Helpful Links: March

Recently we have been:

  • Piloting a training programme where we’ve created the content as SCORM files so it can be integrated into our clients own in-house training system. Topics include: inspiration and ideas for using social media for work, the employee social media policy, getting the basics right and a guide to their social media strategy.
  • Helping a regulator to shape a ‘blueprint’ for its corporate social media channels
  • Celebrating five years of Fair Tax Mark status
  • Delivering crisis simulations for a Spanish humanitarian organisation, a US financial services giant and a French luxury beauty brand. Zombies may have featured somewhere in amongst a busy week of scenarios…three zombies
  • Hiring for a Senior Consultant, Americas and freelance associates
  • Sharing a resource for quickly auditing your social media accounts

Our latest round up of Helpful Links follows with news and updates on crisis communications and misinformation, social media developments and some examples of good communications that our team have spotted. 

Crisis Communications and Misinformation

We’ve been taking a look through the Media Manipulation Casebook, a digital research platform from the Harvard Kennedy School linking together theory, methods, and practice for mapping media manipulation and disinformation campaigns: 

Dan Slee’s blogged on handling hostility online, and breaks the challenge down neatly into comment (fair enough), criticism (OK too, especially if taxpayers or customers pay your salary) and abuse (where to draw the line): 

Facebook are trialling a new approach to tackling climate misinformation in the UK.  In Australia they have been involved in a dispute about whether or not they should pay for news content.  They have also shared their latest update on enforcement actions against hate speech and harassment.

Twitter has begun to label personal accounts of heads of state as it expands its policy on government-affiliated accounts.

Social Media News

Sprout Social have a handy guide to image sizes for social media posts.

LinkedIn, which has seen record use over the last year has added some new options for Company pages

Rival IQ have published their latest Social Media Benchmark report

Recent moderation efforts from TikTok are summarised in this Social Media Today article. 

Clubhouse has been growing rapidly, but with some privacy concerns and still restricted to iPhones. Facebook is looking to build a similar audio-only product, and Twitter has just announced they they are opening up their Spaces to Android having previously only made it available to iOS users. 

TikTok’s trends report is a handy guide to the trending topics on the platform across 19 major markets.

Good Communications

Working with online communities is a really good way to engage with key audiences. Outgoing Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield wrote a guest post for Mumsnet recently and answered questions posed by their community. 

During the recent power outages in Texas, energy supplier Oncor, did a really good job of keeping customers up to date via their social media channels, using powerful photos and videos to demonstrate the work they were doing.  

Deborah Lee is a really engaging trusted voice, sharing her work as Chief Executive of Gloucestershire Hospitals. She amplifies the work of her team and also responds to queries. This was a really well worded tweet to acknowledge an issue with her initial tweet. 


We enjoyed listening to this podcast about saying sorry

Sprout Social’s guide to social customer service basics is a good place to start if you’re looking to bring your customer service via social media up to customers’ expectations in 2021.

This New York Times piece explores how the r/Unemployment subreddit became a self-help community, support network and troubleshooting guide for people facing unemployment in the US.

And finally, if you’re looking for an accessible guide to giving your writing a little more pop and zazzle, try Julian Shapiro’s Writing Well handbook. Here’s a great section to dip right into on tone of voice and style.

If you have any questions about any of these links or anything else digital please get in touch, we love to help