I love it a lot:
Seen the news today? When asked what they wanted to be when they grow up, being a #police officer came top 3 among boys. That’s great, but it’s a great job for girls too! If you’re a young person in #Hampshire & interested in policing join our @HantsPolCadets#Equalitypic.twitter.com/eEg8yMR0Ho
As the late David Bowie once sang: “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, turn and face the strange.”
Almost five decade old lyrics that can help you navigate the ever changing ever evolving landscape of social media.
Facebook announced a change of direction a few days ago. It came in a blog post from Mark Zuckerburg and it has led to a fair degree of fear and uncertainty. It heralds a new direction for how people will consume content on the channel.
More than 50 per cent of the UK population have a Facebook account, Ofcom say, so an announcement on how your audience will use the channel is hugely important to everyone who wants to use the channel to reach them.
One thing is striking about this announcement. It is light on detail. It is vague in places. Frustratingly so. But after reading a stack of takes on the blog and giving this careful thought here’s a few things that public sector people need to know.
Facebook’s focus will be on friends and family not businesses, brands and organisations like the public sector. What your friends post is going to be dropped into your timeline more often. That’s at the expense of content from organisations. You can count the public sector in that.
Your Facebook page will reach fewer people unless your posts are genuinely engaging. As the squeeze on pages kicks in you’ll reach fewer people through organic posts. The broadcast content that ticks a box for someone? It’ll work even less. Reading what Zuckerburg it needs to be genuinely engaging. So, the Sandwell Council discussion on Snow Champions where people share pictures and discuss where salt can be got looks the best bet. This will need a re-think for many people. It’ll also mean you need to engage.
The public sector person who shares work content to their network will cut through. If friends and family are important to Facebook, the shared message from an employee who lives in the patch will be more important. Of course, this is a fraught area and one where HR have had a field day in recent years. Your policy may not be for people to share work content. You may not even let them during work hours. But the email to the 100 librarians about that library content you’ve posted for them on a Facebook page feels like a sensible thing to do.
The internal comms of social media feels more important. If friends and family are more important, internal comms as a discipline overlaps further with social media. Tapping into staff’s networks of friends and family feels like an optional bonus nice to have. It may only reach small numbers per person. But in a 1,000-strong workforce even half bringing 10 each may represent an audience.
Facebook Groups are more and more and more important. In 2018, your strategy for how you map, search and interact with groups will be mainstream if you want to use Facebook sensibly. This is something I’ve written on before and I’ve been carrying out some detailed research in the field. The Facebook group admin in your area are as important as journalists and other influencers. They have been for some time and the Facebook announcement is a klaxon wake-up to this. Make friends with them where you can. Think what content would work for them. Don’t spam them. The 500 members of the New Parents Facebook group are the right audience for new parent content. Join a group yourself and interact directly.
The new approach can be summarised in this short video. Although it is longer than Facebook’s optimum 21 seconds. But that’s fine.
Facebook Live video will be more important. Zuckerburg talks about the explosion of video as being significant and he’s especially keen on live video. Why? Simple. It carries more interactions. An encouraged route to your audience on pages is live video. This could be a Q&A, a behind the scenes tour. The body of experiment and case study is growing. Learn and add to it.
Facebook engagement rates will go down. That’s not just for the public sector, that’s right across Facebook. This is one of Zuckerburg’s clearest predictions. Lerss time but more valuably spent. So, as you see your stats dip remember that you are not alone, okay?
Facebook advertising feels more important. Advertising is not mentioned through the Zuckerburg post. As an organisation that is highly skilled at extracting cash from business, brands and organisation this is notable. The detail will follow, I’m sure, but I can’t imagine that Facebook won’t turn down the chance of allowing brands to beat the changes by advertising. As blogger Jon Loomer has speculated, this may lead to more competition to get into people’s timelines. This may lead to a spike in costs. Or it may not.
That’s not the end for your Facebook page. This may be the start of using it more creatively and using it as one element of your overall Facebook strategy that inckudes groups, pages and internal comms and a higher barrier for posting better content.
Being human doesn’t always have to be a public sector thing as this tweet from Kentucky Fried Chicken shows.
McDonald’s leader Ronald just stated he has a “burger on his desk at all times”. Will someone from his big shoed, red nosed regime inform him that I too have a burger on my desk, but mine is a box meal which is bigger and more powerful than his, and mine has gravy! #nuclearbutton
There are risks of straying into politics. Especially if you are public sector. The reaction online to this private sector company has been largely positive. Given that this is a US-based company I wonder if the UK operation had any interesting phone calls from head office.
