why being human beats being french cheese

A multi-national company employs a company with a team of 13 to take weeks to craft each tweet but isn't getting as much buy-in as those who trust staff and are human.

by Dan Slee

Have you heard the one about the chatty English book shop and the unspontaneous French cheese maker?

One has 50,000 followers on Twitter and from their smartphone give a slightly idiosyncratic view from Waterstones in Oxford Street, London. It shows how trusting staff can work.

The other President Cheese has 153 followers and employs a company with a team of 13 in a Star Trek-style ‘war room’ that takes up to 43 days to draw-up a tweet in a highly planned campaign.

But for me nothing I’ve come across better illustrates how being human on social media runs rings around the scripted, over agonised and contrived.

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how a tweet made a lasting difference to a community

People often ask how social media can help organisations. At Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service it has proved a key way of warning and informing during operational incidents - but the lesser reported success is how it connects the Service with individuals to make a lasting difference to the community. 

by Kate Hall

Now the Service is able to share how a single tweet led to a heart wrenching water safety education campaign - and a national award for a volunteer.

Beckie Ramsay became a volunteer for GMFRS in 2012 - and it all started with this tweet sent in response to live tweeting from @manchesterfire about how it was working to keep the community safe:

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honest conversations and better internal comms

Happy Election Day 2014. If you work in local government you may want to think about honest conversations. Really quickly. This post was first published in The Guardian. 

by Dan Slee

As election day looms the last doors are being knocked on, the last leaflets dropped and church halls made ready for use as polling stations. But what does this all mean for the management of local government? After all, an army of council officers have made the wheels of local government turn for the past year and will be called upon to keep them turning.

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six youtube film styles that work in the public sector

We know deep down that video is content too but often we struggle tro get it right. So, how can we do it better? In this post we look at how different styles work.

by Steph Gray

With some jolly clever chums, I’ve been running training for public sector audiences in social media skills for three years now.

In our courses, and increasingly through our new Digital Skills Gym, we go through the how and whys of the big channels, showing inspiring examples and providing some practical tips. When we get to YouTube, we’re frankly a bit stumped for what to say. Everyone knows what YouTube is, pretty much, and most people have got some personal benefit from it. “I learned to change a wheel from a YouTube video,” someone told us once.

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fancy a comms cocktail? I’m a trained mixologist, don’t you know!

At the #content14 event in Cardiff we ran a blogging session to teach people the basics. Here is one post that emerged from it that tells the story of one communicator's view of learning new skills.

by Rachel Moss

When I started out in the brave new world of communications I didn’t realise that cocktail making would be one of the necessary skills I’d need to acquire. But it is - really, it is.

These days, you need to shake, mix, and muddle a whole load of new comms elements if you want your message to compete in a crowded market and get through to people.

A simple Gin and Tonic just won’t cut it anymore – what you really need to be able to do these days is to produce the PR equivalent of the Woo Woo or, dare I say it, Sex on the Beach?!

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my podcasting guest debut

A good podcast educates, informs and leaves you wanting more and I don’t listen to anywhere near enough of them.

by Dan Slee

I’m delighted to say that the excellent Dave Briggs has started a podcast where he talks to someone about what they’ve been doing that week and talks to them about some links they may have come across.

Dave has done some fantastic work understanding how the internet and the social web can work in government and local government and he continues to do great work most recently looking at how digital skills can benefit the workplace through his worksmart project.

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four steps to create a powerful infographic

Infographics are a growing trend and when you get them right they look brilliant and make big spreadshreets come alive. But how do you get them right?

by Caroline Beavon

Honestly, you can’t open a magazine or website nowadays without seeing an infographic. It’s the hot word of the moment and plenty of organisations are trying to introduce them into their communications channels.

If you’re in the dark a little, let me elaborate.

The term infographic is hotly debated, but I like to think of it as “information in a visual form”. The current trend is for full page, or long-images that explain a series of statistics using charts, diagrams and illustrations.

