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Entries in communications (210)

Saturday
Jan042014

comms as a lifesaver during the #ukstorm

Driving rain and storms have battered Britain - but how have the emergency services coped in communicating the warnings?

by Dan Slee

If ever you needed proof that sharing out access to social media was a bright idea take a look at the January storms that struck Britain.

High winds, 30-foot waves and flood warnings struck across the country.

It was imperative that messages were sent out and a network of Environment Agency, local government and central government accounts on Twitter helped spread key messages and point people towards the Environment Agency website.
Google news reveals 32,500 news items online with the terms 'Britain' and 'storm' as weather swamped the conversation and the news agenda.

Click to read more ...

Thursday
Jan022014

tips for communicating with young people from bbc radio 1

How do you reach the under 24's? You be creative. And you create content for different platforms. And you look at how BBC Radio 1 does it. 

by Dan Slee

Sometimes you stumble on something that catches your imagination and fills in some of the blanks.

That happened listening to Millie Riley a broadcast assistant who was talking on BBC Radio 5’s Review of 2013.

She was talking about how under 24-year-olds consume their radio and how their radio is online, face-to-face, shared… and on the radio.

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Dec292013

12 inspiring links from 2013

2013 has been an amazing year there has been some amazing writing powering it. Here are 12 inspiring links from one communications person.

by Dan Slee

For a good long while now I've strongly felt that if you stop learning you stop growing and with the pace of change learning has never been more important.

The ideas that fire me are not from one organisation or institution. They come like refreshing drinks from the firehose of the internet that shares and spreads ideas. 

Every working day myself, my colleague Darren Caveney or from time-to-time a guest editor will trawl the social networks looking for content that will help make sense of this fascinating landscape we find ourselves in.

Now the year is coming to an end I racked my brains for some links that really stopped me in my tracks. There was plenty and this is just a snapshot. 

Click to read more ...

Friday
Dec272013

10 predictions for local government communications

New Year. It acts like a blank page and a line under what went before. It's time to take stock and see what is down the track. Here's what 2014 could look like...

by Dan Slee

“I’d rather not predict,” US Democratic strategist James Carville once said, “I’d rather affect.”

Seeing as the only thing I’m affecting between Christmas and New Year is a large cake tin and a box of celebrations I’ll be ignoring the man who helped put Clinton in the White House.

But first here’s a few things I predicted 2013 would have in store for us in my corner of local government communications on my own blog in 2012.

For those who'd like to point and laugh here is my 2011 predictions too for 2012

Click to read more ...

Monday
Dec232013

comms? it's getting more digital say the 2013 survey results

So, what is the state of communications in 2013? It's getting harder... and the favourite cake is chocolate. Here's our annual survey.

by Dan Slee

A gaggle of geese, a pride of lions... and a chocolate cake of comms people. That was one of the verdict of the annual survey.

We asked UK people who worked in the sector to take part and take part they certainly delivered. More than 220 of us in fact.

In a closely fought battle the top choice of cake was a two way fight with chocolate (31.8 per cent) narrowly beating carrot (28.4 per cent) to the title.

But what were the other conclusions? They were many. It's a challenging time to be involved with public relations or communications. We're faced with a major change that's part exciting, part terrifying but never dull. The internet is revolutionsing the sector just as its doing the same to the media landscape.

Click to read more ...

Saturday
Dec072013

campaigns that made a difference, and one that should have  

I was listening to Public Enemy’s ‘Harder than you think’ recently, and it took me straight back to the summer of 2012.

by Julie Waddicor

‘Harder than you think’ was the iconic song used by Channel 4 for its ‘Meet the Superhumans’ campaign for the Paralympics. Now, that was a truly outstanding bit of marketing. Yes, they had huge budgets and yes, they had blanket TV coverage, the like of which we in local government can only dream of. But fundamentally, some bright spark had the creative vision to identify the people taking part in the Paralympics as super-human, rather than defined by their disability, and to use a song with the line ‘Thank you for letting us be ourselves’.

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Tuesday
Nov122013

tweet today #housingday 

Today over a 24 hour period we’re urging all those involved in housing from landlords, tenants, suppliers and workers to share their ‘day in the life’ stories using 140 characters on Twitter.

