Here’s the slide I keep coming back to and have done for months.
W. Edwards Deming was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. His work has been acclaimed as being one of the key factors that led to the Japanese industrial boom from 1950 to 1960.
He is absolutely right. Without data you are just another person with an opinion.
During my career I’ve not always appreciated this. My career has been a struggle between thought and action. As a journalist, I was measured by action. Write the story, get the scoop. Long term planning was literally tomorrow.
But as I’m often now taking the bigger picture I see the value of data to help you calmly make decisions.
The problem with data is that it doesn’t kick the door down and demand you send out a press release. It’s dull. It’s a pile of numbers. Yet, what stories it can tell you if you spend long enough panning for it like a Klondike fontiersperson hunched over a pan rext to a running stream.
Good data can save a life.
It can tell you, as I heard today at the Association of Police Communicators conference, that abusive behaviour starts in the teenage years. So, comms has been targeted at teenagers that abusive relationships are not acceptable because the data said that’s when offenders start.
So shouldn’t you spend more time panning for data?
Local newspapers, like the mob, has a habit of pulling me back.
For 12-years I worked on local papers writing whole forest-pulping amounts of stories on everything from table-top sales to triple murders.
More than a decade since I sent my last nib the industry keeps tugging at my coat tails.
Today, I read an earnest defence of local newspapers blogged by Ian Carter. You can read it here. In it, he defends the industry against the accusation of clickbait, listicles and falling standards. In particular he siezes on a well-documented story of a frontpage story of an out-of-date pasty being sold. It’s five years ago. Or, rather as this is newspapers there are CAPITAL LETTERS to show OUTRAGE:
“As part of the case for the prosecution, he digs out a story published five years – FIVE YEARS! – ago by the Folkestone Herald.”
Hey, maybe Ian is right. So, I’d like to share some more contemporary work in the style of a listical featured in the excellent Angry People in Local Newspapers Facebook page you can see here.
Seven local newspaper stories… I cried at number two and you’ll never believe number six
CHAIR DESTROYED – Westmorland Gazette. It’s all kicking off in Kendal. However, the anonymous spokesman would have offended my old news editor greatly.
So, join me to jump for joy, raise a glass to fine quality local journalism and look sad next to a pothole. There is a post I’ll write on newspapers and where they feature in 2016. This isn’t it.
What is blogging? It’s thinking something through publicly, then keeping a public record of it to share.
Why change? Because I want to see what impact it has on how I do things. And because I quite fancy a place to develop half-thought thoughts as short reads or possibly longer. For the past couple of years I’ve been writing about things that I’m running a workshop or a session on. That’s fine. But I’d like to expand beyond that too.
Why #blogvember? Because a month feels achievable. Some content every day.
Why a dog video? Becuase I really don’t like reading pronouncements from other people about how they use social media. Just do it, chap. Go on. But this public declaration just to myself is sugared with a viral dog video just for you.
I’ve updated the optimum times for video content with two platforms being removed altogether.
Gone are the six seconds of Vine and gone too is the livestreaming Twitter application Meercat.
I’ve edited the comms2point0 ever updated video resource here and the chart is here:
So, what do the changes say?
Both are Twitter applications, so not all that much.
I’ve also updated the Facebook Live and Periscope optimum length to 10 minutes. This is emerging as the best length of live video.
Luke Watson, in this excellent Search Engine Journal post, makes the point that Facebook page posts reach single digit numbers. But Facebook Live at the minute is free, so it’s worth experimenting with before it costs.
You know all this and so do I. But what I hadn’t done was fully realise just how Facebook was being used by people until I started to look at my own doorstep.
Facebook in my own community
I live in Quarry Bank, near Stourbridge in the West Midlands. Locals have a strong Black Country accent. It’s known locally as ‘Quarry Bonk’. It’s an overgrown village that merged more than a century ago into its neighbours but has somehow retained a sense of its own identity. There’s a high school, a High Street with three butchers. There’s two curry houses and a Labour and a Conservative club.
There’s a Facebook page called ‘The Only Way is Quarry Bank and Brierley Hill’ with 4,258 people liking it. There is 26,000 people in the two areas it covers which means around more than one in ten who live here have liked this page.
Using Facebook’s own search tools I found 16 pages and 14 groups for Quarry Bank ranging from the history group (225 likes), scouts (148), buy and sell (4,623) and a comprehensive school old school friends 1974 to 1981 (70 likes.)
Community pages are bigger than the community newspaper
It got me thinking. How does that compare with those who have liked the local daily paper the Express & Star? Just counting the four Black Country boroughs with 1.1 million residents the 100,000 likes the newspaper has accounts for slightly less than 10 per cent. So in my area ‘The Only Way is Quarry Bank and Brierley Hill’ is bigger than the newspaper.
