A partnership programme of government departments required a new focus on digital and social media to communicate its activities at local level. As part of one of the supporting agencies, my task has been to advise and lead on the development of its interim digital marketing and communications on behalf of my organisation. We commissioned, prototyped and created a neutral brand. This allowed government departments and agencies to raise brand awareness and increase signups in advance of its incorporation into NHS England. It’s a specialist service, the Liaison and Diversion Programme. The interim brand, website, mobile website and Twitter account were developed in consultation with the programme committee and signed off within a month: a quick turnaround, given the number of stakeholders. It will in due course be complemented by a LinkedIn presence to capture more of its intended audience of practitioners.

Engaging video and audio, and a multimedia approach to content, is essential to a digital content strategy. I commission and direct digital content, ensuring it’s suitable for the intended audience. Usually, videos are more appropriate when they’re short and to the point and this is part of my planning for a recent series of videos in which people relate their experiences of different aspects of work.

Recovery Near You is an ambitious new concept that aims to tackle an endemic social problem by involving an entire city as part of the proposed solution. The problem is substance misuse and the difficulty lies in tackling it effectively in communities that are struggling to deal with multiple interrelated social issues.

A new programme has been adopted in Wolverhampton which sets out to give businesses and educational establishments a stake in improving their community by helping people who are moving on after recovering from drug and alcohol addictions. In partnership with local and national organisations, it offers placements, work and training, while offering their staff a chance to volunteer at the services. The programme is a partnership of organisations, replacing all existing services and covering the entire city. I commissioned and implemented the digital communications and the digital brand. Following a consultation process with local people, services and organisations, a “responsive” website was created as the focus of digital communications. It presents the service to commissioners, employers and people, particularly referrers, wanting to access the service. This is done by means of a website with a mobile and tablet version.

The content strategy is focused on video and personal experience where possible. The videos vary in length, depending on their relevance to the subject, and consist of case studies and testimonials. YouTube is its main social media platform. There is also a separate young people’s brand, Wolverhampton 360. This section of the website sets out to tackle the issues vital to young people seeking help: confidentiality and easy access to trustworthy information. 

I am working with department in Nacro to improve the quality of their targeted audience communications, which is intended to make an ongoing improvement to its existing CRM. Newsletters are a well-established mechanism to reach audiences but they are only really effective in their own right if they contain unique, consistently high quality content.

Therefore, I recommended that an editorial board should be established within each department. This will provide that content, in conjunction with a communications lead who can help them to target their messages and ensure the audiences’ external viewpoint is incorporated.

Early issues of the newsletter pictured have twice the average e-newsletter “open rates”. This is mainly due to effective maintenance and targeting of contacts by a regional network of administrators that I established as part of the planning process – and this will continue to be a vital task.

The newsletter is developed in a mass email marketing system, to a corporate template, in which its reach and effectiveness can be analysed instantaneously. Each link in the newsletter is a call to action to the website so it is developed alongside a reorganisation of the web structure to accommodate this regular, new content.

From the outset of any new digital media development, SEO should be built into the content plan. I redeveloped the Nacro website from scratch, and subsequently many other new websites, mobile versions and social media. The planning for each one included some element of qualitative and quantitative research with end users or stakeholders to enable us to build effective SEO phrases, terms and structures to be included in the websites and their content plans.

I see the job of the web manager or team as managing and creating unique and relevant content that will enable each website and its social media to retain and improve its ranking.

SEO capability is a key element in the specification of a new website from a technical development perspective, and this is part of the reason why I commission very user-friendly content management platforms such as WordPress and Drupal, which have great SEO capabilities. It also enables accessibility, which means that a wide audience has a greater potential to discover content across a wider variety of formats and digital platforms.

Successful, engaging policy-focused social media must incorporate input from a knowledgeable policy specialist or two to give the channel depth and authority. A communications manager will usually manage the channel to ensure that there is a balance between policy information and dialogue, and corporate messaging. This helps to ensure consistency, interaction and organisational ‘tone of voice’.

Here’s one that is run directly by a policy person: @baotcot

But most are run by social media managers. Working on social media for the King’s Fund, a health policy think tank and Independent Age, an older people’s charity, has given me a foundation for more recent social media policy work for Nacro. One example has been the Nacro programme Beyond Youth Custody, which has recently been set up to develop best practice and discussion on the resettlement of young people, primarily by means of a blog and a Twitter account.

With little resource, I do the general management and divide the work between an ad hoc team spanning media and policy. This enables me to cover effectively the main issues of media awareness, engagement, sharing, horizon scanning, event blogging, policy debate and activity updates.

I commissioned a website, mobile site and social media for a partnership programme, Beyond Youth Custody. The programme was set up to develop best practice in the resettlement of young people leaving custody – an issue with a knowledgeable specialist audience. The digital platform is designed primarily to attract and retain policymakers and researchers.

They can sign up for more information, download the latest research findings, browse its stats, share its infographics and browse its case studies. Its social media presence, aside from its main account on Twitter, will include a forum for people with policy interests, moderated by the programme team. The intention is to share best practice and pilot various models of resettlement.

Events signup is embedded in the website. The platform is WordPress, which was chosen for its simple admin interface and active developer community, ensuring that the site will remain technically robust.

Its responsive design works in a tablet and mobile format and was created with the intention of meeting the needs of the ever-expanding mobile audience. Within the five-year lifespan of the programme, these devices could become the primary method by which users browse, although ultimately it may not be the way they do more complex tasks such as signing up to events or commenting in the forum. In launch week, 16% of visitors accessed the site from mobile devices.

I commissioned the digital element of the branding work, working closely with a developer on the technical implementation.

Mobile usage of the Nacro website doubled between 2012 and 2013, mirroring overall mobile device use which is increasing exponentially. Mobile formats are an essential factor in my digital strategy. All new developments must be optimised in whatever way is appropriate for mobile users as well as website users, depending on the audience.

Some examples: A mobile-compatible format has been developed for Beyond Youth Custody, a website targeting policymakers, and Recovery Near You, a website aimed at commissioners and referrers. They utilises the principles of responsive design to ensure that the page layouts adapts to tablet and phone formats and the components of the mobile versions are suitable for audiences on the move.

I was part of an in-house team that worked on a rebrand of Nacro and I was responsible for the rollout across its websites. As a first step, the original Nacro logo (shown here with blue background) was redesigned to make it suitable for use onscreen and compatible with online formats. A new logo was not required, for brand positioning reasons.

The new brand as a whole imparts a very different look and feel and the brief was to make the concept work online.

This was all completed on a small budget, with all the brand and design work done in-house, and by me working closely with all our web development partners to implement re-skins of the various Nacro websites.

Alongside the brand work, I undertook a review of the main Nacro website, revising the information architecture, content and user interface, in line with a revised audience focus and requirements. The changes resulted in a slimmed-down and simplified user experience.

With the new structure agreed, the objective was to get Nacro’s related sites to all look and work as similarly as possible to the main site within the context of their use, no small technical task as they are all set up very differently.

Nacro’s main website
Nacro’s recruitment website