switching on

Switching back on can be as hard as switching off was. But be careful with that switch...

by Darren Caveney

So, hands up, how many of you took Mr Slee's advice and switched off during your summer hols?

Well done, you at the back.

Hard isn't it. It never used to be. But now it is.

But what can be just as hard is switching back on when you return to work. There are many reasons for this not least worrying what you are walking back into or what the future holds for you. And the urge to hunt out a new job following a summer holiday is possibly second only to the desire for a new challenge each January. The whole return thing can be unsettling for some.

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do you remember your first time? 3 ways to review your social media maturity

Where are you on your social media path? Just started? Or a veteran? Here are some tips to see where you are on your journey. 

by Jonathon Fitzgerald

Do you remember your first time? That toe-dipping moment when you tested the waters of social media?

Perhaps you watched from the shallow end to start with, learning by observing some of the ‘big fish’. 

The question is – have you looked back since to evaluate your progress and maturity?

Whether you’re still progressing up the pool and wearing armbands or fully immersed in the deep end and performing the equivalent of backflips and tricks

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gathering the ic crowd

Here's an idea. Looking for a really useful internal comms resource? You're in luck. A new one has been launched.

by Rachel Miller

Do you have a quick question that you wish you could ask other internal communications - or IC - professionals for help with? Do you know who to talk to about certain aspects of Comms? Who has case studies to share on enterprise social networks or communicating with remote workers? Where can you find other internal comms professionals?

On Monday alongside fellow Comms pros and friends Jenni Wheller and Dana Leeson, I launched The IC Crowd.

Essentially it’s a community and a place for people to connect and communicate. It exists already, and alongside Jenni and Dana, I’m bringing it together. There are lots of brilliant people around, specialising in and with experience of a variety of areas including change, social media, intranets, stakeholder relationships, branding, employee engagement, strategy, union relations; the list truly is never-ending.

Our channel of choice is Twitter. The IC community is thriving there and with so many connected and inspiring comms pros around, it makes sense to be the vehicle to gather the crowd.

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the most popular blogs in august

Here's a round-up of our most popular posts in August and it's winner is something of a tribute to its late author.

by Dan Slee

It’s a bit of a bitter sweet round-up is this month.

At the end of most months we round-up what’s popular and what is not and award the winner a fine quality Chinese plastic cup.

This month we can’t do that because the winner isn’t here to receive it.

Dan Harris contributed a cracking post earlier in the year on why Facebook isn’t about big numbers but the right numbers.  We’d spoken by email about him writing more.

As community manager for Moo!  He’d built a great reputation for his work in social media that was built on solid foundations from his days in local government.

I knew Dan only a little.  I’d met him when he was in local government and a warmer, more affable, humorous and passionate chap I’m yet to meet.  His one major flaw was about his football team, Arsenal.  My team, Stoke City, had clashed several times with them and yet I was always prompted on Twitter to tell Dan to look away when I was about to launch into a tirade because I didn't mean him.

Just everyone else attached to his football team.  Because I liked Dan.  It was hard to dislike him.  Goading Dan by suggesting he loved Stoke manager Tony Pulis was how Dan broke his blogging silence for us.

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a linkedin call to arms

LinkedIn is a brilliant comms channel to talk to business. So long as it's two way. Danks Cockburn PR look after the communications for one of the largest public - private platforms in the UK - the Greater Birmingham & Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership. In this refreshing post they talk of where they are.

by Mat Danks

 Before I dive headlong into this, I first offer an apology. If you’re looking for solutions and best practice here, I’m sorry. This is more of a mild tale of woe and perhaps a call to arms for local government and social media types out there.

LinkedIn and Local Enterprise Partnerships: in theory, it’s the perfect social media marriage.

On the one hand, we have the relatively new concept of LEPs, with heavy emphasis on the ‘partnership’, with an evolving network of public, private and third sector organisations.

On the other hand, we have LinkedIn, the moderately clunky, highly earnest social media platform based on an evolving network of public, private and third sector organisations.

Here we have a melting pot of everyone we want to talk to. Partners, politicians, journos, local authority staff, charities, you name ‘em, they’re likely to be there.

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what a saturday morning football team can teach you about digital comms

The Tally Vics. They're the smallest team in Britain to have a club shop with fans all over the world. They're also a brilliant digital comms case study. Not at all bad for a group of friends who play for a Glasgow Saturday morning team.

by Davie Brown

When one of our players started a Twitter feed for the club in our first season I couldn't see the point. Who would be interested in 20 guys playing for a team in the local park?

The player left shortly afterwards and the idea was forgotten until a year later. I got a phone upgrade and wandered onto Twitter myself lost as everyone is to begin with. Around Christmas time 2010 I decided to start another feed for the team to see if it might bring in some sponsorship. I soon found out he was right and I was wrong.

Twenty months down the line we have over 1,300 Twitter followers and a brand new set of strips courtesy of our new sponsor PSL Team Sports. We also have several companies as sponsorship partners and most of our players sponsored by people the length and breadth of the country.

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how to do comms from the top of everest (literally)

You'd be amazed at what doors digital sklls can unlock. For one man who climbed Everest cultivating them has led to a better work-life balance.

by Mark Horrell

On 30 May 1953, James Morris of The Times struggled down the "newly oozing ice-bog" of the Khumbu Icefall during darkness. The following morning at Everest Base Camp he dispatched a runner to Namche, the nearest village with a telegraph office, with a coded message which read: 'Snow conditions bad stop advanced base abandoned yesterday stop awaiting improvement.'

