A bear, a pie chart and deleting TikTok
Helen Reynolds
Unboring comms training that taps into your creativity, grows your confidence and helps you make a powerful impact
Hello!?Hel Reynolds?here, after being knocked out by an?evil virus,?this month and after an unplanned but well needed rest, I’m back to fight another day.
Let the BYN begin!
Contents
Comms Creatives content of the week
This week’s content comes from the National Park Service in the US.
This tweet shows a cute bear appearing at a window after coming out of hibernation, and it quite rightly got?millions of views and lots of likes.
I actually feel like this right now, sliding?into your?inbox after a few weeks in bed.?
It’s a very sweet and relatable break from the doom scrolling and toxic posts that can be rife on Twitter.
We can learn a lot from a post like this, even if we don’t have cute bears to post on our social media.
The standard way to do something like this, would be to share?a professionally taken wildlife photo, and ask?readers to click the link to find out more about bears.?
Instead,?they’ve hooked us with a cute,?fun and relatable post first.
We are intrigued by the bear looking through the window and we learn that the bears have come out of hibernation in a much, more powerful way than simply being told to read an article about it.
As a result, they’ve got way more engagement (and a way bigger audience).
As a National Park Service, they know it’s 'social media' and not 'dry information?media!'
Think first of your audience,?then?what you want to tell them
Think about how to make the information you want to share relatable to your audience.?
And remember, telling a story is always more attention-grabbing than just sharing information.
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领英推荐
TikTok ban – what does it mean?
The news that the?UK government has banned TikTok from corporate phones?for security and privacy reasons will come as a blow to many forward thinking social media managers who’d already spotted the potential for the platform to engage new audiences in a big way.
But if you work for a public sector organisation, or have concerns as a comms pro in any industry, the news needn’t put the brakes on your portrait video plans.
Ultimately, you need to weigh up the pros of being on the platform versus the pitfalls.
So what’s the risk?
Like most social media applications- especially Meta owned Facebook and Instagram- TikTok collects lots of data from its users.
The difference between TikTok and the rest is that it’s Chinese owned and, like other Chinese companies, the Chinese government could in theory access this data- something which TikTok itself denies.
Do I have to delete the app?
Currently the ban only applies to government departments and it only applies to work phones, though other public sector organisations are reviewing their position and the?BBC has taken a similar step?in asking staff to remove the app.
It’s worth pointing out here though that organisations are only restricting access on corporate devices.
National government departments, councils, emergency services, health trusts, the BBC and other public organisations still have TikTok accounts and still intend to use it to reach their audiences – especially the millions of people aged under 34 who are increasingly hard to reach using other digital platforms.
I don’t want to use my personal phone for work – is there another way?
If your organisation is asking you to stop using TikTok on work devices, your best bet is to carry on using the app but doing so from your personal phone.
We understand not everyone is prepared to use their own devices for work purposes. If this is you, you could ask your organisation to provide a standalone device solely for social media purposes which still has access to the apps you need – including TikTok- but isn’t hooked up to your network, thereby reducing the risk of important information or contacts being accessed by the app.
Is it all just a big conspiracy?
Unless you’re an expert in geopolitics, it’s probably beyond any of our pay grades to second guess the big picture reasons behind the ban. But suffice to say growing concern in the US and Europe about China’s influence on world affairs is heavily tied up in the decision.
We’ve also seen suggestions that TikTok’s phenomenal growth has given US-owned digital giants like Meta and Google the heebie-jeebies, with heavy lobbying by Meta behind Washington’s own government phones ban.
We’ll let you make up your own minds on that one.
You offer TikTok training- no wonder you want us on the platform!
True: we do?offer training in TikTok, but we deliver it to a broad range of clients many of whom aren’t public sector.
Many brands will ultimately continue to use TikTok because they understand its enormous potential for reaching huge numbers of people for free.
TikTok has become the fastest growing app on the planet and on a purely practical level, right now it’s hard to see how any social media manager can legitimately ignore it completely.
Ok, so just tell me – should I be on there or not?
Our answer here is the same as?what we wrote about Twitter in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover: think about your brand’s strategy.
Social media channels come and go and it’s impossible to know what will happen in the future, so think- who do you want to talk to, what do you want to say and how you build trust and community.
If you have clear answers to those questions, that should help to steer you in the right direction.
Comms Cartoons
No tips here, just solidarity.
We all get bogged down in the stuff that should take a few minutes, but actually take all bloody day.
May as well chuckle about those working days where everything is pure chaos!
Cool comms and social media jobs
Each week, Caroline and I scout about for great jobs and share a selection of them on Linkedin.?Here's?a list of potential fresh beginnings:
Got a lovely job you'd like us to consider for inclusion in the weekly roundup??
Drop Caroline a message?on Linkedin.
Have a lovely week!
Hel
Catch up on the Thrive webinar
Creating killer PRODUCTIVITY ?so you can get the important stuff done. I will ask you about your productivity strategies
2 年This is a cracking summary of how to think about Tik Tok.