Tag Archives: communications

GUEST POST: Seven lessons on handling broadcast interviews on Ukraine from a media trainer turned pundit

Cormac Smith was known to many through his career in local and central government. He’d also been communications advisor for Ukraine government. So when Russia invaded the country he looked for a way to make his experience count… in TV studios.

In early December 2021 I was visiting friends and former colleagues in Kyiv.  Between 2016 – 2018 I had served as special advisor to the country’s Foreign Minister.  Over lunch one day, a number of those present including Ukrainian diplomats suggested I should be speaking about their country on the media back in the UK, because in their words, I understood them.

Storm clouds were already gathering, they knew what was coming, so I said I would see what I could do.  Long story short, I returned to the UK, hit the phones and began pitching myself as an expert on the region.

Over the next 13 months to date I have carried out in the in the region of 150 TV and Radio interviews across nine countries. As a seasoned media trainer and public speaker, the following is a summary of the lessons learned or in some cases, simply confirmed.

1. Media relations can be tough

Despite a strong resume, buckets of determination and over 30 years’ experience of selling in stories and placing interviews it took me over a month after my return from Kyiv to get my first gig.  But I had made a promise to my friends; what was I going to do, except keep buggering on as Churchill once said. Finally, around mid-January, with Putin’s further invasion still over a month away I got my first interview

2. Honest tough feedback is critical

I am fortunate to have a number of professional friends and colleagues, both in the UK and in Ukraine who can be relied on to give honest feedback.  Getting this feedback and acting on it to make improvements, especially in the early days was very helpful.

3. Do your research

Find out as far as possible what the interviewer wants to talk about, then prepare meticulously. Nothing will lose credibility quicker than not knowing your subject. Having said that know when to say; I don’t know.

4. Key messages are critical

Having done your research decide what you want to get across.  Expect the unexpected, always answer or at least address the question but learn how to bridge back to your key messages, and bridge back as often as necessary. This takes skill and practice if you are to keep interviewer and audience happy and not antagonise them.

5. It’s not just what you say, its how you say it

As little as 10% of what we communicate is verbal. Body language and tone of voice are critical if we are to grab attention, be trusted and gain traction. Assess posture, eye contact, hand movements and facial expressions.  And analyse tone of voice and pace as well as strength of delivery.  All of these things combine to make you either likeable and credible, or get them wrong – and you lose your audience.

6. Find the full stop

Despite coaching others for years to be concise and economical with words this was the biggest lesson I needed to learn early on. Prime time opportunities with the likes of Nick Ferrari on LBC will generally see you get between three and four minutes.  Their clock is running and if you talk too much you will be cut off and fail to get your key messages across.  It was when two trusted friends and colleagues, one a Brit and one a Ukrainian diplomat, told me on the same day that I had to learn to find the full stop, that the lesson finally sunk in.

7. Develop relationships with producers and interviewers

As an interviewee part of your job is to add value to producers and interviewers lives by being easy and pleasant to deal with and guaranteeing quality content every time. The other part of your job is to get your message across consistently, credibly and memorably. Be prepared to be strong and hold your ground from time to time, but don’t get confrontational.

Summary

I have been placing stories and setting up interviews for 30 years.  I did my first interview on national television almost 24 years ago.  I have also been coaching others to go on TV or radio, formally or informally, for 20 years. Nothing I had done compared to the intensity or importance of what I have done for the last year.  Never assume you know it all or can turn up and wing it.  Preparation is key and hubris comes before many a fall.  On the other hand, humility and a little bit of fear will serve you well and keep you honest. 

Cormac Smith is a freelance communications consultant who specialises in a range odf areas including public speaking and media training.

SHOT LIST: How to draw-up your own video style guide

The argument for shooting, editing and posting your own content is well and truly won. But how should it look? 

There’s a few things to consider when you are drawing up a video strategy for your organisation. Content would be one. A style guide would be another once you’ve got some confidence.

This would dictate things like the typeface you’d use and maybe where your logo sits.

You are probably used to using brand guidelines in marketing and print. What you do with video needn’t feel as onerous but some basic pointers will make your collective output look much better.

Here are some things to think about. You can use as much or as little as you like with this. Certainly, as an extra task it’s going to add some time onto the end of your workflow but you need to ask yourself if the process adds any or takes away.

