by Hel Reynolds | Mar 27, 2017 | Blog post
Communicators often confide in me that they don’t really like using Facebook (and other social media) for their organisations because people will probably post snarky things in the comments section of each post. Especially if they’re communicating potentially...
by Hel Reynolds | Nov 28, 2016 | PR, Social Media
Is it ever OK to respond to a breaking story about a mistake your organisation has made – with a joke? A BBC story about Cardiff Council I read this week, demonstrates that sometimes, using humour can be a great way to diffuse tension. Somebody at the council...
by Hel Reynolds | Oct 25, 2016 | Blog post
Do you want to cry when someone asks if they can have an app? Do you shout for mercy when a colleague tells you to make their boring story go viral? Now you can enjoy these excruciating moments, with Comms Facepalm Bingo! Gamify that pain. (If you like my scrawls, I...
by Hel Reynolds | Aug 26, 2016 | Blog post
I’ve been developing a course on social media evaluation, and one metric stands out to me as most important. I call it the ‘ex-haters story’: the number of people you’ve won-around. In this post I outline: What the ex-hater metric is; Why it’s one of the most...
by Hel Reynolds | May 31, 2016 | PR
If you write media statements, advise colleagues or clients or speak to the media regularly yourself – it can be comforting to fall back on familiar phrases and reassuring sayings. But try to make your statement sound like it wasn’t composed by...
by Hel Reynolds | May 29, 2016 | Blog post
Have you ever wandered over to your head of finance and told them how they should interpret the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill of 2014-15? No? Funny how comms people often find colleagues from other professional disciplines advise us about comms...
by Hel Reynolds | Feb 12, 2016 | Blog post
Most are not serial killers – in fact psychopaths are more likely to find their way into politics, boardrooms or media organisations than be jailed for murder.” Will Black In this post, I want to show how some of the behaviours that have become standard or...
by Hel Reynolds | Aug 7, 2015 | Blog post
A few weeks ago, I made the trip to London to do a podcasting course at the Guardian offices – this meant driving from South Wales at 5am on a Sunday morning (no public transport to get me there on time) – it was worth it. Podcasting seemed to be seen as...
by Hel Reynolds | May 21, 2015 | Blog post
This month I’ve been working with a cool organisation to recruit an outstanding social media and communications professional. It has made me think hard about which qualities are most desirable in a social media manager or communications employee of any kind....
by Hel Reynolds | May 5, 2015 | Blog post
It’s getting a bit of a cliché to describe it as a ‘social media election’ but things have changed drastically since 2010. In 2010 adults spent 14.2 hours per month on the web, but, thanks to widespread use of mobile devices, our total use of media...
by Hel Reynolds | Apr 3, 2015 | Blog post
I’ve been lucky enough to work with people doing some pretty important, serious stuff. Social work, policing, health, public finances, planning, housing, community safety: it’s all critical work. I’ve noticed that lots of people in the most serious...
by Hel Reynolds | Apr 1, 2015 | Blog post
Note from Helen: It’s such an honour to share a guest post on this blog from a communicator I have admired for years, Laura Davies. As a judge and a winner of awards, I’ve experienced how outside recognition helped individuals and teams improve their work...
by Hel Reynolds | Dec 31, 2014 | Social Media, Twitter
My top two most read blog posts this year were: number 1: a ‘how to’ flow chart, and number 2. a look at how social media can help public servants be less evil. Both are quite visual: they each include charts that make a point with more impact than lots of...
by Hel Reynolds | Dec 30, 2014 | Innovation, Productivity
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by Hel Reynolds | Dec 14, 2014 | Blog post
Facebook can be a hard place for brands. It’s a lot like a wedding: friends and family gather to have fun, catch up and talk to each other. Brands need to be careful on Facebook that they don’t come across as a salesperson or a work bore at the party. Moreover, as...
