Belfast
City Council
Report to: Strategic Policy and Resources Committee
Subject: Communications Update
Date: 11th December, 2009
Reporting Officer: Eamon Deeny, Head of Corporate Communications, ext 6285
Contact Officer: As above
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Relevant Background Information |
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Significant progress has been made in
developing an efficient and effective communications service for Belfast City
Council with a view to improving the image and reputation of the
organisation. New communications channels, such as the website, Facebook and
Twitter are successfully being used to reach ratepayers alongside the
continued development and improvement of existing and traditional channels
such as the media, City Matters and publications. All of this has been
achieved while at the same realising significant savings for the council.
This report sets out to outline details of progress to members. |
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Key Issues |
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Awards
and recognition July
2009: UK Good Communications Awards (the main
communications awards for the public sector in the UK) – Belfast City Council
Corporate Communications was one of just four local authorities across the UK
to be shortlisted for PR Team of the year and was a commended runner up. December
2009: CIPR Awards (the PR industry’s main awards
of the year for both in-house and consultancy PR) – Belfast City Council was
described as the most prolific winner on the night, picking up awards in a
range of categories. The awards were the result of excellent team work across
departments.: Gold Award – Best Newsletter – the A-Z of
Council Services Gold Award – Best Leaflets – Information on
Flooding Gold Award – Best Website – The Zoo Gold Award – Best Integrated Communication –
Waste Management Silver Award – Best Newspaper/magazine – City
Matters Silver Award – Best Event – the MAD Awards. October
2009 – Belfast City Council was held up at a Social
Networking Conference in the Odyssey in Belfast, attended by 400 people, as the
best example of how organisations should use Facebook and Twitter to engage
with customers. Efficiencies The Council has
developed a corporate approach to effective communications, by the internal
transfer of resources, delivering the 2005 recommendations while also
achieving significant savings. With
the support and co-operation of departments, total efficiencies in the area
of communications will have amounted to over £1.265 million in the three year
period ending 2009/10. See table below:
Website
The number
of unique visits to the council website has increased almost threefold in the
past three years, from around 675,000 in 2006 to almost 2 million in 2009.
The progress has continued this year with 135,130 visitors in April compared
to almost 160,000 in September. Hits on the website peaked in
August with 216,000 unique visitors as a result of the Tall Ships visit
ensuring that Belfast City Council website was one of the top four sites for
traffic among all public sector sites in the UK. City
Matters City Matters continues to be our most successful
communications tool. We continue to get up to 1,000 responses from the
publication’s readers including comments, feedback and requests for
information, with the vast majority of these being extremely positive about
the publication and about Belfast City Council. The cost per edition is £38.5k. It is partly paid
through advertising income which averages £20k per edition. City Matters is
delivered six times a year but one edition will be removed from next year’s
budget for efficiency reasons. A-Z of council services Our
A-Z directory highlighting all the services the council provides began
distribution on 7 December and will be delivered to all ratepayers. The
income generated through advertising for this publication was £27k out of the
total cost of £40.5k. Graphic
design Out of
the 207 design jobs carried out over the past six months, over half of these
were completed by our in-house designer. These include: ·
City Matters ·
Intercom ·
The City Hall reopening campaign ·
Garden Gourmet campaign ·
Tall Ships publications. A
second designer on a fixed contract is starting in December 2009. This means
that we will significantly reduce our spend on graphic design – over £120k
was spent on using external companies in 2008-09 – as we will be able to do
even more design work in-house. New
media Corporate Communications will bring forward a
digital strategy for the council early in the New Year and will also develop
policies and procedures around the use of new communications technologies,
such as email marketing and social networking, to ensure a corporate value
for money approach is adopted across the council. ·
Email marketing A procurement document has been sent out
for an email marketing solution to ensure a corporate approach. This will
provide efficiency savings by cutting down on things such as print and
postage. It will also be a more targeted and measurable way of communicating. ·
Social networking The use of this new channel of
communication is proving to be extremely successful. For example over 8,000
people said they would be visiting the continental market at Christmas
through our Facebook site .We have successfully promoted events, such as
Stitch and Style for Waste Week, as well as our Lord Mayor’s blog on both
Twitter and Facebook. Belfast City Council now has 972 followers on Twitter
and 415 followers on Facebook. Branding Corporate Communications is working closely with
BCVB on the development and roll out of the ‘B’ brand and developing council
guidelines around its use. Media
Relations Media enquiries – Increasing media
demands, with 24 hour news bulletins and more weekly newspapers, meant that
there has been a 10 per cent increase in media queries during the past six
months, 1626 enquiries were dealt with – an average of just under 300 per
month. Response times - An improvement in
response times indicates 71% are dealt with in less than one hour, and 11% in
1 to 4 hours. Analysis
of enquiries - During the period, analysis of figures
for regional broadcast media show that BBC NI made most demands on staff time
with 61% of enquiries and UTV 12% of enquiries Media coverage - over 80% of newspaper
stories are now positive Positive media coverage that has been
achieved for BCC has included the Tall Ships, the Belfast 2009 campaign
highlighting the reopening of landmark buildings, such as the City Hall and
Ulster Hall, alongside new developments, Safer Belfast, anti-litter and waste
management campaigns, the continental market, health and leisure initiatives,
economic development and older people. Journalists recently surveyed as an part
of an evaluation of the implementation of the 2005 review of communications said
that the Belfast City Council media operation is among the best, if not the
best, in Northern Ireland. The services we provide the media include:
Advertising Following
implementation of many of the recommendations from the Verve 2007 report on
advertising the following advertising savings have been made this year to
date: ·
Recruitment advertising - £100,200 ·
Placement of advertising - £6,500 (by booking adverts display not
classified) ·
City Hall opening campaign - £17k of media delivered for £10k, 41%
discount ·
Boost January (planned) activity – £40k of media delivered for
£19,182, 52% discount ·
Added value delivered such as FOC print for bus stop 6 sheet activity
and FOC outdoor sites Significant
volume advertising discounts have also been negotiated with main media
suppliers ensuring that the council gets value for money when placing its advertising.