Certainly, there’s sometimes where speed is of the essence.In that case maybe it can all go to the wall. It’s up to you. 

The steps here aren’t that hard and can be replicated using a smartphone and an editing app. I’ve used Kinemaster here.  

I’ve editing some editing points in italics showing you the steps I took. 

Video isn’t print

First things first. Breaking news: video isn’t print. The idea of picking up your brand guidelines and dropping them lock stock and barrel into video is a really, really bad one for me. What’s been developed for print works best in print.

The NHS brand, for example, is a thing of wonder with a clear typeface that directs people around the hospital. It immediately reassures people that they’re getting health information. But a sign isn’t video.

For me, the starting point may be your brand guidelines but you’ll need to start with a spirit of flexibility. BBC News on TikTok, for example, has some broad pointers that identify it as BBC but it doesn’t drop in the opening music of a news bulletin, for example.   

A typeface

Video editing tools give a variety of different typefaces. If you’re using something like Kinemaster you’ll get some free. If you upgrade to Pro you’ll get access to plenty more which is where the value of Pro pays dividends.  

If you’ve got a font you use but you’re maybe not clear on what the font is called there’s a great website called whatthefontis.com. Drag and drop a piece of content and it’ll tell you what the font is and a number of close matches. Then look for the matching font that’s available to you in the video editing app.

Making your typeface work

Once you’ve got your typeface you’ll need to think of a size for the title, maybe you’ll need to use the editing tool to create an outline for the title to make it stand out. 

A title

You’ll maybe think of how you’d like titles to appear and depart the screen. Using an editing app it’s very easy to create an in-animation and an out-animation. Fade is a pretty standard one but having one makes your content look that bit better.

Here’s a title created using Kinemaster Pro and uses Plus Jakarta Sans Bold downloaded from the shop. 

Text on screen 

This is the part where you want to tell the story using text on the screen maybe with some supporting footage. 

This uses Plus Jakarta Sans Bold.

A caption 

This is the additional information that maybe shows the name and the job title of the individual in question. It’s sometimes know as a lower third. What would you like your template to look like? You may want this to be part of the family of typefaces you’re using for the title. 

I’ve created two separate lines. For the first one, the name, I’ve created a text layer, enabled background colour, changed the colour to red, changed opacity to 100 per cent. This creates a solid block of colour. If I wanted it to be really opaque as a background I may knock this down to something like 30 per cent.  I’ve used Plus Jakarta Sans Extra Bold. The default text colour is white. I’ve then duplicated this to create a second text box. I’cve switched the typeface to Plus Jakarta Sans Light. I’ve changed the colour of this second textbox to red and I’ve changed the background to white. In other words I’ve flipped it round entirely.  

A sub-title

This is the accessibility-friendly part of the video where you’re adding the what the person on screen or voice is saying.  

There’s two ways of doing this. Yes, you can do this on Kinemaster. Yes, you have to do it letter by letter. No, there’s no shortcut. I’ve changed the typeface here to Plus Jakarta Sans Extra Light. It’s part of the Plus Jakarta family of fonts I’ve downloaded but it’s lighter so more suited to a sub-titling role.  

A logo

You may be watching something like Al Jazeera English and you’ll see a logo in the top left or maybe top right corner of the screen. This is really useful as it reminds the viewer the source of the information. It plays a supporting but helpful role.  

Here I’ve emailed myself the logo and I’ve added it as a media layer. I’ve changed opacity to 75 per cent. Feel free to experiment with your own. My own logo is white text on an orange background. You may feel that white is less obtrusive. Go with what works for you.  

A style guide

All of this builds up a style guide. Mine may look like this…

Title: Plus Jakarta Bold with fade for in and out animations.

Caption: Plus Jakarta Sans Extra Bold for the name and Plus Jakarta Sans Light for the job title.

Sub-title: Plus Jakarta Sans Extra Light 

Logo: Orange logo top left corner at 75 per cent opacity. 

You may want to add to it as you go along using this as a starting point. Maybe your style guide may include something like resolves – how each clips bleeds into each other – or other things. That’s all fine.

Remember that all these things are part of the language of film. It’s fine to play around with them from time to time.

The bottom line is with a bit of teaching being able to do this isn’t hard. The results outweigh the effort you put in. 
For more on video, I deliver ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED on planning, editing, and posting video. You can find out more here. I also deliver ESSENTIAL PORTRAIT VIDEO FOR TIKTOK & REELS. More on that here. 