by Hel Reynolds | Dec 4, 2014 | Blog post
A great report from business advisory and accountancy firm BDO, Direct Message, has been released this week, showing results of councils reported use of social media. According to localgov.co.uk: “Two-thirds of councils are now using social media, with 77%...
by Hel Reynolds | Nov 7, 2014 | Blog post
Samaritans have suspended their Twitter monitoring app. I initially thought it was a nice idea but I was being naive and the case for rethinking it was made well online and in the media. Loads of people have written insightful things abut why the app could have been...
by Hel Reynolds | Nov 5, 2014 | Blog post, Community Management, Innovation, Social Media
Broadcasting meetings to residents live on the Internet needn’t cost the earth, as Monmouthshire County Council has demonstrated in recent weeks. The council has bypassed expensive monthly fees from livestreaming services by directly streaming meetings, from the...
by Hel Reynolds | Aug 7, 2014 | Blog post
(Or, ‘How social media helped me get my heart back’) I’m going to keep this quite short considering this is post about obedience, public sector managers, the nature of evil and social media. I’m going to argue how findings of a few psychological studies suggest the...
by Hel Reynolds | Jun 28, 2014 | Blog post
If you’re a chief exec or a leader, you’ve probably given Twitter, blogging or even Facebook a go. Maybe you love it. But are you getting the most from it? Sometimes people tell me they’re on social media, they’re starting positive conversations about their work but...
by Hel Reynolds | Jun 19, 2014 | Blog post
I promise not to harp on about this after today but I WON AN AWARD! I asked people here to vote for me in the local government official category of the Digital Leaders 100 Awards and some you lovely lovely readers must have actually done it. Thank you! It’s so...
by Hel Reynolds | May 29, 2014 | Blog post
*When I first posted this chart back in 2014, the social media environment was a very different prospect! I had no idea how popular it would be with comms pros. People have sent me tweets showing photos of it pinned on office walls, and still people regularly tell me...
by Hel Reynolds | May 26, 2014 | PR
‘Rumour Cascades’, a joint study from Stanford University and Facebook, provides some fascinating insights that can serve as advice for public bodies on halting the spread of misinformation. This was first published on the Guardian website in mid May. A...
by Hel Reynolds | May 26, 2014 | Blog post, Innovation
This is a unusual post from me that: a) asks you a favour (I want your vote!); b) ponders why talented people are so modest. a) The favour I’ve been added to the 2014 Digital Leaders 100 list! I’m very honoured. It’s open to a public vote and I would like you to...
by Hel Reynolds | May 8, 2014 | Community Management, PR, Social Media
This article was first published in the Guardian, you can read the original on their website here. We are in an era where we get our news and entertainment in increasingly brief chunks and on smaller, mobile screens. Councils, like other organisations, are in the...
by Hel Reynolds | Apr 3, 2014 | Blog post, Social Media, Twitter
Here’s an article I wrote for the IC Space, sharing three social media tips for internal communicator. You can read the original posting over on the Government Communications Service website. The IC Space is a fantastic place for internal communication...
by Hel Reynolds | Mar 16, 2014 | Blog post, Facebook
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by Hel Reynolds | Mar 15, 2014 | Blog post, Social Media, Twitter
As a bit of a public sector social media obsessive, I’ve picked up lots of examples of police use of social media from twitter and the news. Police forces have done some fascinating work using social media that all PR and social media people can learn from. So...
by Hel Reynolds | Nov 30, 2013 | Innovation, PR, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube
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by Hel Reynolds | Aug 16, 2013 | Innovation, Productivity
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by Hel Reynolds | Aug 7, 2013 | PR, Productivity, Social Media
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by Hel Reynolds | Jul 5, 2013 | Innovation, Social Media
[Photo by Pete Prodoehl] I learned the other day that Homebase don’t refer to their employees as ‘staff members’ or ‘colleagues’. They call them experts. I love this: it shows that they’ve hired people to be good at their roles – it boldly acknowledges the skills and...