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five challenges that face ambulance comms

They are there when a little boy falls out of a tree or when there is a train crash. Who? Ambulance crew. So, what does the comms look like?

by Anna MacArthur

Let’s be honest, paramedics are sexy. They wear uniforms, save lives at the scene of major incidents and race around in cars, motorbikes and other vehicles with flashing blue lights.

It’s this appeal that leads to our first challenge: staying focussed on our corporate objectives when lots of our staff and the makers of everything from Junior Paramedics, to 999 What’s Your Emergency and Soho Blues want us to be involved in their observational series? 

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in praise of the sausage fingered pr officer

Sometimes when things go wrong online it's best just to be honest...

I notice Wrexham Council has got online praise for holding its hands up to a mistake with humour and honesty.

They accidentally tweeted a decision from a key meeting and predictive text said that the 'Pathetic executive' had made a decision. They then apologised straight away and went on to blame their 'sausage fingers' and predictive text.

A Wrexham Council spokesman said:

“We hold our hands (and big sausage fingers) up - we fell victim to the dreaded predictive text. We noticed our error and the tweet was removed promptly.”

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how should we answer cuts questions?

There are cuts coming. How should public sector comms people handle the media queries?

by Dan Slee

You’re a public sector PR person and you’ve got to answer a question from the media about cuts, what do you do?

You You’re a public sector PR person and you’ve got to answer a question from the media about cuts, what do you do?

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using digital skills and a choir to shout about a charity

It's not writing a press release, it's creating content. And spotting stories to tell as this charity comms case study demonstrates brilliantly. 

by Will Barker

Being part of a communications team for a charity in Wales can be difficult at times. Let’s be honest, being part of a communications team for any charity in the UK can be difficult.

We’ve all got great reasons to shout about the work we do and brilliant, inspiring stories to tell, but we don’t always have enough people to tell it to. More and more we are creating our own content and using our own channels as news sources to reach the people that matter to us, it’s not often that you get the opportunity to do both.

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25 things I learned from #content14 in cardiff

We took part in a rather fine event staged by the NHS in Wales this week where we looked at how to produce better content. Here's a few things about what we learned.

by Dan Slee

There’s something rather special about a cricket ground in summer with the sun shining on cut grass and the groundsman preparing the cut strip.

At the SWALEC Stadium in Cardiff there was just that for NHS Wales 1,000 Lives event to look at how to give comms people the skills to create content.

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don't fear failure - blog and slideshare

Failure. What can comms people learn from it? Lots, actually. Don't fear it... 

by Dan Slee

It's such a damning word isn't it, failure? It's the bowler hatted man falling on a banana skin or the wrongly sent tweet that leaves us falling about LOL-ing.

But the truth is, failure is beautiful. From failure we learn and we can do a better job. We shouldn't fear failure. We should leave space for failure so we can have the confidence to do bigger better things.

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your essential facebook page survival guide

If you look after a Facebook page you'll have seen the number of people who automatically get to see your content shrink massively. So, what to do? Quit? Not necessarily. Here are some tips to fight back.

by Adam Turnbull

So, I’ve a turbulent relationship with Facebook, haven't you? Over past few years, we’ve gone from a rock steady relationship, where I post an update and it’s get delivered to those that like the page, to a relationship where such a small amount of people see the update in an organic manner. Of course, when it comes to the Facebook revenue model, it’s not a huge surprise.

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wands, muggles and wizards… how housing met hogwarts

One of the ways comms teams can be most effectivce is to help the organisation move to more efficient ways that their customers can do business with them. It's often called 'channel shift' but beyond the jargon there are some simple learning points.

by Christine Howles

Channel shift? Digital by default? That’s gobbledygook to most people. So how do you encourage customers to get online and do it online? You call in the Web Wizards.

At Wolverhampton Homes we don’t have digital inclusion officers or digital champions – we have Web Wizards whose one simple catchphrase is “You can’t break the internet”.

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