COMPUTER WORLD: What AI tools like ChatGPT mean for PR and communications

Bear with me, I’m going to open gently with a story before I move to the central point because I think the central point is almost too large to grasp.

When I worked in local government there was a man in charge of committee clerks. He was a grey haired man, always approachable and always helpful. He made sure committee meetings ran smoothly and in accordance with the laws and constitution. He was a deep well of information and anecdote.

I remember being in his office one day and he pointed at the grey filing cabinet in the corner of the room.

“Back in the day,” he said. “That’s where all the archives were stored. Every set of agenda papers, every minute, every decision. It was all there. There used to be a queue of people asking to check things and we’d have someone who would check things for them.”

His tone darkened.

“Then the internet came along and someone in their infinite wisdom decided that was better.”

At first, I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.

As the gatekeeper of that information he was an important man. He still was important. But something told me he missed being that gatekeeping librarian. For the first 20 years of his career he was the internet as far as constitutional matters were concerned.

The internet meant that anyone could do it when previously just one could. There was many winners and one loser.

Something is going on with Chat GPT

I don’t think I’m overselling it to say that something is happening right now that is truly revolutionary and I’m not sure if we’ve got our heads around it.

In late 2022, the Microsoft-backed AI chatbot ChatGPT was released. It plugs into 20 years of internet knowledge to produce solutions to tasks given it. Google finds you the links to help you piece together the solution eventually. ChatGPT finds the solution and gives you it with a bow tied around it.

I’m coming to the main point.

If you have earned your living from the knowledge economy your job is about to be turned upside down.

What you’ve spent years working and studying for can be replicated in seconds by ChatGPT.

As an experiment, I gave it a few tasks.

I used it to create a tenancy agreement under the law of England & Wales that favoured the tenant here.

A Dad’s Army scene that involves Captain Mainwaring, Sgt Wilson and a Tech Bro from Shoreditch looking to move to Warmington-on-Sea here. 

I also asked it to write a communications strategy for a charity that looks to communicate with young people and to set out the channels here.

Other people have used it for far greater tasks.

Like writing a Seinfeld script, a tool for debugging code, design meal plans, as a rival for Google search, writing a piano piece in the style of Mozart, writing verse in the style of Shakespeare on climate destruction or a poem about electrons written in iambic pentameter.

Looking at what I asked it to write it looks as though it’s about 75 per cent there.

It looks as though it was written by a human and it makes sense.

The thing is, AI looks to improve itself constantly. These are the baby steps. Far more powerful tools are expected in the next few years.

What ChatGPT and AI tools mean

There is a school of thought that says that we are moving overnight from being information creators to information curators.

The most extreme of predictions are that potentially everyone who has a career in the knowledge economy can be replaced. Why pay for five £40,000-a-year professionals, the argument goes, when two using AI can do the job?

AI companies that have written about the industry insist that AI is not to be feared. They’re here to help, they say, not replace. There’s part of me that’s not so sure they even believe that themselves.  

Many schools and Universities who have started to wake up to the threat have moved to ban ChatGPT from work submitted here and here. This prompts the idea of an arms race between AI essay writers like ChatGPT and software that can detect AI writing. Internet Q&A site Slack Overflow have also banned ChatGPT for providing answers that are not reliable.

What does ChatGPT and AI tools mean for comms and PR?

On the face of it a tool like ChatGPT is a threat. It can produce what you do to an increasingly good standard. That’s dangerous, surely? Well, partly, yes and partly no.

If we step aside from the shock of seeing the outline of a comms plan being produced by a robot we need to ask ourselves the question ‘then what?’.

A comms plan on its own is an attachment that sits on a hard drive. On its own, it won’t produce and post content. Right now, that will need some human involvement. Sure, ChatGPT could help to produce the rough content but right now it still needs shaping and scheduling. 

What’s coming out of an AI tool is not 100 per cent fool proof. So, there’s still need for humans.

Right now, tools such as ChatGPT can be a help to the day-to-day. It’ll be fascinating to see where they take is in two, five and ten years. 

COVID-19 COMMS #47: Reminder: National messages delivered in a local voice can have 800 times more reach

And like that, England is back to earnest COVID-19 communications.