by Hel Reynolds | Jun 30, 2013 | Community Management, Social Media
I noticed on Twitter last week that in Granada* the police officers have the force Twitter handle sewn into their uniforms and it’s also on police cars. Police in Granada have Twitter handles on their uniform pic.twitter.com/xwH2AX8sp4 via @gordonmacmillan...
by Hel Reynolds | Jun 14, 2013 | Innovation
This post will look at five ways Google Glass (and the inevitable other brands’ wearable devices) may change our understanding of how to protect vulnerable people, look after youngsters and improve life for older people. Google Glass, if you don’t know, is a wearable...
by Hel Reynolds | May 29, 2013 | Innovation, Productivity, Social Media
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by Hel Reynolds | May 3, 2013 | Twitter
The brilliant Comms2point0 guys let me post on their site earlier this week about messing up on Twitter. I’ve republished here but if you get a minute take a look at the amazing resource they have on their website for communications people. Of all experiences we...
by Hel Reynolds | Mar 28, 2013 | Linkedin
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by Hel Reynolds | Mar 26, 2013 | Community Management, Innovation, Social Media
Digital agency Coup Media asked to interview me this month for their blog – they’re doing very cool things so I was honoured to chat about how I work with digital communications. They’ve let me re-post it here – in this chat I talk a bit about...
by Hel Reynolds | Jan 31, 2013 | Community Management, Facebook, Twitter
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by Hel Reynolds | Jan 17, 2013 | Innovation, Social Media, YouTube
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by Hel Reynolds | Dec 30, 2012 | Social Media
I just came across a great piece in the Guardian from an anonymous council officer who talks about how overly cautious social media policies do more harm than good for local government. Here are extracts but it’s worth reading it in full over at the Guardian...
by Hel Reynolds | Dec 3, 2012 | Blogging, PR, Social Media, Twitter
Last week when the awesome Nick Atkin of Halton Housing and I talked to some clued-up housing sector professionals* we looked at social media in 2012 and what’s in store for next year. Here are just some of the social media stories from 2012 we looked at and...
by Hel Reynolds | Nov 23, 2012 | Social Media
ParticipationCymru do great work to achieve better public engagement in Wales and I was fascinated to read the latest results on how public sector organisations here are using social media. There were an impressive 576 respondents of which 50% were from local...
by Hel Reynolds | Nov 21, 2012 | Blogging, Community Management, Social Media
Blogging can sometimes be a bit of a daunting task. Sometimes it’s helpful to think of some the things good bloggers do so our posts are read a bit more or just to inspire us to write when we’re out of ideas. This blog post is based on a presentation I gave last night...
by Hel Reynolds | Oct 24, 2012 | Community Management, Social Media
I work in digital communications. In the public sector. If there’s one obsession both disciplines share, it’s the quest for ‘engagement’. It’s often said about digital engagement that ‘we’ (organisations) need to go where people go. What that actually means to me...
by Hel Reynolds | Sep 25, 2012 | Blogging, Community Management, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube
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by Hel Reynolds | Sep 6, 2012 | Community Management, Facebook, Social Media
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by Hel Reynolds | Jul 27, 2012 | Community Management, Social Media
I’m just going to come straight out with it: I’m pretty interested in online influence scoring tools like Klout and Peerindex. I think they might be useful to organisations and particularly the public sector in years to come. I understand and agree with lots of the...
by Hel Reynolds | May 18, 2012 | Blogging, PR
This month I was honoured to be interviewed for a new book on blogging available now on Kindle. Author of ‘Your Blog Voice’ the fabulous Philippa Davies asked me questions about my blogging for inclusion in the book and she’s kindly allowed me to...
by Hel Reynolds | Apr 15, 2012 | Community Management, Innovation, Social Media
On the whole, UK councils are doing a nice job of using social media – possibly we caught on early because we’re used to making the most of tools that don’t cost much. ‘Fair play ‘ as we say here in Wales, we’re doing getting...