And my community isn’t unique
Running a search for Dudley – the borough where I live – found a pile more. In all 102 groups and 42 pages. In the Amblecote ward of Dudley 54 pages and groups and in Gornal 85. In Stourbridge, there are 79 pages and 237 groups These are serious numbers and it all adds up to a conclusion: People are on Facebook in numbers. They are using pages and groups. If you want to talk to them you need to go to the pages and groups.
Every community is hyperlocal
Where I live is typical. Every community has a patchwork of Facebook groups and pages from community pages to clubs, societies, pubs, parks. The village to the estate, the town and the city.
Much work has been done around hyperlocal news sites. People who live in Stone in Staffordshire, for example, have A Little Bit of Stone with a website, Facebook page and Twitter or a blogger like Brownhills Bob. But not every community has people aggregating and writing local news. What they do have are a network of Facebook pages and groups that is hidden in plain site.
You need to take a look for yourself
Don’t believe me? Go to your Facebook profile. Put a ward, village, town or community in the search box. Then click on pages to see the pages. Then do the same with groups. You may be surprised.
What this means for public sector comms people
If people are on Facebook comms people need to talk to them on Facebook. You’ll know you may need a page. But is chucking your content up onto that page as you produce it really the answer?
Some public sector Facebook pages do work. The Isles of Scilly page grew to 57,000 likes driven by Sgt Colin Taylor’s human voice. Sandwell Council’s pagewith 22,000 is a fine example and the DVSA’s page aimed at learner drivers I Can’t Wait To Pass My Driving Test with 57,000 likes also hits the mark. But if you are honest does yours? Does your council’s? Or fire service? Or housing trust?
Public sector organisations have put a toe in the water with Facebook but they’ve not dived in. They are sat on the side waiting for people to swim over to them when there’s usually more fun to be had elsewhere.
What your 2017 Facebook strategy should look like
Yes, you might need your own page. Organisations are encouraged down this path by a trail of sweets provided by insights, the ability to create adds and post on other pages. But with Facebook reducing the reach of your updates suddenly, this isn’t so attractive.
Yes, you might need your own group. The benefit of this is a greater reach, the ability to create closed groups to limit access. The downside is that you post as an individual.
No, you can’t create a work profile for yourself. Facebook’s terms and conditions are clear that you are only allowed one profile.
So, ideally, people from your organisation should be using their own profile to join groups and pages and add content as themselves. This is a step which some may be reluctant to make. I get this.
But the benefits of using Facebook as yourself is that you become a human being again not a job title and by doing so you can talk to far more people. Back in the day Al Smith pioneered this approach when he was at Newcastle City Council and Tim Lloyd did something similar when he was working in government digital comms. This isn’t new.
Turn off the firehose, turn on your brain
You shouldn’t turn the firehose of your content into spamming pages and groups with your content. Nor should you just chase numbers, either. If a local history group has 50 members with many who all look over 40 they may not object to being told about a flu jab, if that’s your task. Similarly, a community group with 1,000 people may want to know about a plan to change the road layout.
Tips to put this into practice
Make it routine that you make a search on Facebook when you are looking to communicate. Something to say about cycling? Look for a cycling group. Changes to a community? Look for the groups and pages from that community.
Run a review of pages in the area you serve. Log a cross section to show colleagues.
Try and trial posting content as yourself to groups and pages.
None of this is straight forward. It’s messy and it may not work if an admin from a group or page doesn’t want you there. But that’s fine.
But by diving into Facebook and going to where people are you may be surprised.
It reminded me how long it’s been since I’ve seen something that publicly praised communications people. Or the public sector.
All too often run down by people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing they carry on.
Putting in the extra time, going the extra mile, thinking up new ways of communicating because they want to do their job better.
I spent eight years in the public sector and was always struck at the hard work and dedication I found. Often from people who were not recognised. I’m the third generation of my family who has worked in the public sector and you know what? I’m proud of that. In my heart I haven’t left.
So, if you are a press officer, communications officer, manager, head of comms, marketing assistant or digital specialist working anywhere in the public sector ‘thank you.’
Keep doing brilliant things.
And thank you Unison for shining a light on the work they do.
Can we have more of this, please?
Cheers to Antony Tiernan for spotting and sharing this image.
“How?” said one person in the packed room. “How the hell did that happen?”
More than 20 people were crammed into a small room with a dozen chairs at commscamp in Birmingham for the topic on Brexit.
