the real reason why you should enter the UnAwards

There are several reasons for us running the UnAwards 15. Celebrating the work and efforts of colleagues across comms, PR, marketing and digital is right up there amongst them, of course.

But for me it runs a little deeper than that.

By Darren Caveney

We run the UnAwards to support and – in our own way - fly a flag for folks across the UK and beyond who are working in difficult circumstances and still delivering day after day. To sing for the unsung, to recognise the unrecognised.

I hear – and I hear it way too often, I’m afraid – of some less than great behaviours by some organisations and the way they are treating staff. To a degree this is to be expected with the enormous and ongoing cuts to the public sector – with 350k people leaving local government alone in the past five years there is unprecedented change taking place.

But this doesn’t excuse shoddy behaviour.

Lack of recognition has been a theme in much of the staff survey feedback I have seen over the years too. Sometimes your achievements will be appreciated by others, sometimes they’ll not be. That’s a fact of comms life, as it is in life.

And for me, part of the UnAwards is flying back into face of this and celebrating what you do and do well. We’ve been at, and are, at your coalface so we know.

So the real reason that you should enter the UnAwards is to celebrate you.

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10 things I have learned about being a head of communications

One of the best things about having the comms2point0 web site is the opportunity to showcase and share other people's rich learning. Learning from one another is at the heart of our ethos. This post ticks all of those boxes.

by Paul Masterman

Darren Caveney’s recent blog post about his experiences as a Head of Communications over the last 10 years got a huge and admiring response from his friends and colleagues across the public sector comms industry.

At the same time I was asked to do a second year as a mentor for one of local government’s aspiring communications talents on the LGcommunications’ Future Leaders programme.

Both Darren and LGcommunications got me thinking about my experiences as a leader of communications teams and what, if anything, I really had to pass on to a leader of the future (the very near future if the track record of LGcommunications of spotting stars is anything to go by.  Step forward Emma Rodgers and Natalie Corney, as just two recent examples).

The results are in: here are my top 10 honest lessons from 11 years as a Head of Communications...

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talking business – are you missing out on great stories about local growth?

A question:

Encouraging local growth: who is responsible for 56% of the sole contacts your council has with its business customers?  

Answer 

Your regulatory teams.

by Darren Caveney

If you didn’t know this, you could be overlooking a great opportunity to engage with your business customers.

And you could be missing an important narrative about how your authority is working for economic growth and local prosperity – a story your council leaders dearly want to tell.

Are you clear how your regulator colleagues can give businesses the confidence to grow by helping them comply with the law?

What are regulators talking to your business customers about?

And what are your business customers saying to them?

For an already stretched communications team you might be wondering what you can do to make the most of this opportunity and why this should be a priority.

Here’s where to start: You are invited to attend an all-new workshop in Coventry on 10 November at the three-day LGcomms/Government Communications Service Academy.

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the future of local government comms leadership is... female

The Future Leaders programme run each year by LGcomms is a fantastic initiative. Each year it offers a dozen or so comms managers and officers the chance to join a development programme aimed at bringing forward our next wave of comms leaders, heads and directors. This year’s intake has one thing in common: They are all women.

By Darren Caveney

I have been mentoring comms managers in the UK for several years now and always enjoy the process - meeting new people, sharing ideas, jointly tackling issues and hoping to impart a smidge of what I have learned after 20 years in the game.

So I was very pleased when I was again asked to speak at the launch of this year’s Future Leaders programme in London last week and be a mentor once more.

What struck me instantly the moment I arrived in Hackney Town Hall was that I was the only man in the room.

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council magazines - do they have a future?

Council magazines. Thought they were a thing of the past? Think again - it turns out most councils still have one according to this latest research. But what of their future?

You can have your say via a planned Twitter Chat today.

by Kelly Quigley-Hicks

When the Local Government Association launched its first Reputation campaign in 2005, publishing a regular magazine or newspaper was one of the 12 core actions each Council was advised would help to improve public satisfaction.

