communications

Snow blower

Hadrians wall snow

So, you’ve had some snow recently? There’s been so much written about it in the last week that the only remaining headline is a reference to robot-based 1980’s comedy movie Short Circuit.

But while you were kicking through a light dusting of white powder, I hope you spared a thought for us in the most Northern English County. Redesdale in Northumberland was the snowiest place in England with 33cm in a single day. On top of that we had 12 foot snow drifts and a 3,500 mile road network to worry about. Continue reading →

I never make predictions………and I never will (looking back at 2012)

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“I never make predictions………and I never will” – One of the most famous utterances of footballer Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne which has passed into commentary legend, but actually makes more sense than we all think.

If experience teaches us anything (and it doesn’t) predicting anything is utter folly. To stay with the North East footballing analogy, last season Newcastle United were flying high in the league and ended up qualifying for Europe.

The darlings of TV and regular scorer of inspiring goals (Chelsea away) the owner rewarded the manager with an unprecedented 8 year contract. Last night they conceded seven goals and dropped to within three points of the relegation zone.

Fate and time make a mockery of all predictions so instead I thought I’d look back over the last year – only to find that makes a mockery of expectations too.

Continue reading →

Ten tips for freelancers

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A guest post this week from Anna-Clare O’Neill who is a freelance PR consultant based in North East England. You can follow Anna on twitter @AnnaClareONeill

As it’s National Freelancers Day this week (21 November 2012), I thought I’d share my freelance story with you…

It’s five years since I first fell into freelancing. That’s right. I didn’t choose to be a freelancer, it just happened. You could say it chose me.

Continue reading →

CIPR Northern conference

Thanks to everyone who came to see me speaking on the social media panel at the Northern conference in Leeds last week.

It was a larger audience than I’m used to but it seemed to go OK and people had lots of comments and questions.

Thanks also to the other speakers Jo Newbould from Asda and Alex Abbotts at Bromford who I really enjoyed listening to, as well as the excellent Helen Standing who chaired. Continue reading →

Ten thoughts on getting social

In advance of my session at the CIPR North conference in Leeds tomorrow, I thought now would be a good time to repost my top ten tips for social media.

This first appeared in corpcomms magazine. Hope it’s useful.

Ross Wigham, service manager for communications at Northumberland County Council, offers up some advice on using social media to promote local, public services.

1. Try to think customer not corporate. This sounds pretty obvious doesn’t it but for too long we were focusing on what the council wanted to tell people, rather than thinking about the conversations that we should be having. Social media for councils and the whole public sector is a real game changer when it comes to engagement and that starting point should be thinking about the stuff residents want to talk to us about. It’s meant to be a conversation, so make sure you’re listening as well as talking. From a population of 300,000 we’ve now got more than 26,000 people signed up to our networks, despite being a predominantly rural area. Continue reading →

Social speed now a vital public sector tool

One thing that has surprised me about social media is the sheer speed that it has been adopted by consumers and taken off as a vital corporate tool.

Although I’ve used it for a good few years professionally I was pretty sceptical about how much value it would add for local councils communicating directly with residents.

Thankfully I was interested enough in it as an experiment (for the wrong reasons as it turned out) to push hard for the council to use and invest in social media over a number of years. Continue reading →

I hear you

Thanks for all the votes in the poll I set about what you’d like to read about.

The results are now in and you can see them here.

So much for all my serious, hard thought, insightful writing about work and professional issues. According to this you mostly want more of my jaded, cynical musings on life and parenting.

I’ll try to dream something up so expect a new post each on the top three issues soon: life & children, comms & pr and social media.

I was pretty surprised by the results but when I looked back this  piece about having children is the most popular post on the blog by more than 100 hits.