We have also generated advertising revenue to help cover the cost of City
Matters and the A-Z directory as outlined above. An
audit report on the council’s approach to advertising is currently being
completed. Once it is finalised, Corporate Communication will begin to
develop an advertising strategy, including defined policies and procedures.
Its aim will be to further improve effectiveness and achieve further
significant savings and will be brought to the committee for approval early
in the New Year. Internal Communications Interlink – employee intranet - News
stories of interest to staff including council decisions and policies are
uploaded with many new sections added regularly with information on staff
offers, the staff restaurant, ISB
customer zone, Waste treatment facilities and performance. The success of the
site is underlined by the fact that more than 1,600 distinct staff visit the
site on a monthly basis with over 7,000 hits per day, making it an effective
communications tool. Getting People Connected - A pilot, called Getting People Connected, is to run at six sites
(depots, leisure and community centres) during December 2009 to get
information to staff who don’t have PCs. TV screens will be installed in
staff canteens to display stories from interlink's homepage. Intercom – During
the past six months three editions have been produced. Among the stories
features has been the 2009 MAD Awards and a pull out on the reopening of City
Hall, the Tall Ships event and stories on performance and business issues
such as absence and local government review updates. A reader satisfaction
survey in July showed over 96 per cent of respondents rated the publication
as good or very good. Team brief - The
team brief has been reviewed with the brief now issued to all departments
every second month. Over 150 team briefers have been on refresher training
and the new evaluation system has been running for six months. Face to face - one council briefings – Regular staff briefings take palce at City Hall informing staff of
important issues, such as RPA and the many challenges facing our organisation.
Future plans – Initiatives under
consideration include the use of video to get across messages to staff,
further development of Interlink as a two-way communications device with
staff. A high priority will be given to exploring
with Members how they want to receive information and be kept informed about
operational work and activity and initiatives aligned to our corporate
themes. |
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Resource Implications |
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None |
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Recommendations |
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Members are asked to note: ·
The recent awards successes
achieved by Belfast City Council for its communications activity, which
enhances the image and reputation of the council and the city as a whole; ·
The efficiencies and
improvements achieved as a result of professionalising the
communications service · The efforts to embrace new communications channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, as a way of improving services and engagement with ratepayers. |
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Documents Attached |
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Appendix 1 -
Twitter details and examples Appendix 2 – Facebook details and examples Appendiz 3 – You Tube Appendiz 4 - Flickr |
Appendix 1
Twitter
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging
service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets.
Tweets
are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's
profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers.
Followers
We
currently have 925 followers (16
November 2009). Our followers include ratepayers, businesses, councillors,
other councils and government agencies, as well as members of the press.
What do we use Twitter for?
We
use Twitter to post information about council projects, events, news, jobs and
tenders. We also use it during emergencies such as flooding. It is a quick and easy way to communicate key
messages.
Within
our messages, we always include a web link back to the council website so users
can get further information.
Our
followers can also communicate with us via our Twitter page, sending us queries
or questions about council events and services.
Other features
·
Search facility - this allows us to
monitor what people are saying on Twitter about the council and council
projects or events.
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Re-tweet facility - Twitter enables people
to ‘re-tweet’ our tweet to their followers so our message is spread virally to
people.
·
‘Follow’ facility – we can follow other users and
organisations, particularly partners, tp promote a joined approach
