ignited with sparks

by Susie Lockwood

Do you consider yourself a creative person?

And if you’ve answered yes to that, how often do you act like a creative person at work?

I went to a great meeting just before Easter. I came out with a spring in my step and feeling like I’d been part of some really good work around that table, and the best part was that it didn’t feel like work.

That’s because for the duration of the meeting I’d not only had the opportunity to come up with lots of creative ideas for our Norfolk’s American Connections project that’s launching in the summer but that the people around that table had been really receptive to them. It felt creative, collaborative, rewarding and invigorating - and it made me realise that I want to feel like that more often.

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six things you should know about using linkedin for an organisation

by Dan Carins

LinkedIn is social networking with a work hat on.

Rather than sharing holiday snaps and music tips it’s about sharing landmarks in your career.

It’s also about linking with people to help open doors.

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10 tips to commission a freelance photographer (and five things to avoid)

by Paul Pickard

Good quality pictures can secure amazing coverage. But let’s face it, all too often the opportunity is wasted even before the photo call takes place.

With a bit of preparation and advance planning you too can end up with good commissioned photography that does the job you want.

After years of being a freelance photographer and as a Press photographer in the West Midlands, London and Staffordshire take it from me, there’s a few things to ask yourself before you talk to a photographer.

Ever wondered why your firing squad-style picture of glum people in high-vis jackets and a cheque isn’t working?

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film is often the forgotten medium

by Hannah Rees & Matt Bond

Film can often be the forgotten tool. Considered by many as too expensive, too technical and too time consuming.

At Cornwall Council, we started to embrace the medium around five years ago and put some communications resource behind it.  We were right to do so and it continues to be an integral part of our communications mix.

My role as Communications Specialist now deals with film as part of a total social media and digital communications toolset, and works in tangent with our design team.

Film is a proven medium and has seen a surge in popularity in recent times for both internal and external communications.

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little words mean a lot

by Sharon Telfer

Hands up, who knew what a jerrycan was?

If you’re like me – and possibly Francis Maude – you probably thought it was just a container for petrol.

If you’re like my partner, who happily spent the glorious March sunshine in the garage doing up a moped, you already knew it’s a large piece of military kit holding around 20 litres.

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measure twice, cut once

by Darren Caveney

I’ve always had a fascination for stats, and a sadly photographic memory for stat-related trivia.   This problem surfaced as a youngster.  As a 10-year old I could reel off the brake horse power and top speed of pretty well any car in my Top Trumps sports cars pack.

I even began to memorise chunks of the more interesting sections of my 1977 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.

When it came to football I could bore with the best of them on stats and figures. It partly came from spending too much time staring at Ceefax on a Saturday evening following the day’s results (pages 312 through to 324, for those in the know).

And I could probably tell you the attendance, to within a couple of a hundred, at most of Birmingham City’s key home games in the past 20-odd years.  

So, no surprise then, that one of my favourite quotes ever comes from Vic Reeves who once said that “88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.”

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personfessional – do you speak the new social language?

by Jonathan Fitzgerald 

Companies, brands and local government having a presence in the social world is, on the face of it, like inviting your Granny to a rave.  It’s two separate worlds where collars meet chatters, daytime intrudes on playtime and the well-spoken face the outspoken.

We now know that, despite this apparent oxymoron, there’s room for us on Twitter, Facebook and so on – but only if we get the language just right… it needs to be personal but with a decent tinge of professional remaining. 

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'this, children, is how people did protests before facebook'

by Dan Slee

Just recently my Dad moved from the family home after a quarter of a century living in the same place.

Before moved he handed over a treasure trove bin liner of things from my childhood from cycling proficiency certificates, school reports and Subbutteo figures.

Tucked in amongst the haul was two copies of the first newspaper I worked at as an NCTJ-qualified journalist in the mid-1990s.

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why yammering during work time makes good business sense ...

Yammer is an internal social networking site for business. It burns silos and allows people to connect. How does it work?

by Steve Finegan

Why taking in a hedgehog won’t help with having to pay the bedroom tax and how having less control over internal communications can be a good thing ...

"At Northwards Housing something very strange is happening with internal communications and it’s all thanks to the recent implementation of Yammer – a social enterprise network for businesses, sometimes referred to as the twitter or facebook of the workplace.

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a date with the easter bunny

by Darren Caveney

I’d lay a bet with you all right now: You work longer hours now that you did five and 10 years ago (and for our older followers I double guarantee than you work more hours now than you did 20 years ago)

Some of you will recall the very real process of ‘winding down’ at work before going on holiday (and I was working in the private sector at the time, before anyone pipes up about the cushy public sector)

Did you ever have to produce lengthy ‘handover’ notes for colleagues to pick up your projects whilst away?

And at the risk of sounding like a martyr, how many of you regularly take a proper lunch break? (a rushed sandwich at your PC whilst clearing your email inbox doesn’t count)

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in defence of fun

By Gillian Hudson

Like me, you probably spend 99% of your job communicating about really serious issues. Thinking back over the last week or so, I’ve worked on a projects on dementia, fostering and youth unemployment. But sometimes, just sometimes, I work on projects that are a bit lighter. You might even call them ‘fun’.

A case in point is the first anniversary of our Downing Street cat, Larry, arriving here to catch mice. 

Now if I’ve learned anything during my communications career, it’s that celebs and pets go down well. You’ve only got to look at the popularity of Pop Bitch to know that. So I worked on a little digital communications plan for Larry’s first birthday here. There were pictures taken by a colleague, a couple of tweets and best of all, a Storify of his time with us so far.

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give me a good reason to come to your meeting

by Phil Jewitt

Let’s face it; life in public sector comms is only going to get tougher.

Budgets are reducing, we might have less staff in future and I think it’s fair to say we have a few more lean years to come.

So we have to learn how to work smarter.

And the fine people here at Comms2point0 and friends have provided some great comms resources, advice and guidance on how we can share and adapt to do the best we can.

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unsung #localgov heroes – time to tell our stories

by Geoff Coleman

Last week I came across a brilliant storytelling project called Unsung New Yorkers (from the trenches to the treetops they keep the city running)

The project is a collection of amazing videos shining the light on the day-to-day workload of a range of people - from a lost property attendant to a crew keeping the city sewers clean.

In my opinion the stories are incredibly effective because they don't look like glossy promotional videos, they tell the real tale of real people doing the sort of jobs many of us simply take for granted.

Ring any bells?

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the things we think but do not say

by Will Mapplebeck

Remember the start of Jerry Maguire? For the few who haven't seen Cameron Crowe's much quoted 1996 rom-com, it starts with sports agent Jerry, played by Tom Cruise, frantically writing what he calls his mission statement at 1am in a Miami hotel room. He writes all night, pleading for a better more ethical sports business, hands it out and promptly gets the sack.

The memo is called 'The Things We Think But Do Not Say'.

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keep calm and carry on

by Kevin Hughes

Hertfordshire County Council has had an open social media policy since early 2010 – around about the same time the communications team began tentatively dipping its toes in the then unknown waters of the corporate Twitter and Facebook accounts.

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