Two days later while lying in his tent he tuned into his wireless and heard an English voice announce Everest had been climbed, The Times had broken the news, and Queen Elizabeth had received it on the eve of her coronation. He breathed a sigh of relief his danger-fraught communications process had worked.

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what volunteering at the olympics taught me about internal comms

One of the successes of the Olympics was the 70,000 volunteers that made the games fly. What was behind the success? Good internal comms - by as many channels as possible.

by Jo Smith

I was an Olympic volunteer – one of the poppy-and-purple Gamesmaker army who clapped and cajoled and pointed and smiled my way through shift after shift, question after question. And I loved every second.

Gamesmakers have been congratulated for their contribution to the success of the games but have you thought what kept them so chipper?

Lots of them were positioned on street corners and in railway stations, in offices or back-room locations, far from the glamour and the sporting endeavours. It wasn’t witnessing the action that kept them going, so what was it?

It’s no surprise, in my view, that keeping volunteers informed was key to keeping them motivated.

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collaborate to create stories, not announcements

Sometimes the heart sinks when you've got a press release to write. You know deep down it's got little chance of coverage. But here's an approach that could work.

by Eleanor Willock

I read this blog post by Charles Arthur, the technology editor at The Guardian. It really got me bought in. He’s got a unique style, and I really agree with the subject. Charles points out, for what I’m sure he hopes will be the last time to his PR audience - the difference between ‘news’ and ‘an announcement’.

I think a lot of us, sadly, know the difference, but are sometimes pushed to release the latter under the guise of the former. It’s one of the pitfalls of being in PR – sometimes, there’s no telling people, it’s just not news. Be honest - in your earlier career years, I won’t have been the only one who forwarded on a ‘get lost’ email response from a journalist (such as Charles) in response to my feeble pitch, to a client, in order to back up my quietly mumbled perspective that the press release won’t be well received, surely?

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the dangers of cack-handedness

Seen the one about the pensioner who thought she could have a crack at art restoring? You should. There's a message there for comms people.

by Darren Caveney

It’s one of my favourite stories of 2012. The tale of cack-handed Spanish art ‘restorer’, Cecilia Gimenez and her attempts to tart up a century old mural of Christ in her local church, la Misericordia de Borja.

The mural had seen better days so Ms Gimenez decided to get out her paint brushes and give the century old piece a quick once-over.

You’ll be familiar with the story now, no doubt, unless you have been away on holiday and cut off from media – if so read all about it here.  It’s an absolute gem.

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because i'm a person

Like a good chef’s stock, this post has been on the go for a while, but until now it just didn’t have the final finishing touch to roll it out as a menu dish. I’ll come back to this.

by Phil Jewitt

If you’ve read my blog before you’ll know that I’ve been on a journey of discovery, learning by doing; blogging; getting involved with things going on in my city; going where the conversations are; and generally exploring the boundaries of flexible working. It helps being a bit of a nosey bu**er and also being proud of my city. 

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the show must go on: 7 digital challenges for hard times

by Sharon Telfer

How are emerging technologies changing the ways we connect and communicate?

If you’re looking for an answer, your first thought might not be York’s Theatre Royal, a gilt-and-plush delight built in 1765.

Think again. It was the setting for July’s Shift Happens conference, exploring ideas about the digital future.

The spotlight was on creativity. With Shift the brainchild of Pilot Theatre, most delegates were from theatre or arts organisations.

But a fantastic programme – with 17 very different speakers – threw down some juicy challenges for anyone working in communications.

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37 skills, abilities and platforms for today's comms person

The world is changing. Sitting down and listing the skills you use on a daily basis can be both surprising and reassuring. It's still story telling. Just using different tools.

By Dan Slee

Before the internets were invented life must have been so dull. Y’know, really dull.

You wrote a press release, you organised a photocall and once in a while TV and radio would show an interest.

A few years back the yardstick of success where I work was getting the local TV news to come host the weather live from your patch.

There’s been a change. Like a glacier edging down the mountain valley blink and not much has happened. Come back a while later and things have unstoppably changed.

Truth is, it’s a fascinating time to be a comms person. We’re standing at the intersection between old and new.

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a holiday book that tells a comms story

Switching off on holiday with a good book can reap dividends. There's an unexpected lesson in a book on footpaths.

by Dan Slee

Okay, so I went offline on holiday this past week.

It was cream teas, throwing stones on the beach and no internets. I followed my own advice and switched off.

It was like the 1970s only this time I had money.

One of the books I took with me and raced through was 'The Old Ways' by Robert McFarlane.

It's a book that traces some of the old paths of Britain and across the world.

There's the Icknield Way in southern England some of which was first trodden by hunters 5,000 years ago.

There's the deadliest footpath in Britain, the Broomway, which emerges at lowtide to link Essex with Foulness that has claimed a hundred lives.

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i ♥ infographics

I've always loved infographics. But are we missing a trick in not using them more often?

by Darren Caveney

The first recorded infographics were early cave drawings.

And infographics have been a constant, creative and brilliantly simple medium guiding, helping and directing us ever since.

They take so many forms, from weather maps to motorway signs.

If you have been abroad this summer then you probably got around just that little bit easier because of infographics. They are universal, they are 'easy-read', they cross boundaries and language.

What's not to like.

So why don't we use them more often in our communications roles?

Yes, I know we all use use them on some level, even if it's something as simple as a graph to show an increase or a decrease in something we're measuring.

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