five lessons learned in campaigning on the right to film council meetings

August 6, 2013 Darren Caveney

Ridiculed in satirical publications such as Private Eye, caught on camera for YouTube viewers, slammed in the press by cabinet ministers and MPs alike, the issue of members of the public filming council meetings can provoke strong feelings. Here, campaigner and journalist Sarah Hartley from Talk About Local draws out five conclusions from recent events which could help councillors, comms professionals and campaigners find a way through the friction.

by Sarah Hartley

It’s an issue that’s not often been generating the sort of headlines most local authorities would like to see written about them.

Videos of people in ceremonial chains demanding that cameras be ‘dismantled’, meetings being dissolved rather than hearing important local issues and police having their time wasted on well-meaning citizen doesn’t present local authorities in a good light.

So how has it come to this point?

up for the cup: july's top posts

August 5, 2013 Darren Caveney

As months go, July was a bit special for us. The launch of a new white paper, record web site visitors and a new job for one of us. But nothing quite compares to the announcement of the top post for July...

by Darren Caveney

With well over 300 posts on the site we like to think that we have a little something for everyone now. And the top five most read posts in July underline the mix of case studies and learning from across many sectors.

So, the top five, in our usual reverse order:

At five, was What would Basil Clarke the father of British PR make of today's industry? by Richard Evans.

future leaders on tour

August 1, 2013 Darren Caveney

Future Leaders, now in its second year, is giving talented public sector comms people the chance to expand their leadership skills. In the days of zero training budgets this is a timely initiative by LGcomms.

by GUEST EDITOR Emma Rodgers

When was the last time you got time away from the office to think about how you spend your time at work, how effective your leadership style is and what to do to build your own personal credibility?

how social media can play havoc with your business continuity

July 30, 2013 Darren Caveney

It's normal now for the time between an incident hitting and 'first tweet' to be just 30 seconds. Armed with that knowledge, what can be put in place before that incident happens to help reassure and ensure business continuity?

by Steve Finegan

“We don’t have an official company policy. We know being social is quite popular, especially with some of our younger staff.”

“I don’t really place that much importance on social media. I use twitter to market our products. Sometimes I promote our voluntary work with local communities.”

“We don’t really bother with it. We created a Twitter account because it’s the in- thing to do. Most of our customers communicate with us via our website which has a range of interactive services.”

“We don’t use social media at all, it’s not a priority, besides, there’s less chance of us being criticised if we’re not online.”

“Our business is very active on social media. We have our own Facebook and twitter accounts, and we regularly engage in conversations directly with our customers.”

If any of the above statements apply to you, then your business continuity plan needs to be ready. Ready for what exactly? Well, it’s really quite simple. Whether or not your company has developed an approach to social media or chooses to leave all this social stuff to others, like generation Y (those born between 1981–2000), I’m afraid there really is no escape.

why face-to-face conferences still matter in internal comms

July 21, 2013 Darren Caveney

With a shift to digital does an email from the top work as well as the traditional conference? There's a place for it. But there's a place for the traditional event too.

by Theresa Knight

Picture the traditional staff conference - you know the one where the chief executive and senior managers engage with the workforce, give them key messages, put them into workshops and take questions from the floor.

learning to build an online community

July 20, 2013 Darren Caveney

People under rate how hard it is to build an online community. It takes months and years of careful work. Yet, it's increasingly a task being asked of communications. Here's what one person learned from a course acknowledged as one of the best.

by Andrew Brightwell

When I was asked a while ago why I'd signed up for the Online Community Management course, run by Feverbee, it took me a moment to decide how to answer. Should I try to say something clever or be honest? In the end I plumped for honest: "I'm here because I am called an online community manager and I'd quite like it to mean something."

It got a laugh, but I'm guessing my flippancy also revealed a little about my own attitude t

tips from the frontline on surviving a re-organisation

July 16, 2013 Darren Caveney

Being put 'at risk.' Going through a re-organisation. Chances are if you work anywhere these days you stand a chance of going through this stomach-churning process that tests patience and commitment and frays nerves. Tom Phillips in his 39-years in local government did every kind of job imaginable and some best not imagined. After surviving a series of re-organisations he took voluntary redundancy in 2011.

by Tom Phillips

They don’t give out campaign medals for surviving local government reorganisations, or I’d have a chestful. I’d only been working in my first job a week when they announced the 1974 changes following the Local Government Act 1972. It never really stopped after that. When I finally stepped off the merry-go-round in 2011, I had been in jobs placed “officially at risk” twelve times. In one particularly hectic phase in the 1990s, I was “at risk” three times in six months, in a service suffering badly from central government interference and privatisation.

tweeting godiva

July 14, 2013 Darren Caveney

Our friends from Coventry City Council always set high standards across their comms and digital activity. And they put on some pretty mean events too. The Godiva Fesitval 2013 gave them the chance to showcase all of these skills. What Coventry teach us is that Twitter might just be the festival platform of choice.

by Gareth Lewis

The first weekend in July saw the fantastic three-day Coventry City Council-organised Godiva Festival take place in Coventry’s War Memorial Park.

7 things I learned at the big yak

July 1, 2013 Darren Caveney

The Big Yak was an internal comms unconference staged by the IC Crowd who are lovely people. In this post, here's what one person learned and seven take-homes...

GUEST EDITOR by Corrinne Douglas

I set off for London and The Big Yak, an internal communications unconference with a mixture of excitement and a bit of apprehension. Over 100 comms pro’s coming together to discuss internal communications, most of them having never been to an unconference before, would we have enough to yak about?

who should we really be talking to?

June 26, 2013 Darren Caveney

It's never been more important to base our communications activities on sound intelligence about who our residents and customers are. And checking that that evidence is up to date is also vital.

by Julie Waddicor

Who sets your comms priorities? Your councillors, your boss, your residents? I imagine that, in most local government organisations, it is a bit of all three. That’s fair enough (to an extent), but a lack of focus on residents and their issues, in the right proportions, could mean a lot of our efforts go to waste.

what would basil clarke the father of the british pr make of today's industry?

June 22, 2013 Darren Caveney

Public relations emerged in Britain in the first world war. But what would the pioneer of the field make of comms today?

by Richard Evans

The media landscape of today could hardly be more different to the one Basil Clarke faced when he became the UK’s first public relations officer in 1917.