But for public sector people, smile at it if you like. But do keep clear of taking the rise out of any politics. Even American politics. With the mooted visit of Trump that will be a live issue. Already civil servants have been asked not to post anti-Trump content.
What’s the benefit of this? It shows that police are human. It builds followers on a site. It allows you next week to talk to more people because you were human.
For the past few years I’ve blogged at the end of the year some predictions. For 2018, here are some more.
The broad trend is one of rapid change and a broad shift to more visual ways to communicate with people… who are consuming more visually, on mobile and on-the-go.
Get Facebook right and you’ll be a long way to cracking your comms. It won’t be the answer to everything but it is so big and so all encompassing for people that it is comfortably the biggest platform, the largest way people get their news and understand what is happening in their friends’ lives.
The Facebook group admins who communicate with your audience have already become as important as journalists. Groups have grown in importance. Get to know them. Join them. Build bridges with the admin. See if you can work with them. As Facebook pages get more money driven their importance rises. They can challenge fake news about you because they are often where it starts.
Technology is outpacing the public sector massively. This worries me. In the mid-1990s mobile phones became a mainstream Christmas present. They became part of how people communicated to become the dominant platform it is today. Today, the best organisations for years have been experimenting with voice recognition, artificial intelligence, machine learning and virtual reality. Amazon Echo and Google Home have led the breakthrough shifting units for Christmas 2017. And where is the public sector with this trend? Nowhere. This very soon will be a comms issue.
Bad video is not good video.‘Can we have a video’ has replaced the request for a Twitter account as the request from those in service areas who think they can do your job. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. ‘What do you want to achieve?’ remains the response to the request for a video. Or a Twitter account.
Go beyond your Facebook page.Far, far, far beyond. If you think posting to a page and leaving it there is reaching your audience you are almost certainly wrong. Navigate across Facebook as your page to visit other pages. Cross post your page update to groups.
Re-balance from broadcasting by being human. After 12-months of social media reviews, the baked-in problem remains treating social media like a broadcast channel to make it work better. Calls to action should be 20 per cent of your content to be most effective.
Specialist generalists. In the NHS and other areas, the specialist or generalist debate continues as teams shrink. The answer is comms people should be specialist generalists. They should be really good at two or three niche things and have some core skills. But no-one should have the monopoly on anything.
Not keeping pace is dangerous for your organisation. The cost of falling behind with how people want to consume media is that your organisation will be at best irrelevant and at worst seen to be actively not caring.
GIFs and threads will become expected. THREAD. How Twitter threads changed. 1. First there was the tweet. 2. Then the tweet got longer. 3. But words are inherently a bit dull. 4. So the animated GIF started to be used more. 5. And the thread which links tweets together. Keep reading, okay? 6. This is all part of a wider trend to move from text to images and video.
Twitter continues to wither. Twitter is a channel to reach PR people and journalists brilliantly. But increasingly not residents. Three years ago, it was the third largest channel in the UK, Ofcom says. In 2017, it has slipped to fifth. Against a background of hate and fake news, this trend with carry on. Good on Twitter? Fine. What else are you good at?
Social media is becoming less social. In part, fueled by the Trump effect but in part by sharing fatigue, social media will become less broadly social and more splintered into places where small groups of like-minded people will exist. No, I’m not sure that’s healthy. But that’s what will happen.
Becoming digital first. If you haven’t already work out how you’ll need to work out how to respond as an organisation to a mis-truth posted in a village Facebook group that is picked up by a newspaper Twitter account. You don’t have 24-hours to get back. You can’t leave that person in a meeting. They need to respond now. But they need to understand why they have to respond, first. That’s best done in peacetime.
Video continues to rise. It’s more than 80 per cent of the internet. This is an easy prediction to make.
Live video continues to rise. The public sector has been left behind by media companies in this field but will continue to catch-up.
360 images and virtual reality grow as part of the landscape. Where short video was once daring, the daring use of virtual reality content will continue to grow.
The need to demonstrate results grows ever more important. Again, an easy prediction to make.
There will be another terrorist outrage and comms teams need to be kind to themselves. London and Manchester suffered in 2017. They showed some of the best public sector communications I’ve ever seen. They also came with lessons from those involved. Yes, accept offers of help from day one. Yes, this will affect the mental health of you and your team.
