Better #12

Kia ora friend,

I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in the fact that whatever challenge I’m facing in my work, someone else has already faced it.

What’s more, someone is bound to have come up with an excellent solution to it - all I have to do is find that solution and make it my own.

Solutions can come from anywhere. They might appear in a book, online, in a conversation, or even an email newsletter. They might come fully realised, or in dribs and drabs we must combine ourselves. What’s important is that we are open to discovering them, we recognise them when we see them, and we put them into practice.

As Rick Rubin writes in The Creative Act:

“Instead of talking through different solutions to work out which is best, take it out of the realm of the verbal. To truly weigh choices, it’s necessary to bring them into the physical world. Have them acted out, played out, or built into a model. Descriptions do not do ideas justice.”

Today we’re looking at solutions to some common problems. Not detailed, definitive solutions - but basic approaches from which you can build your own response.

They won’t fix everything, but they might just get you unstuck.

I hope you find them helpful.

Cheers,
Seamus Boyer 👋

I’m lucky enough to speak with a lot of people working in public sector comms and social media. In addition to my clients, I have regular catch-ups with people across the sector, plus I hold free sessions with councils about once a fortnight.

What’s really obvious is that everyone is facing similar challenges, some of which we’ll tackle today:

• Our audience is fed-up

• We’re drowning in requests

• It’s a struggle to come up with ideas

• I’m feeling uninspired

• We’re overwhelmed by BAU

For each challenge I’ve suggested a solution to give you something to try to see if it works for you.

Good luck.

Problem: Our audience is fed-up
Solution: Adjust your strategy to address it

There are a lot of angry, anxious people out there at the moment, and from my conversations with frontline social pros, pretty much anything they post is attracting negative comments. Our strategy needs to take into account the current political and economic climate, and that might mean adjusting our content so we’re not presenting unnecessary opportunities for negative interactions - for the wellbeing of our people as much as anything else.

This might mean cutting back on the amount of content we publish, focusing more on the most important projects and updates, and dialing back posts about smaller projects which benefit fewer people or could be seen as frivolous.

It might also mean restricting comments, and strictly enforcing our moderation guidelines. This is not about being less transparent or putting a spin on things, it’s about strategically shifting the focus of our approach to proactively deal with our current problems and challenges.

Whatever your situation, the key is to act deliberately. If your resources are low, your approach should address this. If your resilience has taken a hit, your approach should address this. If your audience is on edge, your approach should address this.

As the strategy thinker Richard Rumelt explains 👇

Problem: We’re drowning in requests
Solution: Formalise content thresholds

When it comes to our channels, everyone wants a piece of the pie. We end up fielding requests from all over our organisation, and often try and help as many people as possible (because we’re nice!). The result? A broad range of bitsy content that can appear random and confusing to our audiences.

With the demise of X/Twitter, a lot of service updates are also finding their way onto our other channels. I see low-level or geographically limited updates, outages, and works regularly being shared on Facebook - which doesn’t make any sense. Why broadcast to your 20,000 followers that the water is out for an hour on one small street?

Instead, set some thresholds. Only post that update if it affects a certain number of people, or that outage if it’s likely to last a certain length of time. Do anything to take the pressure off you and your channels so you’re not posting 10 times a day on Facebook.

Once you’ve got agreement on the thresholds, turn them into an easy-to-follow flowchart and distribute them far and wide.

Problem: It’s a struggle to come up with ideas
Solution: Steal from others

Coming up with fresh ideas is taxing at the best of times. When you’re busy, it’s a chore that goes to the bottom of the pile.

But here’s the thing - there’s absolutely nothing stopping you taking the best ideas out there and making them your own. You just have to spend the time to explore and discover examples.

Jim Jarmusch said: “Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.”

Amen!

And Jean-Luc Godard: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."

Too bloody right!

Recently, Rangitīkei District Council posted about how they’d used a prompt from my article 50 council content ideas you can steal. It got great results from minimal effort.

A couple of years ago, not long after we launched our Street Smart series at Wellington City Council, our counterparts at Christchurch City Council launched their Street Talk series. It covered a bunch of the same ideas as ours - some copied very closely but adjusted for their city. Great stuff, I say! In fact, I think more councils could still replicate it.

If you want to play spot the difference, one of the below articles is from WCC, the other from CCC… 🤔

Problem: I’m feeling uninspired
Solution: Optimise for fun

We do better work when we’re enjoying ourselves or having fun.

Research suggests when we’re enjoying our work, we’re more likely to be engaged and motivated, more productive, more creative, and more collaborative.

So if you’re feeling uninspired, don’t sit at your desk and do boring stuff by yourself.

Do something different.

Meet people.

Get out of the office.

Create content with your favourite colleagues.

Optimise for fun.

Here are a few recent examples of content that I lovingly call “unnecessarily fun” - posts that could easily have been boring and expected but instead look like they were great fun to create:

🎉 ABS using a tiny dog as statistician in an Instagram reel.

🎉 Zealandia’s recruitment TikTok for a new digital marketing advisor.

🎉 Horowhenua District Council controversially comparing residents’ Facebook comments to a Cherry Ripe (comments are great).

🎉 Hutt City Council’s relaxed and reclining photo for a youth engagement post because why not.

🎉 Rotorua Lakes Council getting creative below to advertise a social media role 👇

Problem: We’re overwhelmed by BAU
Solution: Stop and reassess

I speak with a lot of teams that are running on a hamster wheel, constantly working through a never-ending list of tasks, never getting the chance to catch their breath.

If you’re overwhelmed, slowing down can seem counterintuitive. But creating space to assess your situation is crucial for finding a way forward.

My first step when overwhelmed is to carve out some thinking time. Taking 30 minutes to assess what is going on around me can be ample for working out what’s important and what isn’t.

Remember, there is always time to stop and think. Even in the midst of a crisis or emergency, there is generally more time than you imagine. It is amazing what a 5-minute pause can do to calm a turbulent mind or team.

Everyone is different, but here’s what I do:

• I put my phone in another room and shut my laptop. No distractions.

• I take an A3 pad and write down everything going on - all the projects and issues I’m facing - before ranking them according to importance and urgency. I try to be as honest and realisitic as possible.

• Finally, I take the 2-3 items from the top of the list and work out the very first step for each. It doesn’t matter how small the step - in fact, the smaller the better. Even it’s just reading an email so that I can refresh myself where I got to with a certain project, or schedule a single meeting, that can be enough to pull away the chocks and allow the wheels to roll free.

By immediately completing that task, I’m making progress towards my goal. And progress, my friend, is the name of the game 😎

Ok, that’s it for this edition.

Hit reply on this email and let me know if you’ve found it useful. I’m still experimenting with content and formats, so any feedback is really appreciated.

And as always, please consider forwarding this email to someone you think might appreciate it.

See you in two weeks for a super exciting interview to help you get a little bit Better 👋