Over the last few days, UK Government announced the need to wear masks in shops in England as part of a range of measures. This follows the spotting of the Omnicrom variant of the virus which is suspected to be more virulent.

The emphasis now falls on the public sector to communicate and enforce the new rules.

So, UK Government led the way with this post…

Intrigued to see how the public sector local to me had communicated it. Looking around online they hadn’t.

There was no re-sharing of the Government content.

That in itself isn’t that bad.

I don’t say that because I think wearing a mask to help stop the spread is an appalling infringement of my civil liberties.

I say that because of some research I did earlier on in the pandemic which showed clearly that national messaging at this stage of the pandemic was failing in England.

The numbers then showed an average of two shares for UK Government or England NHS messaging.

Looking at it objectively, post-Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle trust was never quite the same.

However, what has been more successful in being shared was a local voice delivering a national message.

For example, the A&E staff of Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust were featured in a video asking people to observe the rules. How did that fare? Superbly. The content was shared 800 times.

For me, there were three reasons for this.

Firstly, it was video and this content is proven to do well on Facebook.

Secondly, it was delivered in a human voice and a local accent by people who work in the area.

Thirdly, it was given a power-up by comms teams actively sharing it in Facebook groups in Sandwell and West Birmingham.

You can see the video here.

For me, a local delivery of a national message is essential.

The data shows that more people share a message that’s identifiably local to them.

COVID COMMS #46: Winter is here, ready to go again, public sector comms?

Growing up there was a local newspaper sports reporter nicknamed ‘Dave McCliche’ because of his fondness for the same phrases.

With Dave, the picture caption of two footballers would always read how Player A wins the ball ‘despite the close attentions’ of Player B.

In the first weeks of lockdown we had the same emptiness of phrase. Our experience out-stripped our language. We were left grasping for ‘uncertain times’, ‘the new normal’ or even majestically the written phrase ”all this’ *gestures wildly*.’

So, it’s hard to know what phrases to use at the news that there’s a new COVID-19 variant called Omnicron.

Or that warnings that the NHS is at risk of collapse have been dismissed.

Or that parts of the country literally ran out of ambulances.

Or that 150 people a day are still dying of the first variants at a time when people are talking about being in the ‘post-pandemic’ period.

What if people won’t listen?

Talking to people, there’s not just a serious risk of burn-out, burn out is already amongst us. So is walking off the job for the sake of your sanity.

Numbers say, police comms have had it worst, followed by NHS and local government. Fire comms haven’t been in the epicentre but have been drawn into delivering vaccine.

Comms asked to step up again

With another chapter of crisis now facing the UK the public sector are being asked to step back up again. Or before you ay it, did they ever step down?

What’s interesting to me is that for months COVID-19 messaging has all but evaporated. In the tracker survey I’ve been running 65 per cent of public sector communicators in Autumn 2021 recorded that they’ve been sending out less pandemic messaging over the last three months.

No wonder.

There is no way that the level of messaging could be maintained. The cold bath shock of lockdown 1.0 saw 42 per cent of the UK watch Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s address to the nation. For weeks hands, face and space was the messaging shared and reported. But as we grew used to it the message blunted.

Burn out and risk

In Winter 2021, the important questions facing public sector comms are this.

How do we crank back up the messaging that works about hands, face, space, wear a mask, get a jab or a booster?

How do we do all this without breaking what’s left of the people who are communicating these messages?

Because if we break the people who are doing the communicating, what then?

But if we don’t get the message out what then?

What if people won’t listen?

Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons.

NEXTDOOR DATA: How influentual is Nextdoor becoming?

Landscape

Nextdoor has been quietly making a mark in communities across the UK. Communicators now need to take a long look at this platform. Lucy Salvage has been comparing the Nextdoor v Twitter data.

Forget Twitter. Nextdoor is the social media platform you didn’t know you needed.

Following on from my previous guest blog post on Nextdoor vs Facebook (April 2021) I’ve been doing some further research into how the newer social plaform compares to our old faithfuls.

We’ve known for a while now that the Twittersphere isn’t once what it was and the OfCom stats prove it. Twitter is the main social media account for only 5% of 16-24 year olds, and the older folks don’t rate it much either, with only 4% of 65+ year olds tweeting on the regs.