By GUEST EDITOR Adrian Capon

The idea to raise the profile of UK Housing from a tweetathon was ignited by the success of various initiatives #Walsall24, Greater Manchester Police and Local Government #Ourday. I first blogged about this here.

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
Nov062013

how football clubs can learn from local councils

It’s a funny old game, but could football clubs learn something about communicating from their local councils?

by Simon Alton

Football is the biggest sport on the planet, with millions of us spending an awful lot of time and money following our club - whether it’s going to a game, watching it on TV or (as in my case) following updates on Twitter while keeping half an eye on the kids in the park on a Saturday afternoon.

The level of loyalty football fans show to their clubs is unequivocal and unlike any other brand/customer relationship. The vast majority of supporters would never dream of going to support another club if they were unsatisfied with the way their club was performing. It’s just not the done thing.

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Tuesday
Oct222013

a case study on rewiring national debate

How can you seek to influence debate on a national level? A campaign by the Local Government Assoiciation has done just that at a time when cuts totalling 43 per cent will be coming down the track. Through a video and other collatoral the phrase 'rewiring' has entered the vocabulary.

by Lawrence Meehan

For those working in the public sector, funding has been the dominant issue for the last few years and for local government this has been more acutely felt than most. By the end of this parliament local government will have seen cuts totalling 43 per cent.

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
Oct162013

26 things to learn from day one of europcom

Every year hundreds of communicators gather in Brussels to listen, talk and share ideas. This year comms2point0 social reported from the event with a rolling Twitter, pictures and a storify to capture all the tweets.

by Dan Slee

So, there you go. Day one of Europcom and we end up trending in Belgium. Just goes to show that just talking about communications things can be popular.

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Oct082013

brand management and online engagement

How do you join the dots? How do you deliver the same message on the web and through the social web while using the comms team? Especially while talking to people. One company has some answers and has published a report too.

by Katie Bacon

A recurring theme shared with our team from local authorities, educational provisions, charities and private sector clients is: 

“How do we integrate the online ‘organisational brand’ message in conjunction with the communication team while connecting online with our target audience in an transparent and inclusive manner?”

Click to read more ...

Monday
Sep232013

how to communicate a g8 summit 

There were 8,000 police officers at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland in 2013. The world's leaders gathered and key items were discussed. But what was the role of the 10 Downing Street digital team?

by Gillian Hudson

I was in a meeting the other week when it occurred to me that the beautiful round table we were gathered at was used by leaders at this year’s G8 summit at Lough Erne, Northern Ireland.

In addition to adding a slightly absurd twist to my otherwise fairly run-of-the-mill meeting, it quickly took me back to the fantastic time I had as part of the G8 digital team.

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Tuesday
Aug202013

a campaign to tweet realtime murders

The image of Victorian London is a strong one. Pea soupers, Dickens and Jack the Ripper. As part of a campaign to promote a book one publisher is using Twitter to post realtime updates.

by Jamie Wolfendale

It’s been 125 years since Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of Whitechapel, but his bloody legacy still looms large. This year The History Press is proud to announce its follow-up to the award-winning 2012 Titanic Real Time campaign with another social media campaign, Whitechapel Real Time – a digital exploration of Victorian London at the time of the Jack the Ripper murders.

Join The History Press on a historical journey through London in 1888’s ‘Autumn of Terror’, where the Jack the Ripper story will be told through Twitter using real-time tweets from characters both real and fictional.

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
Aug142013

arts and culture cuts – what happened next?

Remember the phrase ‘doing a Newcastle’?

It entered the local government lexicon last year when we unveiled our budget proposals and said we’d have to scrap the funding we gave to arts institutions across Newcastle.

By Will Mapplebeck

It caused a tremendous row, even the likes of Sting and Bryan Ferry got involved, and I wrote about it in a previous comms2point0 blog that you can find here

As I said at the time, compared to some of the choices we had to make – for example closing respite centres for children and adults with learning disabilities – you might think that arts funding would not cause us that much reputational damage.

Click to read more ...

Friday
Aug092013

an app to bring police and communities closer together 

Sometimes a press release or some social media just won't do. When Greater Manchester Police force were looking to register help from residents they developed a smartphone app that uses the geolocation capability of a smartphone.

by Amanda Coleman

Almost 12 months ago we were discussing how new technology identifying locations could support frontline policing. Apps are at their best when they use the mobile element to do something different to websites or social networks.

Click to read more ...