challenges in 2013 from a pr consultancy perspective

It's a tough time to be in public relations. The landscape which has changed forever is just as tricky for agencies. Here is what one senior figure has to say:

by Mark Whitehouse

Every PR agency will tell you they’re different.

We measure success for clients differently, boast a unique team of people, are the most creative, can implement a media campaign like no other, turn water into wine and back again.

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the people using twitter are changing

Think you know everything there is to know about Twitter? It might just be time to think again.

by Guest Editor                                  Emma Rodgers

I’ve always used Twitter primarily for work. It helps me to get ideas, find out news, meet new people and speak with like minded people often doing similar jobs across the UK and beyond. But a crossover as to who’s using it seems to be taking place. Sorry to all those who already knew this but it seems to me that Twitter has become the new Facebook for teenagers. And I find that fascinating.

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Head of Comms: JD 2.0

Every job in the public sector requires a job description and a person specification. Many of them, it appears, hark back to a time before social media existed and when we still used fax machines.

by Darren Caveney

Job descriptions. You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them.

They quite regularly fail to portray the real flavour of what we do these days. In a fast-changing world they are, to a degree, quite flawed as a concept but we still need them in local government, not least to determine what salaries we get paid for our roles.

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sunderland, di canio and the pr perspective

So, appointing a manager with a history of making comments about fascism was never entirely a smart move. But did Premiership Sunderland make a tricky situation that bit harder?

by Eva Duffy

Last Monday was never going to be an average day in the office for communications manager Louise Wanless.

That Saturday her employers, Sunderland Association Football Club, had sacked The Nicest Man in Football™ Martin O'Neill after a defeat to Manchester United, the club’s eighth game without a win which saw the team precariously balanced just above the relegation zone.

The announcement of Paolo Di Canio as the new manager was always going to mean a challenging time for the club’s press office. Even as a player, controversy was never far. Most infamously, in 1998  he earned universal condemnation, an 11-match ban and a £10,000 fine when he pushed a referee during a Sheffield Wednesday fixture against Arsenal, a game I attended and left with a memory of the collective gasp of shock that reverberated around the stadium as the ref toppled backwards in slow motion. 

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up for the cup: march's top posts

Excitement always grows at Comms2Point0 Towers when the engravers get to work on the shiny £1 cup awarded to the creator of the top post for the month.

by Darren Caveney

March was a bumper month for both the number and quality of new posts. And this possibly accounted for a record number of visitors and page views in March.

Anyways, cue drum roll and we'll do this, as usual, in reverse order...

In fifth spot was the superb, unfortunately, essential, 10 things to do when your team is cut in half by Rebecca Crosby.

At number four was Liam Barrington-Bush with How an author is using small conversations and viral campaigning We were chuffed to receive Liam's debut comms2point0 post.

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listening and monitoring

Listening and monitoring is a challenge that every digital comms person must face when running a social account. Here are some thoughts...

by Simon Booth-Lucking

We sponsored and attended CommsCamp, an unconference for public sector communicators.

We had a great time and you can read plenty about what other people had to say about it in this round-up of CommsCamp.

We ran a session on Listening and Monitoring in Social Media that was pretty well received so here are the slides and notes for you and anyone who was there.

  1. This is a taster class from our Social Media School. It’s all about how to listen and monitor in social media using cheap tools and a few simple techniques
  2. And a lot of those techniques we can learn from internet dating
  3. Except we’re going to be very promiscuos, we’re trying to meet a lot of people in order to find our true loves
  4. So here’s the structure for the class
  5. Let’s start with a bit of planning first; although many of the tools are free your time isn’t so we need to have a plan so we’re making good use of our time
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10 things to do when your team is cut in half

Cuts are here or cuts are coming. Across the public sector and the private. But what happens when an axe gets taken to your budget and your headcount is reduced? By lots? Here is some advice from one who has been there and emerged the other side...

by Rebecca Crosby

By 2015 the Civil Service will be around 23% smaller than it was in March 2010.

Most central government departments and agencies have already been through restructuring programmes and communications teams have typically been hardest hit.

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apprentices - the way forward for PR?

