by Dan Carins
LinkedIn is social networking with a work hat on.
Rather than sharing holiday snaps and music tips it’s about sharing landmarks in your career.
It’s also about linking with people to help open doors.
10 tips to commission a freelance photographer (and five things to avoid)
by Paul Pickard
Good quality pictures can secure amazing coverage. But let’s face it, all too often the opportunity is wasted even before the photo call takes place.
With a bit of preparation and advance planning you too can end up with good commissioned photography that does the job you want.
After years of being a freelance photographer and as a Press photographer in the West Midlands, London and Staffordshire take it from me, there’s a few things to ask yourself before you talk to a photographer.
Ever wondered why your firing squad-style picture of glum people in high-vis jackets and a cheque isn’t working?
film is often the forgotten medium
by Hannah Rees & Matt Bond
Film can often be the forgotten tool. Considered by many as too expensive, too technical and too time consuming.
At Cornwall Council, we started to embrace the medium around five years ago and put some communications resource behind it. We were right to do so and it continues to be an integral part of our communications mix.
My role as Communications Specialist now deals with film as part of a total social media and digital communications toolset, and works in tangent with our design team.
Film is a proven medium and has seen a surge in popularity in recent times for both internal and external communications.
little words mean a lot
by Sharon TelferHands up, who knew what a jerrycan was?
If you’re like me – and possibly Francis Maude – you probably thought it was just a container for petrol.
If you’re like my partner, who happily spent the glorious March sunshine in the garage doing up a moped, you already knew it’s a large piece of military kit holding around 20 litres.
measure twice, cut once
I’ve always had a fascination for stats, and a sadly photographic memory for stat-related trivia. This problem surfaced as a youngster. As a 10-year old I could reel off the brake horse power and top speed of pretty well any car in my Top Trumps sports cars pack.
I even began to memorise chunks of the more interesting sections of my 1977 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.
When it came to football I could bore with the best of them on stats and figures. It partly came from spending too much time staring at Ceefax on a Saturday evening following the day’s results (pages 312 through to 324, for those in the know).
And I could probably tell you the attendance, to within a couple of a hundred, at most of Birmingham City’s key home games in the past 20-odd years.
So, no surprise then, that one of my favourite quotes ever comes from Vic Reeves who once said that “88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.”
personfessional – do you speak the new social language?
Companies, brands and local government having a presence in the social world is, on the face of it, like inviting your Granny to a rave. It’s two separate worlds where collars meet chatters, daytime intrudes on playtime and the well-spoken face the outspoken.
We now know that, despite this apparent oxymoron, there’s room for us on Twitter, Facebook and so on – but only if we get the language just right… it needs to be personal but with a decent tinge of professional remaining.
why yammering during work time makes good business sense ...
Yammer is an internal social networking site for business. It burns silos and allows people to connect. How does it work?
Why taking in a hedgehog won’t help with having to pay the bedroom tax and how having less control over internal communications can be a good thing ...
"At Northwards Housing something very strange is happening with internal communications and it’s all thanks to the recent implementation of Yammer – a social enterprise network for businesses, sometimes referred to as the twitter or facebook of the workplace.
a date with the easter bunny
I’d lay a bet with you all right now: You work longer hours now that you did five and 10 years ago (and for our older followers I double guarantee than you work more hours now than you did 20 years ago)
Some of you will recall the very real process of ‘winding down’ at work before going on holiday (and I was working in the private sector at the time, before anyone pipes up about the cushy public sector)
Did you ever have to produce lengthy ‘handover’ notes for colleagues to pick up your projects whilst away?
And at the risk of sounding like a martyr, how many of you regularly take a proper lunch break? (a rushed sandwich at your PC whilst clearing your email inbox doesn’t count)
in defence of fun
Like me, you probably spend 99% of your job communicating about really serious issues. Thinking back over the last week or so, I’ve worked on a projects on dementia, fostering and youth unemployment. But sometimes, just sometimes, I work on projects that are a bit lighter. You might even call them ‘fun’.
A case in point is the first anniversary of our Downing Street cat, Larry, arriving here to catch mice.
Now if I’ve learned anything during my communications career, it’s that celebs and pets go down well. You’ve only got to look at the popularity of Pop Bitch to know that. So I worked on a little digital communications plan for Larry’s first birthday here. There were pictures taken by a colleague, a couple of tweets and best of all, a Storify of his time with us so far.
give me a good reason to come to your meeting
by Phil Jewitt
Let’s face it; life in public sector comms is only going to get tougher.