After 40-minutes of pulling apart the claim, counter-claim and post-fact democracy one moment of clarity emerged of how the campaign ended as it did.
Leave won because they appealed to the heart not the head.
Remain lost because they appealed to the head.
As a piece of clarity it’s drifted into my head several times since.
That big pile of numbers you’re trying to communicate? Can you find something that appeals to the heart?
Stop. Think of times when you’ve been moved by the heart. Me? More than 12-months ago the refugee found that when three-year-old Aylan Kurdi drowned and was fetched from the surf by a policeman.
In the US, the family of the dead war veteran Donald Trump picked on appealed to the heart too.
Look around you and you’ll find more.
The ability to understand with the head but tell a story to appeal to the heart is priceless for someone looking to communicate.
When I worked in the public sector there was a bunch of people a decade ago who would bang the table not being satisfied with business as usual.
They would experiment and try different things. If there was no rule book they would write their own with a spirit of JFDI – just flipping do it. Sometimes they’d put their career on the line just to try something out.
So, I’d learn more from bloggers, coders and engineers as to how to use the social web than I did from the PR establishment. Bold experiments of yesterday quickly became today’s routine.
It’s an approach that has shaped my approach and for many others in the public sector.
I’m happy to say, there is a movement centred on private sector PR just as happy to write new rule books where there are none. Through challenge, experiment and boldness there’s a feeling that there is a better way.
Stephen Waddington in his introduction to the first Future Proof: The Go To Guide For Managers of Agencies and Communications Teams talks of there never being a more exciting time to be in the industry. I’d agree with that. You can download that here for free.
Now, Future Proof: Edition Two has been published. I’m hugely excited to have written a chapter on the role of video in communications in this book. But I’m far more excited to know that there are more than 30 chapters from fellow travellers who aren’t satisfied with business as usual too.
Hats off to those who wrote chapters and to Sarah Hall for pulling this together.
You can buy the book here in print and kindle here.
A chapter a day handily is set to be released here if you can’t afford the book.
Future Proof: Edition Two chapters
COMMANDING THE RESPECT OF THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY AND THE PITCH TO EMPLOYERS by Francis Ingham
STRONG TOGETHER: WORKING TOWARDS A COMMUNITY OF THEORY AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC
RELATIONS by Stephen Waddington
WHAT BREXIT TAUGHT US ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY FOR PR Rob Brown
ECONOMICS SOCIAL DIALOGUE AND PUBLIC RELATIONS Ezri Carlebach
SERVING THE MEMBERSHIP: IS IT TIME FOR THE CIPR AND PRCA TO MERGE? Richard Houghton
MAXIMISING THE TRUE VALUE OF MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS TO DRIVE IMPROVEMENT
Matthew Hopkins
FROM PURPOSE TO PERFORMANCE: A RADICAL APPROACH TO STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
Sean Trainor
CHARTING THE COURSE OR JUST KEEPING YOU AFLOAT: IS HUMAN RESOURCES TAKING YOUR
BUSINESS WHERE IT NEEDS TO GO? Elizabeth Baines
SOCIAL MOBILITY IN PR: A CAREER OPEN TO ALL Sarah Stimson
STITCHING TOGETHER GOOD CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR Karan Chadd
STORIES VERSUS FACTS: DO COMMUNICATORS HAVE A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY TO ENSURE THE
PUBLIC ISN’T MISLED? Stuart Bruce
CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT (CPD): CAN IT HELP YOU IN A CHANGING WORLD?
