This week I will be speaking about procurement communication at the LUPC & SUPC Conference 2018. I do a lot of work with procurement teams, helping them find ways to engage their internal audiences with the need for compliant action. The teams are lovely, hard-working experts in their field who are striving to do their … Read more
…. are you making an ‘ass’ out of ‘you’ and ‘me’? Or at least out of someone you know? Apologies for starting with such directness, but sometimes we need to ask the tough questions. Of course, what I’m really asking is are you making assumptions about people around you and what they mean by the … Read more
In this month’s guest post, we learn from digital marketer Emily Weston about how to use SEO to communicate more effectively about your organisation. How to optimise your website for Google when you know nothing about SEO Search engine optimisation (SEO) is not as complicated as big digital marketing agencies like you to believe. It’s … Read more
I spend my working life helping my charity and education clients to improve their communications, solving their problems by motivating their audiences to take actions. To celebrate the end of another year where effective communication has again proved a powerful tool for many, I asked some lovely people I know to tell me which communications … Read more
I love writing and during the summer holidays I get to spend more time than usual writing in my journal. Last summer I published this blog piece about writing as a core skill for communicators…. Over the last few years I have attended a number of careers events to talk about my profession and raise … Read more
I’ve recently done some work with a small education charity to help them improve their termly schools newsletter. It was a classic situation of something they knew wasn’t working as well as it could, but as a small and operationally busy team they simply didn’t have the time to step back and look at how … Read more
Until I started working for myself, nearly 7 years ago, I had no idea how many membership organisations there are. I was aware of professional membership bodies, such as the Institute of Internal Communication and CiPD, but not of the multitude of others. Since then I have come across many more, including CharityComms (one of … Read more
Happy New Year! As a general rule, I don’t tend to make new year’s resolutions. Like a lot of targets, they seem to me to often be setting yourself up to fail. They’re usually full of things I think I should be stopping or doing more of and not the things that I really want … Read more
We’ve all heard the old cliché “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. Personally I’ve always found it a bit smug, but like most clichés, there is a truth at the heart of it. Regular readers of this blog will know that it has become my mission in life to inspire organisations to be more … Read more
This afternoon I am talking to the local Women’s Institute (WI) group about ABC to read, the literacy charity of which I am a trustee. It’s a chance to spread the word about the work we do to change children’s lives by supporting them to develop their literacy skills. As with many small organisations, we … Read more