Dan Slee

Helsinki in November is a grim place.

The weather hovers around minus one and you get seven hours of daylight.

So, this banner nails it:

Rather than gloss over things, the poster celebrates the awfulness by making braving it a virtue. 

Be human. 

Day two of a 30 day trek around comms that is recognisably human.

Step forward Doncaster Council for allowing five-year-old Jake to realise his dream not just of seeing a street sweeper but of carefully sitting at the controls of one too.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Doncaster Council has excelled at communications. Their tweeted thread of an abandoned speedboat caught the imagination of the internet.

What works?

These are staff who give a stuff and go the extra mile.  Instead of hiding behind process they made room for Jake to come to their depot and see a street sweeper.

Not only that, but video content shot by the council was distributed and re-used by other media outlets. Here it was the BBC who created a video that was posted to Twitter:

What a great story this is – well done to @MyDoncaster for fulfilling 5-year-old Jake’s dream @BBCSheffield pic.twitter.com/GgrWpWHQ4j

— Oli Constable (@OliConstable) February 26, 2017

What is human content? It’s something that looks as though it has been shaped by real people. Why am I blogging for 30 days? Because human content can shape attitutes that makes calls-to-action more effective.

Years ago, it was all about putting press releases out and managing the message. Now, a fifth of public sector comms teams have an income target to meet. An income target? Yup. Here’s some ideas if this is you and some advance warning if it isn’t.

The world has changed and we are changing with it.

Income targets have become a reality for 20 per cent of public sector comms teams and that figure is likely to rise.

What the heck does that mean? A survey we ran with Granicus UK gave some fascinating insight. At the conventional end of things the income target was getting targeted by web ads and ads in your residents’ magazine. At the more creative end was hiring out car parks, hiring out co-working space and a whole lot more.

What he heck does all that mean?

Well, trouble, if you are not careful. The issue isn’t straight forward. What will your organisation stand? What buy-in do you have? What ideas can you come up with? How do you turn-in a profit? What skills do you need?

Together with my comms2point0 colleague Darren Caveney and Granicus UK’s Emma Howard we produced a rather fine download on income targets, comms and the public sector. You can download it here.

Back in September, myself and Darren spoke at Granicus UK’s annual event in London. I’m really pleased that a flavour of that will be offered as part of a webinar on Thursday November 23 from 2pm to 3pm. If you struggled to get to London that day this is perfect. It’s free.

Also taking part are:

Nicola Goode, Marketing and PR Manager, Bournemouth Tourism at Bournemouth Borough Council. Imre Tolgyesi, Partnership Manager, Commercial Services, South Staffordshire Council.

Dave Worsell, managing director, Granicus Europe.

Pop by. If you are having to sort an income target, this is for you. If you want toget up to speed in case you do, this is for you too. I can’t promise cake but you can bring your own.

Webinar: Income Generation Strategies and the Comms You Need to Succeed takes place from 2pm to 3pm on Thursday November 23. You can register free HERE.

Picture credit: National Archives UK / Flickr.

Ladies and gentlemen, in Northern England this week a powerboat was dumped on the street and as a result Doncaster Council won the internet.

The speed boat will not be the only thing dumped across the country with the cost likely to top £50 million across the UK.

Every council across the country is forced to pay to clean-up illegally dumped waste. But aside the financial cost there’s the cost to communities blighted by bags of rubbish.

An everyday story told in GIFs

GIFs are short animations which date from the 1990s. For the past 30 years GIFs have been used across parts of the internet to make a point or tell a story. The public sector at first hesitant to use these animated devices have started slowly to use them.

Doncaster Council’s comms team decided to tell this everyday story using GIFs. It is magnificent. Human, witty, warm and engaging. Will it work for everthing? No. Does it work for this? Absolutely.

The great twin triumph of this is not the web architecture of GIFs that creates it. What makes it a triumph is the reaction it gets from people, firstly. They smile and connect. But most of all it is the willingness to experiment.

A story told as a thread of GIFs

And the story begins…

The chief praises the work…

But perhaps the cherry on top of the cake is that Doncaster Council’s chief executive used Twitter to send them a fist-bump.

The idea is to tell stories every week using the technique of Twitter thread and GIFs. That’s fine. But the real win in this is experimenting with how people are already using the internet. This won’t work in every piece of communications. That’s fine.

But where this does win is by creating human and engaging content. As a resident you’d want to follow the account.

The best day to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best day is today. It’s the same for you and your team.

