to strike or not strike? a comms dilemma

A strike is likely to take place on July 10 in local government and comms people will have some hard thinking to do. In this post one professional thinks aloud over the difficult choice they face.

by A Local Government Comms Person

Sitting at the heart of a local authority within a corporate comms team often brings about conflict between the decisions and policies of the organisation and your personal views. However, it is the job of the professional to separate the two, and to present the organisation in the best possible light, enhancing, preserving or defending its reputation. 

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barbie has joined linkedin... shouldn't you? shouldn't your daughter?

The size and reach of LinkedIn has reached a tipping point with Barbie now joining. Is this a positive message to girls? And to all of us? 

by Karen Steel

Barbie has joined LinkedIn. That’s right. The pneumatic blonde (or sometimes brunette) with the unlikely proportions has her own showcase page under the Mattel company account which details her 55-year career encompassing more than 150 jobs (currently she describes herself as ‘entrepreneur’ and the role is said to be inspired by Sheryl Sandberg).

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#HousingDay 12.11.14

Taking a leaf out of brands using ‘real life’ human stories, it’s time housing collectively hits back with some of its own...

Smashing perceptions - hitting back with real life stories

by Adrian Capon

Tackling negative stereotypes and perceptions is complex and long-term. Recent TV portrayal has seen stigma entrenched for people living in social and council housing. With so much media popularity focussed on this - what about creating a programme hearing from people who do amazing work?

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step back and look at the view

We're all so busy racing around trying to get good at the latest 'next big thing' that sometimes we forget to take a step back...

by GUEST EDITOR Nic Davies Uley

Working in communications, reading about communications, communicating about communications, it can all get a bit too much. If working for myself has taught me one thing, it’s to step back and look at the view.

But you can’t look at the view, unless you take the step back.

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don't worry about dumbing down, worry about dumbing up

Do we need to apologise for making things jargon-free and easy to understand...? One comms professional has just drawn a line in the sand.

by Jon Matthias

I’ve decided I’m not going to apologise any more for ‘dumbing down’. And I’m going to be less tolerant when people start ‘dumbing up’.

We have two challenges as communicators - to both be heard and be understood. Simplicity is the key to people understanding what we say. Clarity and brevity are our friends.

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survey launch: the death of organic reach on social media

If you work in digital comms you'll be aware of a storm coming down the path. It's about Facebook. What you post may not be seen unless you have an advertising budget to help promote it. We're launching a survey with the nice people at Deeson Creative on social media and advertising. We'd love you to take part in it. But first here's a take on where we are and where we are headed.

by Emily Turner 

How many people have told you that they’ve seen a tail off of engagement on Facebook and that fail-safe images no longer bring forth the plethora of likes, shares and comments they used to?

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using pinterest in the public sector

Pinterest? That's for weddings, isn't it? Not entirely. One bright comms person is experimenting in the public sector.

by Karen Jeal

There are more than 500,000 businesses using Pinterest. So at Lambeth Council are we behind the times or ahead of the game? Well there’s only a handful of councils using it so we’ve added ourselves to that small list and started pinning.   

In the three years since Pinterest launched, there are more than 70 million people using it. Wow. That’s impressive.

In Pinterest there are boards. You pin things on the boards. People follow you or your boards. You can like things without attaching it to a board. In short it’s a virtual inspiration board. Those already ‘pinning’ will know that it's far more than that, but at Lambeth we’re just settling in.

We’ve started using it to influence outcomes, engage with our community and encourage more collaboration.  

Things you can recycle is one of our boards. The idea – to create a range of things showing residents what you can be recycled and how to reuse different objects. The long-term outcome of this is to increase recycling rates and reduce waste.

We recently ran a parks challenge where residents tell us what they want to see in their parks. Pinterest is a great way of doing this too. Adding things that inspire us or to pin things others are doing to create a virtual mood board of which direction we want our parks to go in.

We’ve a board for each of our priorities to really drill down to what they mean and how we can fulfil them. We’re using it influence too – a board named ‘People of the borough’ basically showcases everyone who has an association with Lambeth.

Take a look http://www.pinterest.com/lambethcouncil/ you’ll see it’s still in its early stages but it’s going to be a great tool for taking our digital channels to the next level.

Karen Jeal is digital officer at London Borough of Lambeth.

 

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navigating internal comms? it’s plain sailing.

Remember when you didn’t work in comms? When you didn’t have access to every possible piece of information about your organisation? When you had no idea who the chief executive was and there was more chance of winning Euromillions than you ever meeting them in the flesh?

by Jo Smith

I have to go back 20 years to my graduate days to be ‘BC’ – Before Comms.  Back then people still used typewriters. Email was barely born, mobile phones were the size of suitcases and if you wanted news you read the paper.  Since then I’ve watched communications techniques evolve and have done my best to keep up with every exhausting and exciting step.

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the press release is dead theory...? here's the practical

Further evidence that the press release is not the first thing comms people reach for in the toolbox. 

 

We all know it. We’ve been told a million times. The news release is officially, well if not dead, then old news.

We’re still a bit sceptical about this though, aren’t we? Like a bad marriage, we just hang on in there, perhaps for old times’ sake.

But actions, as I always tell colleagues, do speak louder than words and our actions when we had our ‘crisis’ communication plans tested by a major incident recently, spoke volumes.

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four steps to create a powerful infographic

Infographics are a growing trend and when you get them right they look brilliant and make big spreadshreets come alive. But how do you get them right?

by Caroline Beavon

Honestly, you can’t open a magazine or website nowadays without seeing an infographic. It’s the hot word of the moment and plenty of organisations are trying to introduce them into their communications channels.

If you’re in the dark a little, let me elaborate.

The term infographic is hotly debated, but I like to think of it as “information in a visual form”. The current trend is for full page, or long-images that explain a series of statistics using charts, diagrams and illustrations.

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five challenges that face ambulance comms

They are there when a little boy falls out of a tree or when there is a train crash. Who? Ambulance crew. So, what does the comms look like?

by Anna MacArthur

Let’s be honest, paramedics are sexy. They wear uniforms, save lives at the scene of major incidents and race around in cars, motorbikes and other vehicles with flashing blue lights.

It’s this appeal that leads to our first challenge: staying focussed on our corporate objectives when lots of our staff and the makers of everything from Junior Paramedics, to 999 What’s Your Emergency and Soho Blues want us to be involved in their observational series? 

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in praise of the sausage fingered pr officer

Sometimes when things go wrong online it's best just to be honest...

I notice Wrexham Council has got online praise for holding its hands up to a mistake with humour and honesty.

They accidentally tweeted a decision from a key meeting and predictive text said that the 'Pathetic executive' had made a decision. They then apologised straight away and went on to blame their 'sausage fingers' and predictive text.

A Wrexham Council spokesman said:

“We hold our hands (and big sausage fingers) up - we fell victim to the dreaded predictive text. We noticed our error and the tweet was removed promptly.”

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