don't sweat the facebook changes

There have been some big changes to Facebook of late prompting many to ask why and if it is worth bothering with unless you have a budget to support it. Here is one take.

by Jon King

Having stepped away from local government comms for a year, I’m back in the saddle again at another authority.

Knowing a little about social media helped. And just as I was extolling the virtues of Facebook as a means of connecting with residents I had to remind myself that the game has changed a little in my absence.

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could twitter be a weekly voice for local government?

Could a Twitter account passed between local government people help tell the story of their sector? One switched-on comms person thinks it could.

by Geoff Coleman

In December 2011, Sweden launched what it called 'the world's most democratic Twitter experiment' when the Twitter account @Sweden was born.

If you're not already a follower I can highly recommend that you check it out.

Basically, a new Swede takes over the country's official Twitter account @sweden every week, sharing their daily experiences and opinions and generally celebrating their nation.

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tonight matthew, i'm going to be...

Professional versus personal profile and use. It's an on-going issue for comms folk. One of our brethren is doing more than most to vocalise and shine a light on the challenges we face.

by Phil Jewitt

The title of this post is taken from a TV series that ran for nearly 20 years. Called Stars In Their Eyes, it involved members of the public, sometimes celebrities, impersonating famous people from the music industry by singing one of their songs. At the beginning of each impersonation you got to see the person going about their own life and giving clues about who they were going to impersonate. Just before their transformation into the pop star, they would introduce themselves by saying the words, “Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be [insert pop star's name].”

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so, what did the #housingday twitter event do?

So, you've done the Twitter event. But how do you measure what kind of impact it had? Here's what he people behind one event to look at what changed because of it. The answers are varied.

Last year #Housingday tweetathon reached a 1,000 tweets an hour. This survey looked to find out about the impact of the day. We wanted to hear from those involved, what they thought about it and what the sector could do next?

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why thunderclap should be part of your social toolkit

Thunderclap? What's that? It's a social platform for making a bigger bang. Here in a case study is what it is and how it works.

by Anna Warren

I first heard of a Thunderclap when our friends at Fire and Rescue asked us to join theirs for the ‘Tick Tock Test’ campaign.  Being a social media intern I felt a bit embarrassed that I had never heard of a one before.  Luckily, when I looked around the team I realised no one else seemed sure either.

It was clear: we needed to get our hands on this tool and do some experimenting.

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are you a social media blocker?

Blockers, Every organisation has them. But in communications teams, really?

by GUEST EDITOR Emma Rodgers   

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the rather brilliant, interesting and super helpful LG Communications Social Media session, organised by Darren Caveney, that was  held at the  hugely creative Antennae Centre in Nottingham.

Billed as ‘Everything you wanted to know about social media but were too afraid to ask’, it combined an immense list of speakers including David Banks [Media Law Specialist], Dan Slee, Paul Taylor, Sarah Lay and Richard Clarke from O2 with an equally inspiring un-conference session led by the Wikipedia legend Andy Mabbett. 

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the importance of being dave

We've always liked the cut of the jib of those folks down in Norfolk. And this post and idea sums them up nicely.

by GUEST EDITOR Susie Lockwood

It’s crucial to lead on things sometimes; come up with new ideas, be brave, be innovative, make stuff happen. But leaders don’t get very far without followers, people who can recognise a good idea when they see one and can make it happen much more effectively.

So it follows (sorry, couldn’t resist) that it’s important to follow as well as lead, support as well as take the starring role.

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from cock-up to case study: a cautionary tale of when twitter goes bad

Sometimes with social media things go a bit wrong. Something happens that is unplanned and leaves you with egg on your face. So, you're in a hole. How do you get yourself out of it? Honesty and humour, it seems.

by Mike Underwood

The Mission: promote the grand work of Charnwood Borough Council’s CCTV service.

The Tactic: tweet live from the camera control centre on a busy Saturday night in Loughborough.

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how social media is helping the ministry of defence

Opening up to use social media can be tricky. Not least if you are the Ministry of Defence. Which is why this case study shows how one department of the MOD adopting social can lead to some unintended benefits.

by Tony Moran

With social media now so much a part of our everyday lives, it’s easy to forget what life was like without it.

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seven more twitter mistakes we all make

Mistakes. We all make them. But many of us shy away from talking about them. One comms pro took a different view and created a massively popular post last year about making mistakes on Twitter. And now she's gone and written the follow-up...

by GUEST EDITOR Helen Reynolds

With the 'first seven mistakes we have to make' post last year I started a club for those of us who have learned the hard way and cocked up on Twitter at some point.

Here are seven more 'mistakes': if you have done more than six of the fourteen you are a VIP member for the 'Twitter pro club'. (Rule 1: talk about Twitter pro club. We're communicators aren't we?!)

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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.

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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.

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delivering a digital G8 dementia summit

On 11 December it's the first ever G8 dementia summit, in the final days of the UK's presidency. It's an event imbued with hope – the hope of anyone who has ever been affected by dementia or loved someone who has – hope of a better future.

by Anna Hepburn

For the Department of Health, the summit is just one moment in our ongoing digital engagement around dementia. But it’s a very special moment, when we expect to be able to reach more people than before. It matters to so many people what is discussed at the summit and what progress is made. Inevitably there is not enough space to accommodate all the people who would like to be there. And that's why it's especially important for the Department of Health digital team to deliver the best digital coverage we can.

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social media, for social good

James Baker, the FSA’s Social Media Manager, explains how social media can help us identify norovirus outbreaks much earlier than labs confirm the cases.  

by James Baker

If you're part of the digital and communication revolution currently happening all around us, you might have already seen how the FSA is embracing social and digital media to help communicate and build relationships with you, with food businesses, with other government departments and with our stakeholders.  

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standing in the way of control

Now here's a question which regularly crops up: 'How do we control social media?' Actually, that's the wrong question. A better one would be: 'Should we try to control social media?' And the answer to that is no. A big, fat, no.

by Darren Caveney

Social media. When you strip it back to the basics, it’s pretty much just a series of conversations. People sharing opinions, chewing the fat, asking questions.

Talking.

And, as my pal Dan Slee would say – ‘being human’,

Which is why I’ve always struggled with products sold by companies which seek to govern these conversations. To control them.

Control your social media activity, lock it down, stop people having their own accounts, put lots of measures in place to prevent staff going off and engaging, being social. Having human conversations.

From what I can see, some of these companies take this control ‘offer’ and repackage it to sell their services by creating a kind of fear of social media.  Within the sales pitch you almost sense a belief that, actually, staff shouldn’t  really have access to social media anyway.

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