Having gone down the traditional route one forward thinking organisation turned to the awesome power of cake to get the right people.

by Alex Abbott

Having presented at the CIPR North Conference on social media, the thing that captured most people’s attention out of all the things I mentioned was our success at recruiting through Twitter.

In particular our #gottalovecake campaign. With this in mind I thought I’d share the story behind the campaign.

So here’s the dilemma: We have five communications roles ready to recruit and we advertise in all the traditional spots like Guardian, PR Week, Monster etc.   

The response was … well, luke warm. The result was no suitable candidates. Sound familiar?

Sometimes digital communications can create unexpected results. Take this tweet after a tragic hit and run incident.

Social media is a cruel mistress.

In years gone by communications professionals could pen an informative press release or piece of news and send it out into the world.

Evaluating how well it was received was difficult. Apart from the piece being picked up by the media, and the prominence it received, it was hard to assess how the general public felt about it.

Not today, not thanks to the power of the Like and the Retweet.

Now you can add your piece of news to your social media channel and wait for the verdict. These days we’re awash with stats about online traffic, page views and the many Facebook metrics. Analytics can inform you about ‘reach’ and how many people have seen it, but the one that matters is the Like – the stamp of approval from a grateful public.

Story telling is important in all fields. The Local Government Association are looking for some around the essential task of being an elected member.

 by David Holdstock

In case you don’t know, it’s Local Democracy Week this week and the LGA will be continuing to promote our successful ‘Be a councillor’ campaign.

In the run up to Local Democracy Week I wrote to communications colleagues asking for case studies of how councils are encouraging people to find out more about how to become a councillor. I got some fantastic examples back but also quite a few responses along the lines of, “Sounds great, do you have any support materials we could use?” (we do by the way – more on that later).

Whenever we talk about encouraging people to become a councillor we often use phrases such as “engaging in local democracy” but what does that actually mean to people who may not be involved in local politics let alone national politics? 

Back in the olden days journalists would rub shoulders with PRs for boozy lunches. It was called networking. Today, networking - online and offline - is just as important. Only there isn't the same cocktails.

by Ross Wigham

Networking has always been a powerful buzzword. Back in 1999 when I moved South to work as a journalist in London it meant boozy lunches with PRs and long nights on the town with their clients.

I was literally partying like it was 1999, often in work time with my employers blessing.

But even back then the 'Mad Men' approach to meeting colleagues and contacts was in its dying day – ‘you just missed out on the good times’ some of the old hands would tell me with a smile.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then and if your job is anything like mine the opportunities to meet, talk and think with like-minded people, are a rare treat.

Back at work the summer holiday is but a memory. But what do those holiday cliches teach you about your career? Quite a lot, actually.

by Lindsay Narey

Great news, autumn’s here! That season which likes to call time on your holidays, and fancies itself as something of an official landmark for going back to work/school/college.  

Whilst this might be an exciting prospect for some (students - I remember Freshers’ Week), for others the thought of a return to the office may sound a deafening klaxon of doom.  If you’d been feeling stuck in a career rut before your holiday, chances are you’ll feel a whole lot worse when you get back from a week or fortnight of gorging yourself on olives and ouzo.

Before the #ourday Twitter campaign across local government came a Scottish initiative to give people an idea of what they get for their council tax. Here's what one comms officer learned.

by Jenny Scott

One of my first tasks in my new role as Communications Assistant for Falkirk Council was to work on their Twitter 24 campaign.

As a newcomer to the working world of PR and Comms this seemed like the ideal opportunity to ease me into the combined world of social media and local government. 

Overall I believe the exercise was a great success. Of course there was the odd #mycouncil is useless - and worse - but in terms of engagement with the general public it seems, at least to me, to have broken the ice for many tweeters. The levels of engagement were higher than usual and hopefully that is a trend that will continue. It’s all well and good having thousands of followers but if they aren’t engaging with you either passively by reading your tweets or actively by directly contacting you what is the point in having them at all?

It can be varied looking after Birmingham City Council's social media events covering everything from artsfest to the visit of the Jamaican London 2012 Olympic Games team.

by Guy Evans

I am the full time social media officer for Birmingham City Council (UK), this involves looking after the corporate facebook, twitter and google+ accounts which have been up and running since January this year.

It is on any given day, exciting, challenging and rewarding, as we come to terms with social media becoming a front line tool for engagement and a channel for customer enquiries.

Top tip - use the Michael Grimes (aka citizensheep) flowchart taken from the US Air Force and redesigned for public sector UK as a standard for handling online criticism and responding. Endorsed by LG Communications and available in their guidelines for social media.

I also look after various social media accounts for council events.

It's easy to be creative these days. Or is it? Because it's not simply enough to have a flair for writing a press release. Good design skills and some knowledge of technology is needed too.

by Matt Bond

I signed up for and started to populate a Pinterest account earlier today. I’m not sure if I’m late or early to the party on this one but hearing some figures which state the content sharing platform is now the third most popular social media site it’s looking very much like the former (I’ll skip over the fact that they were saying this about Foursquare not too long ago – what is happening with that?)

Anyway, I digress, while populating the 200 character profile information section I found myself writing that I’ve got ‘a creative mind but not always the creative skills’. For some reason, this resonated and made me contemplate my creative ‘self’, creativity in general and where it all may be heading as we see much more democratisation of content.

Now, I’m certain that there will always be a special place for that highly skilled photographer, filmmaker or designer, just as there will always be a place for a highly knowledgeable coder, engineer or programmer but for everyone else, those who fall somewhere in between the two (a creative mind without the creative skills perhaps?) we’re going to have to start segueing ourselves somewhere between the two in order to really maximise our own knowledge and therefore the success of our content.