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James Baker, the FSA’s Social Media Manager, explains how social media can help us identify norovirus outbreaks much earlier than labs confirm the cases.
by James Baker
If you're part of the digital and communication revolution currently happening all around us, you might have already seen how the FSA is embracing social and digital media to help communicate and build relationships with you, with food businesses, with other government departments and with our stakeholders.
When a housing comms officer wondered if a Twitter event about public housing would work he floated the idea on Twitter and sought support. It painted a picture of the work that went on in the sector and the people who work in it. And yes, it worked with the #housingday hashtag trending on Twitter.
By Adrian Capon
On 13 November the UK Housing industry used 140 characters to tweet about the work that goes on every day, singing off a single hash tag hymn sheet - #HousingDay
In the build up to the day, there was significant support and promotion from across the housing UK Twitter universe. Announcements were made on Comms2Point0 and our Yorkshire Housing Communications team blog. The media via Guardian Housing, 24 Dash, and Inside Housing featured the day. The National Federation of Housing, Chartered Institute of Housing, Northern Housing Consortium and Tenants Advisory Service proceeded the day with tweets and emailing news about the day to members.
It’s fair to say they got right behind #HousingDay.
Next time you are building a new website, do make sure that you have a comms person on the team.
by GUEST EDITOR Helen Gill 
For me, the power of social media as a PR tool is the power to publish your own content and start to influence and shape the agenda so that you don’t always have to rely so heavily on media relations any more. That’s why I don’t like the phrase ‘online PR’ or even ‘digital PR’ – it just feels like a way of doing what we’d always done but in a slightly different format.
Channel shift. That's the art of getting people to move from expensive ways of dealing with an organisation to cheaper and more effective ways. What role does comms play in this? Actually, a really important one.
There are significant savings to be made from channel shift with plenty of councils fully behind the digital transformation revolution, but moving your services online is just half the battle.
If your customers don’t start using the channel how are you going to reap the rewards that channel shift is capable of bringing? Creating compelling take-up campaigns is the answer and it’s not that difficult.
The following ideas are taken from Gandlake’s channel shift customers and have been successful in ensuring significant numbers select the web as the channel of choice.
Is the campaign dead? Should we not think about what we do 52-weeks a year? Or is there merit in shining a light on an issue?
by GUEST EDITOR Emma Rodgers 
A while ago, top blogger and US Public Health specialist Jim Garrow wrote a post on ‘death to the campaign’.
In it he talks about campaign focussed communications working against our aim of affecting real change for two reasons:
by Eddie Coates-Madden and Lisa Buttery
So, what happens when communications and customer services come together? Are there things in common?
Last week I went to the #channelshiftcamp organised by the brilliant @psfnick in Derby City Council’s stunning HQ.
I took with me my colleague Lisa Buttery, our Assistant Head of Customer Services, not least because the opportunity to line up and join up Comms and Customer Services is never one I think we should miss, but also because it was all quite new to her.
Today over a 24 hour period we’re urging all those involved in housing from landlords, tenants, suppliers and workers to share their ‘day in the life’ stories using 140 characters on Twitter.
By GUEST EDITOR Adrian Capon 
The idea to raise the profile of UK Housing from a tweetathon was ignited by the success of various initiatives #Walsall24, Greater Manchester Police and Local Government #Ourday. I first blogged about this here.
Can you name five female public relations agency heads? That was they questioned posed by PR Week before naming just four women. Thankfully, PR Week didn’t explain away the shortfall of women in top tier posts with the old cliché of “they leave to have babies”, acknowledging that the reality was far more complex than that.
by Liz Bridgen
I’m currently researching why women to leave middle-management PR jobs. Interestingly, one theme that keeps cropping up is that women leave PR because they find the work trivial and unsatisfying. That’s not to say that all PR jobs are meaningless and dull but for a variety of reasons (which would make another article in itself), the women I interviewed weren’t taking advantage of the challenging and exciting PR jobs out there.
The good thing about teaching and researching PR is that you can ask people lots of questions about what they do and why they do it.
It’s a funny old game, but could football clubs learn something about communicating from their local councils?
by Simon Alton
Football is the biggest sport on the planet, with millions of us spending an awful lot of time and money following our club - whether it’s going to a game, watching it on TV or (as in my case) following updates on Twitter while keeping half an eye on the kids in the park on a Saturday afternoon.
The level of loyalty football fans show to their clubs is unequivocal and unlike any other brand/customer relationship. The vast majority of supporters would never dream of going to support another club if they were unsatisfied with the way their club was performing. It’s just not the done thing.
Northumberland is one of the most beautiful corners of Britain. But it suffers from being far away from population centres and a lack of exposure. Go there and you'll fall in love with the place. So, bright people who look after the promotion of tourism have got active during a TV show that showcases it.
by Ross Wigham
It’s not often that I’m nervously tuned into ITV right before Coronation Street, furtively waiting for a middle aged TV star and former hit-maker to wax lyrical about my patch.
Back in the early days, when they were good, U2 sang about October being the month where the trees are stripped bare, of all they wear. But there wasn't a bit of that last month on comms2point0 where we had another feast of new comms posts.
Competition for the coveted 69pence cup shows no sign of slowing down. And we had a stonking, record number of website visitors to our little old site again last month.
