LGcommunications
2010/11 seminar programme

15th November: The New Reputation Showcase including the political landscape and public affairs

Venue: Bristol City Council and Sheffield City Council

The aim of this event is to give guidance to the future of public sector communications teams, offer ways to enhance the reputation of your authority and also how to maximise VFM and return on marketing investment in your communications campaigns.

Following on from last years successful ‘Public sector hub’s seminar in Manchester, this event will show how council, police and health services can run successful joint campaigns and share resources.

This event will also provide you with the knowledge to effectively demonstrate to your leaders how you will deploy the full range of marketing communications tools in the coming year. Such as how your Media Relations team will be used to protect the councils reputation, how internal comms will increase staff advocacy, how to demonstrate value for money and importantly how you’re going to test and measure your plans.

January 2011: Case study: Maximising the powers of social media

Venue: Nottingham City Council

Forget social media for social media’s sake, this seminar will show how you can harness the powers of twitter and facebook to keep your communities engaged and informed. It will provide you with practical demonstrations on how to get information out to your communities during the winter months in sometimes crisis situations.

17th February 2011: Branding and corporate narrative and how to monitor and evaluate your campaigns

Venue: Leeds City Council

Communications professionals need to be capable of influencing the leadership and directing corporate behaviour to relentlessly promote core values.  Moreover there should be a focus on changing corporate narratives from ones that interrupt what people are interested in and developing them into engaging conversations on subjects that interest and stimulate attention. This seminar will give guidance to help your organisation develop clear, believable narratives and values to provide a new impetus for staff engagement.

Monitoring should be focussed on the most important drivers of reputation. Those drivers include the monitoring of satisfaction with universal services, value for money perceptions, trust in the organisation, informed ratings and perceptions of leadership. This seminar will show how your council can harness a suitable mechanism to effectively monitor and evaluate your work to ultimately help you gain further support and buy-in from council leadership.

10th April 2011: Strategic communications and leadership                        

Venue: TBC

The LGcomms Commission on Core Competences laid out six competencies and qualities that chief executives identified for senior communications practitioners to develop in order to become more strategic and gain credibility with political and managerial leadership. This seminar will analyse those six qualities and offer advice on how you can implement them in your workplace.