The skills you need to communicate have been changing. A few years back I blogged a list of skills that every team needed. This started as a list of 40 skills. No more. This is now 55. But do you want to know the good news? I don’t think everyone needs all of them. But your team’s strength should be drawn from different areas.

I’ve divided this into nine areas. Everyone should get the strategic. Everyone needs the core skills.

Strategic

1. Be clear about your organisation’s priorities. Its priorities are the comms team’s priorities.
2. Report up weekly on . List what you are doing against the heading of your priorities. Otherwise you are just making noise.
3. Be able to look finance in the eye. Attach a financial value to the results you are achieving. Fewer GP appointents because of that YouTube clip and receptionists who triage? Attach a value to that.
4. Have a team of specialist generalists. If you expect everyone to know all the skills they – and you – will fail. Have them know core skills and excel at others.
5. Be gate openers not gatekeepers. Some of your best comms work will be done by frontline staff equipped with a smartphone. This is fine. It is to be encouraged.
6. To know what an income target is and to either plan for them or offer evaluated comms savings. A fifth of public sector teams have an income target. If you have one you’ll need entrepreneurial skills in the team rather than relying on ex-hacks to sell ad space.

Core skills the team will need

7. Know how to evaluate. If you are doing something, know why. Count the tweets and press releases you send. But count what people did as a result of all that. That’s far more important.
8. Know that social media isn’t about calls to action. Its being human and engaging 80 per cent of the time.
9. Know all the channels and who uses them. There is no one size fits all channel that will reach everyone. You need to know the online and offline channels and their strengths and weaknesses.
10. Be more human. Everyone’s job in comms is to carry a Field Marshall’s baton to see the big picture, wear a lab coat to know the data and have a plate of cake to speak human.
11. Always be learning.
12. Educate the client. Comms’ job is to help the organisation communicate better. Your job is to advise them how to do that by knowing backwards the complex and fractured media landscape. You are a professional. Give professional advice.
13. Be a diplomat, be small ‘p’ and big ‘P’ politically aware. Know how to handle people and give advice.
14. Speak truth to power. Know that you are able to give the right advice.
15. To listen to the public. Don’t be afraid to reflect their views back to the organisation even when it is critical.
16. To be able to tell stories. In different formats.
17. To know media law. McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists is your friend.
18. To know the value of internal comms. Engage for Success is a good starting point.
19. To know how to write a comms plan. Like this one.
20. To know how to interpret data. And know the right data to interpret.
21. To know how to respond as an organisation in an emergency. Increasingly, the emergency is what tests a team. This will happen to you at a time you need it least.
22. Look for the influencers who can influence networks. The blogger. The community leader. The campaigner.
23. To be able to communicate to the head and the heart. And know the difference.
24. To manage time. To know what meetings to make and those to break.

In person

25. To be professional, warm and engaging.
26. To present. To create a deck of slides and stand up and speak to an audience.

In words

27. To understand jargon but to communicate in plain English.
28. To write effective emails.
29. To write effective email campaigns.
30. To evaluate and improve email campaigns.
31. To write a press release.
32. To be able to write for the web.
33. To create and run a survey.

In pictures

34. To find copyright free images.
35. To take and edit
36. To record the permission of those who are photographed, update and maintain a model consent database.
37. To select information and create an infographic.
38. To know what branding is and why it is.

In video

39. Know the optimum lengths of video per channel.
40. Know how to plan, edit, film and add text and music to a video shot in-house.
41. Know how to plan and commission and external video.

In print

42. To know when a leaflet works and to liaise with designers.
43. To know when a newsletter or magazine works and to liase with designers.

In data

44. To know what data to look for and what data to count.
45. To know what open data is.

On Social media

46. Know the Paretto Principle. The 80-20 split is what works on social media. Make 80 per cent of your content social and engaging to earn the right 20 per cent of the time to make calls to action. People don’t want to be sold to on social media.
47. Think of Facebook as a broad landscape rather than just your page. Most people who use your organisation aren’t following your page but they are using Facebook. But they are members of groups and pages. So go looking for them there.
48. Make friends with Facebook group and page admin. They can help share content for you.
49. Join Facebook groups and pages as yourself. By being a human being you can show that real human beings work for the organisation.
50. To know what audience uses the main social media accounts.
51. To create on each platform engaging content with words, text and video for them with the right tone for the right occasion.
52. To know how customer services works with social media.
53. To respond using social media in an emergency.
54. To know new platforms and be able to experiment with them.
55. To be able to create and schedule content at the right time.

Picture credit: Ryan Dickey / Flickr