video for comms is now way beyond youtube

More than 70 per cent of the internet is predicted to be video by 2017. If you are a comms person it's a challenge you need toio have an answer to.

by Albert Freeman

Online video is becoming more important all the time. There are an exciting and growing number of ways that we as organisations can use it, and ways that people can use it to engage with organisations.

Video is now big news on Facebook

In no time at all video has become huge on Facebook. Organisations need to adapt and take advantage of this. It is no longer enough to simply publish your video on YouTube, and share the YouTube link on Facebook.

Click to read more ...

launching the UK government's comms plan

There are launches and there are launches. The launch of the UK Government's Communications Plan is worth a look. The Government Communications Service has set some high standards in recent years and how they go about their business should be of interest to everyone involved in the field.

by Alex Aiken

This is our communications plan for the year ahead. It sets out the main campaigns that are designed to help deliver the priorities of the Government and the ways by which we are going to improve our professional practice.

The Government’s One Nation narrative provides a clear focus for our work, providing the framework for Government policies and programmes to help working people, spread opportunity, bring our country together and secure Britain’s place in the world. There will be major campaigns to improve public health, get young people into apprenticeships, encourage the right to buy, recruit to our armed forces and explain pension provision. In total this plan contains 77 communication campaigns, from encouraging blood donation to reducing tax avoidance.

Click to read more ...

what has soft power taught me about campaigns?

Sometimes it's not the direct things that wins people over. It can be the BBC. Or Bollywood. As a talented comms officer from Tunisia who worked for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office reveals.

by Kacem Jlidi

Picture this: a 16 year old boy from Morocco going to the hairdresser to get a 'David Beckham' haircut or doodling all sorts of tattoo shapes on his textbook while in class.

Imagine this South African 48 year old lady spending her evenings binge-watching Bollywood movies and gasping at the sight of her favourite Indian actor’s dancing.     

Wouldn’t you agree that those are basic examples of successful brand engagement – ones that went beyond geographical limits? 

Click to read more ...

if staff are our greatest asset why don't we show it?

Staff: Our greatest asset? Don't tell us, show us.

By Darren Caveney

In a recent conversation about intranets and internal communications I fessed up on a theory I have developed.

Staff intranets, we know, are generally unengaging resources, crammed with slabs of info but offering very little in the way of interaction or honest, two-way conversation.

But my theory is that this has very little to do with the intranet sites themselves – they’re just a symptom of a much larger organisational and cultural problem which is that too many organisations – when push comes to shove – don’t truly value their staff. There, I've said it.

Click to read more ...

online chat: the great static v social intranet debate

Intranets emerged in the early days of the web as places to put things you needed staff to know rather than the outside world. Over time many have become bloated with information. Hard to search they can be a forest of information wiuth few paths through. Social intranets have emerged that staff can engage with. But will they work in every organisation? We're hosting a web chat with bright people.  

by Dan Slee 

Got a few minutes to spare this lunchtime? We’re helping with a discussion over on Knowledge Hub you may like to join in with as you munch on your cheese sandwiches.

It’s about the possible benefits of social intranets over static ones and we’d love it if you’d swing by.

It’ll run from noon until 2pm on Monday July 20 over here on the internal comms group we look after (Log in required). It’ll be up to view afterwards too.

Click to read more ...

#ournhs24 – learning from commscamp15

CommsCamp has been the source of many an idea and plan. But one vision, for a new NHS comms initiative, was sparked before-hand and road-tested at the event for communicators instead. Good thinking.

by Amanda Nash

I’ve never felt so naked in a room full of hundreds of strangers. I don’t want to put women off pitching at conferences, in fact Emma Rodgers’ blog inspired me to get up off my seat.

But the reality is, you’re up front alone, with just your idea for a session and a microphone in hand. It could be a great idea, if could be a really bad one. At the point when you see everyone out front staring at you expectantly, that’s the moment you think it’s probably the latter … but it’s too late. You have 30 seconds to sell it.

Click to read more ...

awards and that loving feeling

A smidge of recognition can spark all sorts of positive vibes into a team. So why do we so rarely do it?

By Darren Caveney

Last week I was fortunate to attend the UK Public Sector Communications Awards and together with a rather brilliant bunch of colleagues pick up an award. It was a reminder of how an award nomination or win can provide a welcome and invigorating dose of feel good factor. A little bit of that loving feeling, even to folks who have been involved in the industry for a long, long time.

I stopped entering awards a few years back for a number of reasons. You don’t need award judges to tell you when you’ve delivered good work, in the same way that you don’t always need a kick up the backside when you know you’ve made a mistake at work. You instinctively know these things and learn from them. But sometimes you work on a project that you know is so good it needs to be shouted about so that your colleagues can receive 15 deserved minutes in the spotlight.

Click to read more ...

survey: how good and bad is your intranet?