Sally Keith
THE JOURNEY OF THE ENGAGED EMPLOYEE Bea Aar
PREPARING FOR THE SKILLS GAP IN THE WORKPLACE OF THE FUTURE Tim Hudson
DELIVERING A 24/7 SERVICE; INTRODUCING AN AGILE MODEL IN PR Dualta Redmond
MANAGING THE INTEGRATION OF BUSINESSES: MERGING COMPANIES, DISCIPLINES, AND
CULTURES Ella Minty
EMBRACING AGILE STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT Betteke van Ruler and Frank Körver
HOW TO AVOID #SOCIALMEDIAMELTDOWN Nathaniel Cassidy
A LISTENING AND INSIGHTFUL FUTURE: CHANGING PR PRACTICE TO DELIVER AUDIENCE LED
COMMUNICATIONS Sarah Clark and Professor Jim Macnamara
SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF PROCUREMENT Tina Fegent
STRENGTHENING CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS AND MANAGING RISK Farzana Baduel
MANAGING CLIENT EXPECTATIONS Andrew Reeves
STAFF SALARIES: HANDLING WAGE INFLATION AND SALARY BANDINGS Steve Earl
GROWING PAINS: MOVING FROM AN ENTREPRENEURIAL TO A PROFESSIONAL STRUCTURE
Alicia Mellish
COMPANY CULTURE: MANAGING STRESS, PRESENTEEISM AND MENTAL HEALTH Paul Sutton
WHY GREAT LEADERS ARE GREAT COMMUNICATORS Lucia Dore
INTERNAL COMMS: LEARNING FROM THE PAST AND EMERGING TRENDS Rachel Miller
SEIZING INFLUENCER RELATIONS’ OPPORTUNITIES Scott Guthrie
HOW TO USE THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY TO ACHIEVE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT Ciara O’Keeffe
VIDEO AS A COMMUNICATIONS CHANNEL Dan Slee
LIVE STREAMING TOOLS: A BEST PRACTICE GUIDE Leonardo Stavale
OVERHAULING PUBLIC AFFAIRS: MUCH NEEDED MODERNISATION Iain Anderson
PUBLIC CONSULTATIONS: ENGAGING WITH YOUR AUDIENCE Emily Osborne
HOW THE #FUTUREPROOF PR CAN EMBRACE THE OPPORTUNITIES OF SEO Darryl Sparey
CROWDFUNDING: UNDERSTANDING, INFLUENCING AND MANAGING GROUP BEHAVIOUR
Paul Cockerton
HORIZON SCANNING Stephen Davies
CREATIVITY IN PR – ARE PRACTITIONERS SUCCESSFULLY HARNESSING THE POWER OF
STORYTELLING AND NARRATION? Andy Green
#FUTUREPROOFING COMMUNICATIONS EVALUATION Richard Bagnall
THE IMPORTANCE AND ART OF ARTICULATING THANKS: LESSONS FROM NON-GOVERNMENTAL
ORGANISATIONS (NGOS) Dr Nicky Garsten, Dr Ed de Quincey and Professor Ian Bruce
And like a flock of pigeons they gathered and returned. Not three but 17 issues.
I list them here a) to provide a checklist for those inside the sector and b) for those dealing with the sector.
It’s an impressive list, but the speed of which the Twitter community returned them shows that there are still people out there bothered and keen to help.
issues that face housing communications
Alack of money in the sector.
A lack of houses in the sector.
Welfare reform making it harder for social landlords to secure the rent due.
Right-to-buy makes the pool of social housing smaller.
A lack of grant to build new social houses.
The attitude of public, press and politicians to tenants in shared accomodation.
A lack of tenant voice in the national housing debate.
Risk of poorer tenants to be sidelined in a race for higher paying tenants.
A decline in affordable rents for tenants.
No long term strategy.
Less local government money for supported housing where vulnerable people can live and be independent.
Complacent housing authorities.
Distraction caused by mergers or the chance of rumours.
“I love newspapers,” legendary Sunday Times editor Harold Evans once said, “But I’m intoxicated by the power and possibility of the internet.”
I get that.
It’s hard not to be a participant or a watcher in the media landscape in 2016 without being fascinated at how fast it evolves.
There was an excellent interview by Alex Spence on political website politico with the outgoing director of communications at the Prime Minister’s Office. Craig Oliver spent six years in the post. Leave politics aside, he has some really useful observations. You can read full post here. Here are a few highlights:
On the changing political media: “The reality is that we are not in a 24/7 news cycle. We are in a 360-degree, 3D news cycle, when news is coming at you all the time, constantly, and the next headline is not the top of the next hour on a 24-hour news station, but in the time it takes for somebody to type out a tweet.”
On which media — TV, radio, newspapers, digital, social — now has most influence on political news: “You’re saying, ‘Is the TV news the most important thing?’, and actually that feels slightly dated as a question. Yes it’s massively important but I still think, what are we saying to the newspapers, what are we saying to the broadcasters, what are we saying to social media, I treat each of those quite equally. They all bleed into each other. Increasingly you have news organisations that do websites, podcasts, vodcasts, you know, essentially mini-TV programs, little videos, little audio bites, it’s all merging together. It’s how are you impacting traditional newspapers, how are you impacting the traditional broadcasters, how are you having an effect on social media and that kind of digital world. It is starting to mesh and move but you still do have to think in each of those three ways about each story.”
On the enduring influence of the newspapers: “Anybody who did this job who didn’t think that newspapers had a very powerful influence on the political debate in this country would not be understanding the situation properly.”
These are points that any comms, PR or social media person needs to understand. It echoes something I’ve been saying for a while. Know your landscape. Know your stats. Don’t be a channel fascist and close things out entirely. Use the best channel. Not the sexiest.
