social media

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 →

Pinteresting…

Pinterest is probably one of the most talked about websites around, gathering huge numbers in the past few months.

It has quickly become a behemoth of the web.

In Northumberland we’ve been experimenting with it for a little while now and have seen some promising early results.

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.

Tourism gets social

A guest post this week from @angela_tait, who works in our tourist information centres, but has really embraced social media to help promote what’s on offer. She writes:

Joining the County Councils Tourism Team back in October 2011 I was charged with managing the Tourist Information Centres and developing visitor information.

Immediately I was impressed by the staff I was going to manage, their immense knowledge of the county and their passion for attracting new faces to Northumberland. It’s not just about providing visitor information though, we also support more than 250 local producers, showcasing the finest locally made products from art, photography, jewellery, food, crafts and much more which made me question from day one – how do we tell people about this?

Continue reading →

Our people, our places

Before the start of this summer season we struck a deal with our biggest tourist attractions to do something to help promote Northumberland as a destination and give something back to local people.

We wanted to create a weekend of free or discounted events that would let our residents access some of the best attractions on their doorsteps and celebrate the fantastic county they live in.

Continue reading →

Book review: Brand Anarchy by Steve Earl and Stephen Waddington

“There is a simple reason why you should not waste your time wondering whether you have lost control of your brand’s reputation. You have never had control of your brand’s reputation.”

This is the shocking and probably (for some) frightening premise of the whole book and the powerful opening line is an indication of what’s to come for the next 240 pages.

In essence the book is a potent look at industrial-scale change in the media and how we can understand and cope with it as a profession. Continue reading →

No hiding place

Continuing with the Likely Lads theme from my earlier post one of the most famous episodes is a great example of how much technology has changed our lives in a single generation.

No hiding place was filmed roundabout  the year I was born (1976) and the lads set out to avoid finding out the score of an England game, so they can watch the TV highlights later that night.

Part of the joke is that this should be a relatively easy task to achieve because England are playing in far away Bulgaria and in the 1970s they didn’t have Sky Sports, iPhones or rolling news.

Continue reading →