Ofcom Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes report 2020/21

But it’s not just about the newest Salt Bae memes and trending famouses for getting ‘cancelled’. I was surprised when the majority of our council audience told us that they mostly used Twitter for keeping up to date with news. Not that surprising I guess, coming from people who choose to follow their local council on social media (we can’t all be as good as @MyDoncaster, we can only dream).

More interesting than that I discovered, was the engagement and reach the poll received compared to similar polls on Facebook and Nextdoor. A not too shabby 8,154 people made up of residents and businesses follow Wealden District Council on Twitter – yet only a measly 19 of them responded to our poll, with 47.4% of them saying that news was the main reason they used Twitter. The post itself received 428 impressions – slightly above average for one of our Twitter posts.

@wealdendistrict on Twitter

I put the same question to our 6,029 Facebook followers. The post reached a pitiful 398 people, and only TWO people responded (and one of those was a member of staff!). Not even Destiny’s Child era Beyonce could entice them to take part – her penance was to be permately deleted from the GIF library.

@wealden on Facebook

But this is more interesting still…

A similar poll put to our Nextdoor audience attracted the attention of 2,392 residents. Even more surprisingly 127 of them took part in the poll and confirmed what Twitter had already alluded to – that our audience loves themselves a bit of news. I was very pleased to see that 48% used Nextdoor predominately for news and alerts, especially seeing as this has been the focus of our strategy for posts to this platform.

Wealden District Council on Nextdoor

What the data says

I’m not sure why I was so surprised at the power of polling on Nextdoor compared to that of Facebook and Twitter, as I have seen many times before on organic posts how it knocks the socks off of both for achieving higher rates of impressions and engagement – certainly for Wealden anyway.

This could be for a lot of reasons, but scoring highly is the fact that Nextdoor want public sector authorities to use its platform, and so they want you do well and get good results. They are the only social media platform I’m aware of that offers a personal service targeted at local councils, police forces, fire services and the NHS. Their pesky algorithm isn’t trying to thwart you at every turn and bury your very important messages. It scores particularly highly with me that you can target audiences at a granular level for free at the click of a button. This is another reason I think our posts do particularly well on Nextdoor – because they arrive unfiltered and uninterrupted directly to the people who need to see them.

Here’s a comparison of some recent posts to our council Facebook, Twitter, and Nextdoor account. The messages were all identical. The only difference being with the one highlighted, that it was only sent to residents of Crowborough and its surrounding areas on Nextdoor and not our entire following. The same post was also shared with Crowborough Community Group on Facebook as well as our own Facebook page, and yet Nextdoor was still able to achieve 186 per cent more impressions than the same Facebook post.

Data: Nextdoor v Twitter v Facebook
DateSubjectFacebook ImpressionsFacebook ReactionsTwitter ImpressionsTwitter LikesNextdoor ImpressionsNextdoor Reactions
3/11/21Household Support Fund1,041420101,6273
3/11/21Covid mobile testing (Crowborough)1,8113513285,1737
29/10/21Firework safety8231233005,40014
29/10/21WDC reception still closed5755––2,1371
5/10/21Fly tipping appeal10,2802––1,3432  
10/9/21Open spaces consultation10,2881538512,0102

Wealden District Council – social media reach and engagement comparison

We had just as well not bothered with Twitter. In fact, when putting this table together and seeing the data side by side for the first time, I did wonder why we bother with Twitter at all when the reach and engagement is so poor. We’ve tried threading, and not including links to other sites to appease Twitter’s algorithm, as well of course being strategic with our use of hashtags, but the numbers just never seem to change.  As you’ll also see from the table, there are instances when I have chosen not to post some stories on Twitter at all, as I know full well it won’t perform anywhere near as well as Facebook and Nextdoor.

One thing I can be certain of, is that our audience loves a good fly-tip and any news relating to the possible development of open spaces in the district. Nextdoor may certainly trump Twitter when it comes to the performance of posts on these topics, but where I’m from, Facebook will always knock it out of the park if so much as a crisp packet or brick is out of place.

Time to venture Nextdoor

I’ve seen a lot of posts over the last 18 months from social media managers saying that they’re “thinking” about venturing into Nextdoor, but either haven’t gotten around to it yet, or haven’t been brave enough to test the water. As I mentioned in my previous blog on the subject, I was incredibly sceptical about what it could bring to the social media table. Not often am I happy to be proved wrong, but in this case as a long-time lover of Twitter I will happily state on record that in the workplace, if it were Twitter and Nextdoor face to face in the dance off, I’d be voting for Nextdoor to stay and dance another week leaving Twitter to waltz off into the sunset.

