future leaders network

February 21, 2012 Darren Caveney

LGcommunications has nominated 16 communications specialists from local authorities across the UK to take part in a new leadership programme. The LGC Future Leaders Network, aims to support up and coming officers, connecting them with peers and some of today’s local government luminaries to help them shape their thinking and forge relationships for the future.

What does the next generation of local government chief communications officers look like? I may have had a glimpse into the future yesterday when I joined the first gathering of LGcommunications Future Leaders’ Network in Westminster.

a tale of two teams

February 20, 2012 Darren Caveney

A Tale of Two Teams – how Norfolk County Council made Twitter a genuine customer service channel

by Susie Lockwood

In October last year colleagues of mine in our customer service team took over responsibility for replying to enquiries we received through Twitter. I’d like to say it was my idea but actually the desire to do this, and the foresight of how it could be developed, came from customer services.

snow champion is, champion

February 12, 2012 Darren Caveney

by Claire Bustin

Take 2,500 snow shovels, tubs of rock salt and high visibility vests. Add a band of willing people ready to help their community. Sprinkle generously with snow...

You may have heard about Snow Champions taking to the streets of Sandwell in the bad weather. They’ve certainly been making an impression on Twitter and on the Sandwell Facebook page.

winds of change …

January 30, 2012 Darren Caveney

by Darren Caveney

I’ve been lucky enough to attend and participate in a couple of excellent events this past week or so. The first UKGovCamp in London and the second an LGComms seminar on social media in Cardiff.

A key theme running through both events was that of the shifting nature of the communications landscape, and the differing ways in which organisations are reacting and redifining activity. The sands are certainly shifting at speed for some, for others they're moving at a far gentler pace.

carry on camping

January 22, 2012 Darren Caveney

by Darren Caveney

On Friday 20 January I woke at 4.15am – and for once, it wasn’t because of the kids - to set off for 'the smoke' to attend UKGovCamp.

A long, long day was in store, a day which helped me to crystallise some thoughts around comms approaches in 2012.

knowing your ABC's

January 15, 2012 Darren Caveney

by Darren Caveney

The world has never been more full of stats, figures and data. Bank losses, Facebook numbers, job cuts – the list is virtually endless and the transparency agenda has only increased the numbers maze.

Closer to home, our working world’s are also all about metrics, ROI’s, sales figures...

And our home lives are stacked full of numbers too – bank balances, school league tables, weather forecasts, mortgage rates, the price of fish.

how to fix council news

January 9, 2012 Darren Caveney

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.

comms new year’s resolutions

January 2, 2012 Darren Caveney

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.

building your business image through flickr

November 30, 2011 Darren Caveney

Flickr is home to over five billion of the world’s photos and is, without doubt, the most effective way to store, sort, search and share your photos online.

For business, quite aside from eliminating the need for expensive photo management software or suppliers, Flickr can also be a valuable branding tool and a great way to engage with your staff, customers and your business contacts.

what we need is a comms plan

September 27, 2011 Darren Caveney

by Darren Caveney

If i had a pound for every time i’ve heard that line.

Well written, well executed comms plans are an essential part of the business toolkit.

They aren't magical documents which can, purely by their existence, guarantee business success.

Whether you need to communicate good news or bad, ensuring the business is telling a consistent and well thought out story can make the difference between success and failure.

Want to write a post for comms2point0? Email us a brief outline of your post idea or specialist subject and we'll be in touch!

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