Brexit will affect everyone. Teams in London are already feeling the effect of EU staff leaving. But the predicted economic effect will hit public sector organisations too. That means comms teams going through more austerity challenge. So, get good. Or get so small you can barely answer the phone.
Internal comms reaches crisis point. We’ve gone as far as we can with 2003-era intranets which have become a repository for pdfs. The public sector keeps its head above water through the good will of staff alone. The organisation that fails to take seriously how it talks to its staff will reap the results. The comms team that spells out the risks and leads a renewal of channels will reap the benefits.
The comms person who stands still won’t get a new job in two years. If you don’t learn you really will get left behind. Who needs a fax-operating press release writing envelope-stuffer in 2018?
Income targets will remain a minority burden on comms teams. But the trend will be slowly upwards bouyed by some success stories.
If you fail to change what you do, your life WILL get harder. This will mean changing how you do things, I know. As a team and as an individual. This will take time. But it is time you need to spend. Change the supertanker. Please. It’s more fun than hitting the rocks.
Predictions for 2017: How did I do last year?
Things I got right
Zombie comms teams did rise. The risk of being leant on by politicians did increase. Teams remain too old and there remains a recruitment gap. Educating the client remains the most important thing to do in a changing world. Post-truth remains an important problem. Facebook groups did become more important.
Things I got half right
Did the rise of dark social leave comms teams flat-footed? Dark social is things like whatsapp and Facebook Messenger. Platforms that link a few people together but can’t be searched. Thing is, I don’t think most teams even realise how large dark social has become to even become flat-footed. Twitter did wither but LinkedIn didn’t charge up the table. Press offices have transformed and changed title at a fast pace.
Things I didn’t get right
Merged comms teams that bring NHS, fire, council and police together haven’t happened. Yet. Although fire and police in some places have joined together.
There is something about the festive season that gives comms people free licence to be more creative.
The season’s cheer means that people are a bit more relaxed about the content they put out. As a result there’s been a slew of engaging content.
Some of it has a call-to-action while other content is a more relaxed human approach. A timely reminder that the people who work there are human too.
So, in the style of the Radio Times Christmas edition, here’s a quick run-down of some of the may clips that caught my eye.
Sussex Police’s domestic violence drama
Police would steer clear of domestic violence a few years ago. That’s changed. This video focusses on a child getting ready for Christmas under the shadow of warring adults. A call to the police leads them to come around.
Staffordshire Police’s Carpool Karaoke
A few years ago, Dover Police captured a singing cop while on patrol. It showed a human side. This Staffordshire Police video updates that. There’s carols. There’s also a conversation about the dangers of cybercrime. Why does it work? Because it’s just people talking. It’s brilliant.
West Sussex Council’s 12 days of Christmas
Christmas comes but once a year but grittimng can be four times in a 24-hour window. This light hearted clip shows the 12 days of Christmas with recycling and other messages. Excellent.
Bath & North East Somerset Council’s recycling singing
Mountains of wrapping follows Christmas and it’s always as well to get the message in quickly.
The is unusually affecting. The transcript of a potential road traffic collision is played out by children’s voiceover and toys. ‘Stay with me, stay with me,’ one child shouts as the victim loses consciousness. Drive safer is the message.
New Forest District Council’s location lyrics
Everyone loves a Christmas carol. The singing plays as council staff point to different parts of their district to pick out the key words. Merry Christmas.
Dorset Police’s Christmas pop hit
Taking inspiration from Carpool Karaoke is Dorset Police’s singing staff who make the clips on their lunchbreaks. There’s even a dog joining in.
West Midlands Ambulance Service’s epic fail
In amongst the more light-hearted clip is this excellent short clip from an ambulance service that flags the perils of driving with snow and ice on the roof. A block of ice falls froim a car in front and spins crashing into the windscreen of the following car.
You’ve probably seen what can happen if you don’t clear the snow off the roof of your car before you set off. If you haven’t been out since the snow came, make sure you leave time to clear snow off all of your car #safety#thelawpic.twitter.com/7lQtSSa113
Proving that firefighters are not that great at singing but very good at joining in the seasonal cheer are is this example. Happy Christmas. And switch off your fairy lights.
This is good work. The trick now is to take this creativity into the New Year to shoot warm human footage that engages then too.
Full disclosure: I’ve helped train people in video skills from Durham and Darlington Fire & Rescue Service, New Forest District Council, Bath & North East Somserset Council and West Sussex Council.