By 2009, LGCommunications found that 94% of councils in England produced a regular residents’ publication. In 2015, how has the landscape changed? 

The rise of internet use and social media, reducing council budgets and high-profile changes to the Recommended Code of Practice For Local Authority Publicity all seem to have had an effect.

Of the 310 councils I currently have data for:

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how an italian in 1896 nailed the best social media advice I know

It's one piece of advice that really works. Forget the listicles and the fads. It all boils down to some research from Italy in 1896.

by Dan Slee

If I could give you just one piece of advice in looking after a social media profile it’s this: never forget the 80/20 principle.

All the really good social media accounts have it from Asda, a library or a police force. Most of them don’t realise it.

In almost every talk or discussion over the past few years I’ve talked about it.

But what is the 80/20 principle? It’s the balance of doing things with a little variety. It was mentioned in Richard Koch’s book of the same name in the 1990s but in effect is a sharp re-branding from the Pareto Principle from the 19th century Italian management expert Vilfredo Pareto. In  this, he noticed that 80 per cent of land was owned by 20 per cent of people. Taking it further, he noticed that 80 per cent of peas came from 20 per cent of plants and his curious mind found the same formula in different places.

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survey results: your dull intranet is failing you

We carried out a survey on intranets with digital collaboration platform and social intranet provider Knowledge Hub. The findings are surprising and should alarm internal comms and those at the top of every organisation. People in 2015 want something different to what they are getting.

by Dan Slee

Too dull, too corporate and too uncollaborative… today’s intranet is too often failing today’s employees.

That’s the message from the comms2point0 / Knowledge Hub survey of almost 80 communications and PR workers.

Yet, the silver lining of the study is that employees are still crying out for a space that helps them work, collaborate and do their job more effectively. It’s just that many don’t have that.

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know someone brilliant? nominate them and make their day

We know that a common complaint from comms folk, and others for that matter, is a lack of recognition for their work.

Whether it’s a brilliant campaign, managing communications through a crisis or just turning up every day of the year and being the best you can be it’s not a lot to ask to get the odd ‘well done’ or ‘thank you’.

But it doesn’t happen often enough and that is the ultimate reason behind the comms2point UnAwards 15. To shine a light on the colleagues proudly flying comms flags across the sectors.

by Darren Caveney

Now there’s only one thing better than being shortlisted for an award and that’s being nominated by someone else for an award. It’s a special thing.  It means you’ve caught someone’s eye, demanded their attention or impressed them with your creativity, doggedness, enthusiasm and skills.

Know someone like that? Then why not nominate them in the UnAwards 15.

All you need to do is complete this dead easy entry form here.

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comms teams need generalists and specialist-generalists

Some more thoughts on what makes the ideal comms team discussion.

by Dan Slee

There was a great Twitter chat about the ideal comms team and what it looks like via comms2point0.

Almost 80 people took part and props to Ben Capper and Darren Caveney for navigating the discussion.

There was some really good points and you can find a storify here and some conclusions from Ben too.

One post from Simon Hope really caught my eye. Is the comms specialist dead? he asks. Do we need to be generalists? You can read it here.  

He makes the point that most people join a team with a specialism whether that’s marketing, media relations or social media. However, thinning teams means that people have to turn their hands at a whole range of different things.

But what skills does a comms team need? I’ve blogged about the 40 skills I think comms teams will need.  Just looking at the broad spread of the list it’s apparent that not everyone is going to have all of them. You just can’t.

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an epic twitter chat – what we learned from #idealcommsteam

We thought it would be interesting to begin hosting a couple of Twitter Chats each month on key challenges facing the community. We kicked off with this great session on the 'ideal comms team' - it sparked a flurry of tweets and over 1.1million potential Twitter impacts.

by Ben Capper

You can always count on the comms2point0 to pitch in with ideas and thoughts when you ask them.

Last Wednesday's #IdealCommsTeam lunchtime Twitter chat was a true example of this.