But which was the most read post?
In fifth spot was Hull's very own 'hit parade ever-present', Eddie Coates-Madden this time with the fab 'wake up and sheikh up: five years is too long to embrace technology'
Inspired by other successful Tweetathons, #HousingDay looks to shine a light on the work delivered by housing associations across the UK.
by Adrian Capon
An idea to raise the profile of UK Housing from a tweetathon was sparked by the success of various initiatives #Walsall24, Greater Manchester Police and Local Government's #Ourday. At Commscamp 13, I asked Rae Watson from the Tenants Participation Advisory Service (TPAS) whether this would be something worth doing. From my time at Yorkshire Housing and seeing what we do, I am passionate to show the diversity of the UK housing sector and the work that unites us all.
Employment statistics. Aren't they a bit dry? Well, they can be. That's where a mini-digital campaign came in to help draw out some of the more interesting aspects of an Office of National Statistics announcement.
The coffee was brewing and we were gathered, primed and ready for our Twitter strike to take place. All that was left was for the Office of National Statistics to release the latest unemployment figures and our #notjustmakingtea campaign could get underway.
The figures finally emerged and we set our well-oiled machine in motion.
It was a regular Wednesday morning commute into Birmingham city centre and I was listening to Radio 4. Hugh Grant popped up representing the Hacked Off group in the latest debate about new press charters. He gave a quite brilliant performance as spokesperson, kicking into touch every line of press defence put up by the presenter.
This got me thinking about transferable skills. Now Hugh’s CV would highlight skills and experience of performing in front of a camera and microphone, remembering his lines and getting into character. So, actually, he has oodles of perfect, hands-on experience for the role of a spokesperson. Of course, Hugh has the added ingredient of being pretty passionate about the Hacked Off cause.
This month local government posted a snapshot of what they were doing during 24-hours using the #ourday hashtag. Loads of good content got posted. But as with any campaign it attracted critics who just don't like the sector. So, how should we connect with them? Should we even try?
Council wasters getting upset about hijacking of #ourday tag. Well stop tweeting and do the bastard job I pay you to do.
Maybe the private sector should spend a day on Twitter telling you how awesome they are. Oh, that’s right, they have work to do #ourday
The other week the Local Government Association held #ourday, a twitter campaign designed to highlight the diversity of what councils do.
It did its job, it highlighted the massive amount of great work that goes on in town halls, community centres and other council buildings across the country - but it also attracted a minority of negative tweets.
How can you seek to influence debate on a national level? A campaign by the Local Government Assoiciation has done just that at a time when cuts totalling 43 per cent will be coming down the track. Through a video and other collatoral the phrase 'rewiring' has entered the vocabulary.
For those working in the public sector, funding has been the dominant issue for the last few years and for local government this has been more acutely felt than most. By the end of this parliament local government will have seen cuts totalling 43 per cent.
When one of Solihull Council’s dog wardens picked up a stray pooch with no collar and no microchip last week, it looked like another potentially costly stay at the local kennels was imminent. However, one photo posted on Facebook and, within an hour, the dog’s owner had been found and tails were wagging all round.
By Dave Musson
Sometimes, you get afternoons that just make you smile, especially when they involve dogs. This was one of those gems and I’ll think you’ll like it too – even if you’re a cat person.
I picked up a call from a colleague in our environmental crime team, who wanted to tell me that the dog warden had just picked up a lost pooch that didn’t have a collar or microchip.
Every sector communications face a challenge. But what about when that challenge could be to raise the profile of a charity that struggles to get its voice heard? Who is depending on you and you need to perform for?
There are over 150,000 small charities in the UK, according to the Charity Commission. A small charity is defined as having an income under £1 million.
However there are many charities with an income over £1 million which could be described as 'small' in terms of their staff numbers and available resources. In fact, there are almost 9,000 charities which (unhelpfully) fall in the £500,000 to £5 million income category. There are less than 2,000 charities with an income of over £5 million, so it's fair to say that small charities play a vital role in the sector.
Here's a competition you may want to get involved with if you fancy a trip to New York. Fancy giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse?
by Sarah Kemp
“How many are we on now?” I hear from across the way. This is a question I’m fast becoming used to hearing. You see, excitement is high as we have just launched our very first social engagement campaign where we are offering a grand prize of a three night trip to New York and we’re keeping our beady eyes on the number of registrations received since the launch. And we’re not doing too badly. Within a few days we have broken the 100 mark and the number keeps rising.
As an international media intelligence company, we are constantly connecting PR and Marketing professionals with the people they need across social and mainstream media. We wanted to create a fun and exciting campaign, which will allow contestants to show themselves as thought leaders within the industry, whilst showing everyone a bit of behind the scenes action along the way.
Twitter can lift the lid of what an organisation does. But how about a sector? Last year local government in the UK used a hashtag #ourday to give an insight into what they did. This year, they're at it again from library events and drain inspections to stray dogs and school dinners. Can you help?
Cllr David Harrington tweeted me late one night back in July: ‘How about it @LadyLeoLion?’ Turned out he was concocting ideas to celebrate local government and needed some collaborators.
One thing led to another and #OurDay 2013 was booked in for 17 October.