How many times have you heard it? 'Our intranet?' the voice goes. 'It's rubbish. You can't find anything on it and there'a no social space to collaborate.' But just how good and bad are intranets? We've launched a new suurvey with our friends at Knowledge Hub. We need to fix it. But we need to know the size of the task.

by Dan Slee

Too stuffed with out-of-date information and too hard to find the things you really want.

The bad intranet serves as an albatross around the neck of the organisation. ‘We say we think staff are our greatest asset,’ it appears to say. ‘But we don’t really mean it.’

Click to read more ...

branding: a simple truth

There are professional lessons all around us, literally on tap every day if you look hard enough - even on a trip to the seaside.

By Darren Caveney

I love ice cream. I’ve tried them all. Compared and contrasted and, in my own head at least, decided which are the best.

The Italians are masters of ice cream. But the best of the lot is a British brand.

What adds to their appeal is the masterly way in which this product is branded. So simple, so clean, so stylish and with echoes of its past. It perfectly complements the product. And that’s the trick with branding.

The company is called Hockings, and it you’re a visitor to North Devon you may have sampled their fine good. That’s not a typo either – it's ‘good’, singular. Because this product is so good it comes in only one flavour – vanilla.

It’s been made in Appledore by the same family since 1936 and their small fleet of branded vans has been travelling the North Devonian coastline selling their vanilla-only product to locals and visitors alike for nearly 80 years.

Click to read more ...

video tells the story of drama at sea

Video footage of good work far out at sea is helping to tell the story of the RNLI. 

by Mike Rawlins

I volunteer as a Lifeboat Press Officer (LPO) for the RNLI at Macduff in Aberdeenshire where we have the only lifeboat in the RNLI that comes with its own truck and crane for launching, if that ever comes up in a pub quiz, you’ll ace it.

I have to say I have no affinity with the sea or seafaring blood in me, as far as I am aware. I’m from Manchester so the closest we ever got to the sea was the Manchester Ship Canal or Blackpool beach in summer. There was an incident with the pedalos at Weston Super-Mare in 1974 but that’s best forgotten.

Click to read more ...

should pr really shape how everyone speaks for themselves online?

Speaking for yourself online is a key skill for everyone no matter what job you do. But should that always be left to PR and comms people? 

by Anke Holst

Public relations, communications: broadcasting to the world outside what the organisation needs it to know. Social media seems to be an ideal way of doing this, so it's added to all the other channels comms teams know about and serve.

'Go where your audience is.' So far, so good.

Click to read more ...

why video is important to comms and pr

Video is becoming a skill that comms people can no longer ignore. To mark the launch of our new round of viodeo workshops we've set out some of the reasons we think that video will impact on your world.

by Dan Slee

For a few months now I’ve been convinced that video is going to be absolutely essential for communications and PR people.

Throw a stone, it seems, and you come across forecasts, trends and predictions. Put them together and you create a powerful argument for video.

Click to read more ...

dealing with the death of a colleague - help is at hand

Kathy Stacey is Head of Corporate Communications at Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service and Bridget Aherne is Head of Corporate Communications and Admin at Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service. They are Chair and Vice Chair of FirePRO and here they tell us about how they developed a toolkit for fire and rescue communicators in case the worst should happen…

by Bridget Aherne and Kathy Stacey

The death of a colleague is unthinkable and the idea that someone we work with could lose their life at work is just awful – but that terrible possibility is one that we in the emergency services must face.

Deaths in the line of duty are, thankfully, rare but each and every single one is a devastating event that has an enormous impact on family, colleagues, organisations and all those connected to the person or people involved.

Click to read more ...

“i want a simpler life. so what i need is… a new intranet”

You’ve heard about the internet of things. Well how about the intranet of things?

by Darren Caveney

Since returning from a week’s holiday, most of which was spent offline, I have developed a strong urge to declutter and strip back life as much as possible.  As with everyone else who has ever had a break from the laptops, tablets and the plethora of online distractions that can over-fill our lives, I felt very slightly liberated by the experience.

This ‘lighter’, simpler way to live then expanded into other areas of my life. Clothes not worn for six-months have been sent off to the charity shop, the garage has been cleared, rubbish has been emptied from drawers, paper sent off to be recycled. It feels good.

So now I am turning my attentions to work.

How and where could I simplify, reduce, and better organise with slicker thinking and fewer distractions? Apps, platforms, sites, tools. On and on and on it goes and in truth I’m not sure how much all of it is really necessary and enriching my life or my professional time. So I am stripping back.

Click to read more ...

can britain's best kept secret teach us about open collaboration?

Knowledge Hub is the leading public sector forum to discuss and share ideas.
But what can they learn from the Second World War codebreaking operation at
Bletchley Park? Quite a bit it seems.

by Liz Copeland

During the Second World War Bletchley Park was Britain’s best kept secret and home to an incredible list of codebreaking and game-changing
achievements that, it is said, shortened the length of the war by two years.

Click to read more ...