Blog: Communication Officer’s log – week 14

I've worked in communications and the media for a long time. When I began work as a junior reporter there was no internet, no mobile phones, and the fax machine was still new technology.

So I've had to learn a lot of new skills along the way. Which is great. I like learning, and I like to try to be as good as I can be.

The reason that's all come to mind is because I am working on a project to build a new online resource that will help Poverty Alliance members support people who have mental health problems. It's a joint project with the Mental Health Foundation. I'm building it in WordPress, with Beaver Builder extensions. I had a meeting about it with our Isla McIntosh this week, and I think it's coming together well.

I also had a meeting with Ralph and Becky about the social media needs of our Taking Action on Rural Poverty team. I produce all of our social media channels and we have seven now - Twitter / X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon, and YouTube. There is no comms team at the Poverty Alliance - it's just me - so I've tried to come up with a social media strategy that allows us to show the breadth and depth of our work, while also being manageable, given my other responsibilities. My solution - and I'd be really happy to hear thoughts about it! - is to post twice a day on each channel (YouTube excepted), using Buffer to schedule. A lot of the graphics - like this one - I create in Canva.

I try to make sure we have at least one new blog a week on our website, and to give it a decent show on our socials means two or three posts through the first week of publication, falling to maybe one or two the week after. That leaves around eight other posts through the week to reflect the rest of our work.

So how can we allow teams to use social media in a way that meets their needs, while also making sure that there's space for the work of all the teams on our channels? After the meeting I did a bit of thinking and researching, and one way forward might be to use LinkedIn showcase pages. They have the same functionality as a company page, and are linked to your existing company page, but they allow our projects (or brands if you like) to have their own space to build their own networks. We're going to try it and see how we get on. I'd be very interested to hear from any third sector orgs that are using them already.

On the subject of blogs, I'd been in touch previously with my friend Malcolm Sayers at Independent Age about  their fantastic new Wellbeing Index for Older People. We arranged for his colleague Louise Brady to write a great guest blog for us about it.

We also published this interesting blog from our Lydia about the latest Rights in Action report - setting out the work that six national organisations did alongside her to create and strengthen rights-based approaches in their work.

This week, our Research Manger Laura gave evidence to the House of Lords public services committee. They are looking into the much-overlooked Child Maintenance System. The Poverty Alliance has done a lot of research work in this area with Fife Gingerbread and others. I've arranged for an op-ed from Laura to be published in The Herald on Monday.

I like to think the Poverty Alliance is a good example of an organisation that takes the framing of communications seriously. I thought that - in the context of UK Labour claims that cuts to social security are 'moral' - this blog from Prof David Spencer had some excellent framing around 'work', and some useful evidence to use in policy contexts.

A just and moral society should value the lives of all of its citizens, whether they have or do not have a job.

I've been reading up on work that Frameworks have been doing around 'the system is rigged frames' and this week I signed up for this seminar on it being organised by NEON.