Sadly, this is not a paid for ad, and I am not on any commission with Nextdoor although I probably should be. For anyone who has been unsure up until now, I hope that the data speaks for itself and you’re tempted to dive straight in. Your engagement stats will thank you for it.

Lucy Salvage is Media and Communications Officer at Wealden District Council.

FACEBOOK: Data-driven tips for your 2022 Facebook strategy

I was running through some fresh Facebook data and it seems as though the blunting of Facebook pages is even more marked than I thought.

If you’re a Facebook page admin you’ll have seen your organic reach struggle of late, I’m sure.

But data released by Facebook in the ‘Widely Viewed Content Report: What People See on Facebook’ shows just how much the reach of pages in the newsfeed has fallen.

Facebook page reach falls lower than groups and friends and family

According to the numbers, posts from friends and family in the second quarter of 2021 was 57 per cent, groups joined was 19.3 per cent and pages at 14 per cent. Unconnected posts accounts for 8 per cent and other 1.5 per cent.

Now, there is a disclaimers to attach to this. Firstly, these are US stats from earlier in the year. Secondly, the algorithm is ever changing.

But there is enough to take this as a good representative feature on what the UK picture also looks like.

What this teaches us is that your page content organically isn’t doing much.

Make content that encourages meaningful interactions

Take more time on creating better content. For that we can go back to something Mark Zuckerburg in 2018.

“You’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard – it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

Mark Zuckerburg, 2018.

What does meaningful interactiosn mean?

It means a back and forth discussion and replying to questions for a start.

This National Trust post is designed to encourage discussion. The more discussion the more reach when they have something important to say.

Make content to share with Facebook groups

Get to know the Facebook group admins that are likely to share your post.

Sharing details of a new museum exhibition into the local history group is one thing.

Sharing a request for memories or items from the 1960s when the Glass Cone in Stourbridge employed 100 people is even better.

This post from We Love Walsall Leather Museum shows some good interaction between the page and users.

Steer away from links that aren’t to Facebook

The data also confirmed that posts with links don’t do very well.

Posts with links accounted for 12.9 per cent of all content seen leaving the remaining 87.1 per cent posts with no links.

It’s long been no secret that posts with links get scored down by Facebook. Why? Because they don’t want you to leave the site. Why would they want to send you elsewhere? However, the link penalty doesn’t apply if you are sending people tio another corner of Facebook.

So in other words, links to your website are bad but links to other corners of Facebook, like a page post or event are fine.

Rethink

For some, this may be enough to make them re-think their strategic approach. There has been a clamour driven by business behaviours to quit Facebook. The problem for a public sector communicator is that Facebook is where the audience is. With more than 40 million users, this is the platform that has the potential to reach the most people.

It’s not 2016 anymore.

Have a rethink.

I deliver ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER programme. This is a five-part online training which looks as part of it at ways to create content that gets on the right side of the algorithm. More here.

LONG READ: Why you should have corporate AND non-corporate accounts

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I was reminded of low level civil war happening that pits people in the same organisation against each other.

It’s the comms team against the rest.

In the red corner, the comms people who don’t much like the idea of people outside the team having access to social media. In the blue corner, service areas who glower at comms teams who don’t let them do what they want to.

“The idea,” one senior comms person told me, “Of giving access to social media to anyone outside my team and having a free for all just fills me with horror.”

A free for all would fill me with horror too. But some basic training can reap some really positive results. Let me explain.

Where non-corporate accounts can work well

During training, I often quote the Edelman Trust Barometer. A fine piece of work that points out that people trust 52 per cent of people who are ‘someone like myself.’ That’s significantly higher than the chief executive or any of the suits.

It’s part of the science behind why things like Dave Throup’s Twitter account works so well for the Environment Agency.  You can see day-to-day content like this:

A web page presents tailored content on a topic. You want Baswich library in Stafford? It has its own webpage. You don’t have to sift through lots of irrelevant information. In the same way, a social media profile on a specific topic does the same job. I live in Brierley Hill in Dudley. So the Sergeant that polices the area is more relevant to me:

 

Sergeant Harrison has 1,617 followers and 13,935 people live in Brierley Hill. Even taking into account some of those followers will be fellow officers that’s potentially 11 per cent of the population. That’s compared to 8 per cent of the population – 447,000 – who follow the corporate West Midlands Police account.