Budgets are reducing, we might have less staff in future and I think it’s fair to say we have a few more lean years to come.
So we have to learn how to work smarter.
And the fine people here at Comms2point0 and friends have provided some great comms resources, advice and guidance on how we can share and adapt to do the best we can.
unsung #localgov heroes – time to tell our stories
Last week I came across a brilliant storytelling project called Unsung New Yorkers (from the trenches to the treetops they keep the city running)
The project is a collection of amazing videos shining the light on the day-to-day workload of a range of people - from a lost property attendant to a crew keeping the city sewers clean.
In my opinion the stories are incredibly effective because they don't look like glossy promotional videos, they tell the real tale of real people doing the sort of jobs many of us simply take for granted.
Ring any bells?
the things we think but do not say
by Will Mapplebeck
Remember the start of Jerry Maguire? For the few who haven't seen Cameron Crowe's much quoted 1996 rom-com, it starts with sports agent Jerry, played by Tom Cruise, frantically writing what he calls his mission statement at 1am in a Miami hotel room. He writes all night, pleading for a better more ethical sports business, hands it out and promptly gets the sack.
The memo is called 'The Things We Think But Do Not Say'.
keep calm and carry on
by Kevin HughesHertfordshire County Council has had an open social media policy since early 2010 – around about the same time the communications team began tentatively dipping its toes in the then unknown waters of the corporate Twitter and Facebook accounts.
communications: WD40 for organisations.
So, spring well and truly sprang over this weekend.
Temperatures soared to a balmy 17 degrees in my back garden, inspiring me to dig out the trusty old lawnmower from the back of the garden shed.
An old petrol model, battered and bruised from some less than gentle handling, it’s now rusty with age. But it can still be relied upon to tame my urban jungle of a lawn.
With the sun out, it was time for the first cut of the year. Four hours preparation, clipping hedges and edges and weeding borders then the main event. The glory job. Can you imagine the sense of anti-climax when the thing wouldn’t start?
birds in the nest
My dear old Dad used to say he was always happiest when “all of his birds were in the nest”.
His birds were, of course, his kids. He’d have done – and did – anything for those little birds. Right or wrong, he’d protect, support, help and nurture them and he’d flap and flutter whenever one of those birds left his well-kept nest.
I used to think that this was really funny, especially given he was a pretty tough cookie, unnervingly street-wise and the youngest of six kids from one of Birmingham’s harsher neighbourhoods.
reasons to be cheerful - one, two, three...
Several things hung around in my head in the days after the successful ‘facebook in the public sector’ (#fbps12) event held at my beloved St. Andrews.
First, the sheer positivity with which colleagues from 40 organisations are embracing the opportunity to communicate and engage better with their customers.
Second, a reminder that all organisations have their own individual strengths and weaknesses, things they do well, and things they could improve upon.
in defence of communication ethics
by Sarah WilliamsIn a report in PR Week this week, Lord Bell, chairman of Chime Communications, the group that owns Bell Pottinger, claimed that questions about the conduct of the company’s PR division have had no effect on trading.
Bell Pottinger were last year subject to a sting operation, carried out by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and published by the Independent, in which senior members of the firm were alleged to have boasted about their influence in Westminster.
journalists are still worth bothering with
Yes, social media is great. Yes, it’s quick and cheap.
Yes, it’s a great way to bypass journalists and talk to (and often, with) your audience directly.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the right tool for the job all of the time.
it started with a tweet...
by Matt Bond
At Cornwall Council we were gently nudged into using social media by some forward thinking Members and keen amateurs in the comms team.
Step forward @CllrAWallis, @CllrJeremyRowe, @RobNolanTruro, @SteveDouble and @alexfolkes, Cornwall Council’s self-styled ‘twitter gang’. When they first started tweeting from meetings, it’s fair to say that its potential as a groundbreaking communication channel between the Council and the public took us by surprise.
managing your own reputation online
Employers are increasingly turning to social media as part of the recruitment process. Whether you view this as a gross invasion of privacy or just a sign of the times, it is fast becoming the norm, so how far should you take this into consideration in your online life?
Nowadays, it isn't enough to simply be present on social media, you also need to be active, but exactly how much sharing should you do? More and more employers are looking at online profiles as part of the recruitment process, as this BBC news programme confirms, so do you play it safe and look after your reputation or throw caution to the wind and let everything 'hang out' online?
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