passing the coronation street ad break test

by Dan Slee

Sometimes a simple idea pings around in your head and nags away.

One such was mentioned at Shropcamp in June held at Harper Adams Agricultural College amongst the summer fields.

'How do we make it really easy for people to take part in the decisions local government make?,' the idea runs.

Don’t think for a second you needed to be a local government anorak to get this. A patchwork of small Town Hall decisions affect your everyday lives every day. Schools, roads, libraries, leisure, parks and 695 other things. They’re all local government.

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how to fix council news

by Adrian Short

Adrian Short is a freelance designer, web developer and data analyst. He's also passionate about local government.  In this challenging piece from his blog, reproduced here under a creative commons licence, he rolls a hand grenade under council news online and suggests ways it can be better presented.

Too long, too dull and far too pleased with itself. Little more than an exercise in vanity publishing. Irrelevant to the vast majority of people.

The complaints are numerous but at least you come here to read my blog not to find out when it’s bin day.

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twitter… the next industrial revolution?

by Russ Cockburn

Digital communications are reaching all corners of society and Comms 2.0 needs to bridge the divide between old media and new. In the Black Country, Danks Cockburn PR are bridging that divide with traditional industry in an unlikely way.

When we talk about trailblazers in social media, manufacturers would not be the first group of people that spring readily to mind.

I would have agreed with this popular consensus 12 months ago when I stood in front of ten down to earth engineering directors and extolled the virtues of ‘twitter’, LinkedIn and, to a lesser degree, Facebook.

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comms new year’s resolutions

by Darren Caveney

New year’s resolutions…  I’m sure that I read somewhere over Christmas that 86% of us don’t stick to them.  So, the choice is pretty simple: either don’t make any, or only embrace those which are do-able and will make a real difference.

Career resolutions are just as important as the obligatory ones about health kicks, weight loss and being better with money.

But will we all stick to them? Er, well, approximately 14% of us will, then.

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looking for social media guidelines?

by Darren Caveney

do you want to create a simple, straightforward set of social media guidelines?

do you want to ensure you 'engage', 'explore', 'discover' ... and still 'conform'?

don't want to write war and peace?

how about a set of social media guidelines in less than 140 characters?

sound good?

here you go then.

to Google+ or not to Google+?

by Dan Slee

There's nothing quite like the launch of a new social profile for the hype machine to swing into operation.

Google+, Google's fourth attempt at social networking, is no exception.  Around 40 million users registered within five months of launch in summer 2011.  You can find out the basics of it via Wikipedia.

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connecting with your public through social media

Northumberland is the most northern of English counties. It's quietly created some of the most pioneering and widely adopted social media accounts in the country.

Ross Wigham, head of communications at Northumberland County Council tells how...

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are you reaching your true potential?

As with all marketing channels, your twitter activity can only build your business if you’re maximising its reach. 

Who’s following you? Are they key to your business (potential customers? existing customers? suppliers? stockists? bloggers or journalists from your sector?) Are they responding to your tweets?  Are you creating dialogue and interaction? Are you getting re-tweeted?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’.  Then it may be time to take a few minutes to rethink your strategy.

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want to build your business? it's time to join in the chat

Successful marketing in 2011 is all about the conversation. Whether you want to shift more widgets or shift customer perception, there is no better piece of advice to take on board than to BUILD BUILD BUILD a dialogue with your customers.

Social media offers many simple, manageable - and free - ways to do this. 

Twitter is one of them.

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the guardian : improving local government comms debate

by Dan Slee

There were some fascinating points to come out of an online Guardian discussion on how to improve local government communications.

There was also plenty of pointers for people across the public sector.

One thing was quite clear. We need to change, evolve and adapt. The old ways of working no longer work for everyone.

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