Apprentices are an increasingly important asset in the workforce, and maybe more than ever for the PR industry.

by Stuart Baird

One of the most rewarding aspects of my work in the media and public relations over the last 20 years is seeing new starters grow in confidence, take more and more responsibility and then go on to greater and better things. And that is why I and my organisation are supporting National Apprenticeship Week between 11 – 15 March.

My employer, Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT) has recruited 140 apprentices since 2009 and more than 75% have remained with us for fixed term or permanent roles. Roles have included healthcare, business administration, finance, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and school nurse assistants. And crucially for me, public relations and communications.

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a day in my life: digital media manager

There are challenges facing PR no matter the organisation. In the third sector these can come in different ways.

by Mark Morton

I love that there are no two days the same in my job.  

I'm the digital media manager at Epilepsy Action, and I work to make everything we do the best so we can support people with epilepsy, their families and friends and anyone with an interest in the condition.

My role in the digital media team (there's three of us in total) is to work with colleagues to show them how can we achieve our aims online. And then, we work with everyone to make it happen.

Nearly all my colleagues work in the same building as me, so I aim for talking to be the major component of my day. A meeting just a chat that happens so you don't disturb others, especially with our confidential helpline 20 feet from my desk.

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the pr challenges that face housing

There are challenges in every field of communications. None more than those facing the housing sector.

by Louise Psyllides

First up, a confession - I'm a complete newbie when it comes to comms. I started my job at Chartered Institute of Housing - or CIH - just three months ago after six and a half years as a local newspaper reporter. I'm learning new things every day - not least from blogs like comms2point0 and the comms community on Twitter who are fantastically generous in sharing knowledge and content.

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could budget presentations be better?

Big financial slabs of text often make grim reading and even worse viewing. But do dry figures have to be dull? Not always...

by Jo Smith

It’s that time of year again.

Councils across the country are presenting their budgets. Decisions that impact millions of people for years to come will be taken in town halls over the next few weeks.

And apart from the major headline issues, who will actually understand the detail? Is it because no-one cares or is it because the process of presenting budgets just isn’t interesting enough?

Conspiracy theorists will argue that public sector budgets are deliberately opaque to provide a smokescreen for bad news. The devil is always in the detail – often buried on page 527.

But in most cases there is a genuine desire to be open, honest and accountable about the financial realities – especially as more services face cuts. No-one wants to discover by accident that a service they needed no longer exists.

So where are public sector budget presentations going wrong? With more channels available than ever before is the traditional town hall committee meeting format finished?

And if they have to follow the same old format could they be better?

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how an author is using small conversations and viral campaigning

Just recently we saw a viral campaign to raise funds for a book to be published. Shared by someone we rate we ended up pitching in for a copy ourselves. Called 'Anarchists in the Boadroom' by Liam Barrington Bush we thought we'd ask the author to talk a little about the channels he's using to raise the funding. And about the book. He's a nice man so he did...

by Liam Barrington-Bush

Last year I went to Mexico to write a book about what social change organisations could learn about organising and management from social media and social movements. It begins from the premise that the vast majority of our non-profit and voluntary organisations have taken-on the organising models of industrialism, often without realising it. Further, these models are both deeply at odds with most of our organisations’ values and are ill-equipped to face the increasingly networked world in which we find ourselves.

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the press release is here to stay

Never let it be said that we're not a broad church. Prompted by the debate around the future of press releases one press officer has written this defence of the channel.

by Kam Mistry

In a world obsessed with social media I’ve been asked to scribble a few words, well a few hundred words, in defence of the press release. Some argue that the ability to tweet and blog instantaneously means that traditional channels and methods are redundant – newspapers’ days are numbered. This is far from the case, and the press release as a tool in the professional communicator’s kit is far from humble.

True, twitter and other social media allow us to get messages out quickly, and as someone who works in local government I have found it invaluable, especially when we need to get messages out promptly, for example during flooding, heavy snow or during emergencies. People trust the information we provide, because it comes from a trusted source – and trust is important with all forms of communication.

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digital communicators: we are the change agents

Digital comms has a perfect way that it can demonstrate it's worth. They can help tranform services. That's a bit exciting.

by Kathy Kyle

Among the many topics discussed at this year’s Communications Camp (@commscamp | #commscamp13), the one that resonated most with me was how to best demonstrate the value of digital communications. If we can’t measure our impact as communicators, how can we influence and transform our organisations?

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