Sergeant Harrison’s account works best when he talks about the bread and butter of what is happening in Brierley Hill. To a Brierley Hill audience that’s perfect. Would I sift through the noise of the corporate account looking for Brierley Hill? Probably not. But from the corporate account I want the big messages. And if it kicks off somewhere, I really want the corporate account most of all, please.

Earlier this month I was carrying out a comms review for a fire and rescue service. The community fire station’s page wasn’t engaging. It was rarely updated. But it did have 10 per cent of the population signed-up just waiting to be told things. The decision was taken to carry on but with extra training.

It’s not all plain sailing

Experience of looking after social media policy and delivery for a large council that grew from one to 60 accounts is that things don’t always go well. Over the last few years I’ve reviewed hundreds of social media accounts. Experience shows they fall into three categories. A third are useful and are prosper. A third need a hand and a third you should think about closing down unless they radically improve.

Not every devolved account will be great at sharing the corporate message and somtimes they will frustrate. But for me, it’s about accepting the balance. For me, the third that are doing really well outweigh the downside.

Research that paints a picture of the corporate v non-corporate

My eye was caught by a tweet from Police Oracle with ‘Officers better on Twitter than police PR teams report says: The study analysed almost 1.5 million tweets.’ You can see it here. The tweet prompted several devolved accounts to rail against their comms team. The only trouble was, the research doesn’t show that at all. To her credit one of the authors Miriam Fernandez pointed out in a tweet that it was wrong.

But what does the research say?

Funnily enough, it shows that there is a role for both the corporate and the non-corporate devolved account. They just do different things. If you want to read it you can download it here. Caution: there is a paywall. It is called ‘An Analysis of UK Policing Engagement via Social Media.’ It is by Mriam Fernandez, Tom Dickinson and Harith Alani.

The study looked at 1.5m posts 48 corporate 2,450 non-corporate UK police accounts on Twitter.

The researchers found that corporate accounts got higher engagement – measured as retweets – talking about roads, infrastructures, missing persons and mentioning locations. They got lower engagement on crime updates and advice to stay safe. They were found to broadcast more. The non-corporate accounts were less formal and were more likely to respond to questions.

A quick lesson for better engagement from the research?

  • Have a clear message with a concrete action
  • Know the message but also know the options to act.

What a good corporate account should look like

For me, there are two purposes for the corporate and the devolved non-corporate. The corporate can put out the central messages. It should be a Match of the Day highlights show sharing the best of the rest. It should be human. The comms team can set the direction. It can deliver the training. But the non-corporate team, service area or individual accounts are where the real gold will be found. So have both.

30 days of human comms: #27 Lochaber & Skye Police talk to someone at risk of domestic abuse

A while back a colleague ran a campaign against domestic violence that stays with me. 

They researched how best they could reach women in particular who are at risk and the men – and it is often men – who are the perpetrators.

Their research showed that beer mats were a way of reaching people.

I remembered this when I saw these tweets from Lochaber & Skye Police to someone who was following their account. They are written as a letter and they’re written in a thread.

And then a second tweet.

And a final tweet.

A deeply personal message written in plain English. It’s so beautiful it’s poetry.

Be more human. Like Lochaber & Skye Police.

 

30 days of human comms #25 the Yorkshire motorway police officer and his wife

A while back someone asked what the point of having more than the corporate account was.

Sure, the corporate account can do much but sharing  the sweets and giving the right tools to people on the frontline can be hugely effective. They can post updates on breaking incidents to help keep the traffic moving.

An example of this is the motorway police officer PC Martin Willis captured holding on Superman-style to a van that was about to topple over and roll down an embankment with the driver trapped inside.

It’s by having the tools for the officer to communicate that that the story could be told.

A beautifully human tweet? The cherry was put on top of the cake by the officer’s wife who spoke of how proud she was.

Often police officers can seem remote when they are human beings doing an often difficult job.

Be more human. Like the motorway police officer and his wife.

Thanks to Ben Proctor for spotting this.