The expertise, the experiences (good and bad), the challenges and the triumphs came thick and fast during a cracking hour of discussion in response to my comms2point0 post on the Ideal Comms Team last week.

Just as a reminder, there were a few key rules to the questions we asked during the conversation:

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10 gems to take home from #psdigital

An event for public sector comms people was staged in Cardiff. There was a lorry load of learning. Here's a snapshot from one of the organisers.

 by Will Barker

Last week in Cardiff saw the culmination of a good few months of work for Kate Hammond (@GlamHamm) and myself (@willdotbarker) – yes Will and Kate and no, not that Will and Kate – at our #PSdigital conference that we’d set out to organise on behalf of 1000 Lives Improvement and Public Health Wales.

Cool, but what exactly was #PSdigital?

We’re glad you asked (I’d recommend taking a look at the hashtag or this Storify if you have five minutes, which you probably do as you’re reading this blog).

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read all about it - a story from before the smartphone

There's a generation of people now who have never bought a newspaper. Ever. And even for those of us who have it's more an occasional, old skool treat for a train trip or a day sat away from screens. So it's good to be reminded of the sway they once had, and, in some areas, still do...

by GUEST EDITOR Will Mapplebeck

My first job in journalism was with the Westmorland Gazette in Kendal in the Lake District.

God, I was bored. I sometimes joke that I was there for almost three years and absolutely nothing happened.

There was one murder.

It was my week off and I missed it.

New Labour was elected, Princess Diana died, the IRA blew up half of Manchester city centre. There was a palpable sense that Britain could be on the cusp of big change.

But not in Kendal or its picturesque patch which still resembled what George Orwell was talking about when he described 'old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist'.

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your new 3-person comms team. who makes the cut?

Very rarely in life do you get to choose a brand new comms team from absolute scratch. You normally inherit folk and work with what you've got. But what if you had a blank sheet and the chance to choose. Who would make the cut?

by GUEST EDITOR Ben Capper

Let’s just say you were creating a Comms team totally from scratch.

Let’s also say it can only include three people.

Sure, you could always buy in a bit of agency time here and there, but that’s essentially your lot.

Who makes the cut? Who doesn’t? Why so?

Would this be the same as it would have been five years, or even a year ago?

How do we future-proof ourselves? What experience, and what attitudes would you want to see?

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is ave really dead in pr measurement?

Measurement and evaluation. Fundamental to any effective piece of communications activity, project or campaign. Of course, there are lots of ways in which to do it these days. But should the much derided AVEs be consigned to the bin in the corner forever, or do they have a small part to play after all?

By Nicky Speed

Put your hand in the bucket those who know that the CIPR will disqualify you if you enter one of their awards and include ad value equivalency (AVE) as a measure of success? No, not something I was acutely aware of either - until I attended an event on managing major events and some of the key speakers used the dreaded AVE word!

Now I’m not saying for one minute that we hurtle back to the days when this was pretty much the only performance indicator we used for PR. But should we discount it completely when sometimes it’s the only language that some of our boards, trustees or stakeholders understand?

PR measurement has become a bone of contention in the communications sector. For many industries, services can be measured and return on investment can be easily quantified. This is not the case in our world and I know that many of us are struggling to get to grips with evaluating our work and showing our worth.

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the 5 most important things I learned about comms in an emergency

There's been a fire, explosion, crash or terror incident. As the public demands information it's the public sector comms team who steps forward with a role to warn and inform. One former head of comms who specialised in emergency comms has looked back at what he learned.

by Ben Proctor

I don’t know why my careers teacher at school never told me about emergency planning but I didn’t really know it was a thing until I went to work for South Herefordshire District Council in 1996. There I discovered the Emergency Peacetime Duty Officer rota and began to get an insight into what local public services do to look after people in an emergency.

Since then I have worked in and out of local government, usually in comms or digital roles and I have always maintained a particular interest in emergencies.

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