Agendas, Meetings and Minutes - Agenda item

Agenda item

Overview of Council Communication

Minutes:

The Panel had requested an overview of the Council’s Content and Communication function. The Cabinet Member for Corporate Services and Communication gave a brief introduction to the report following which the Head of Communications and Engagement (HCE) provided an overview of the key issues. Some of the points highlighted were as follows:

 

·         The growing importance of social media, but also that traditional media remained a key communication channel too.

·         The Team had become more effective at communicating with residents during the pandemic, for instance with the issuing of public health messages.

·         There was more emphasis on hyper local targeting of publicity with a better understanding of different audiences.

·         Work was underway to develop better ways for Councillors to share messages in their local area.

 

Members questions created a number of areas of discussion, and the following points were noted.

 

·         In terms of drilling down into figures on ‘followers’ to gain a better understanding of the profile of the followers, the HCE advised that whilst there was a general understanding of the profile of followers, it was not possible to delve deeper to obtain detailed information on each platform. Engagement was the key aim, as well as numbers of followers, the Team were keen to see how often a message was viewed and how people interacted, for instance the number of likes and shares. More people were encouraged to ‘follow’ by creating 2-way conversations and by overlaying channels.

·         The Cabinet Member referred to the need for Councillors to take on a promotional sales role for the Council and advised that he was working with the HCE to develop a short paper on media issues to assist  Councillors to develop in this role.

·         The Chairman commented that it would be useful for the quarterly monitoring if the social media profiles could include age and gender profile by platform, to enable the Panel to drill down into the data. Also, for the  ‘traffic across social media channels’ to include a more detailed breakdown, eg number of hits.

·         On the issue of boosting social media, the HCE advised that ‘boost it’ posts were used on a regular basis on Facebook, with very positive outcomes.

·         A Member suggested that people might be less likely to respond to a social media post with a positive comment and queried how the success of the various initiatives could be measured. The HCE explained that social media posting was only one aspect of engagement, with others including website interactions and face to face drop-in centres.  Following a press release, many connections were received upon which sentiment analysis could be carried out. 

·         The HCE confirmed that actions could be tracked after messages had been shared. Members reported that the messages that they received were sometimes lengthy and in a format that was difficult to share. The HCE confirmed that future messages forwarded to Members would be sent in an easy to share format, which Members could automatically share with ease.  The possibility of sharing messages with Officers and partners was also raised.

·         In response to a question about whether the Communications Team was sufficiently resourced to handle ‘One Worcestershire’ and ‘Visit Worcestershire’, the HCE advised that three key vacancies were currently being recruited to covering the above two aspects and a specialist social media role. The ADHR explained that there was a careful focus on ensuring that resources were in the right areas to ensure that there were clear career pathways in the Unit.

·         A Member asked whether there could be a training session for Members on media issues. The Cabinet Member advised that one had taken place just after the election. The HCE would re-run the session at an appropriate stage.

 

The Chairman thanked the HCE for the presentation and it was agreed that Communications would be included on the Panel’s work programme to ensure that the Panel were able to focus attention on this key area at appropriate times.

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