by Jo Twamley
Communications & Engagement Manager at Medical Council Ireland
Through effective communications, organisations have the power to prove to stakeholders the value they bring to society – whether to enhance reputation, encourage belief in their business, or sell their services.
Fundamentally, providing and delivering a service to the public necessitates clear, approachable, and honest communication. Public sector communications professionals do not typically have large budgets at their disposal. Fortunately, many public bodies do have excellent data, research and publications generated in-house. The opportunity for communication and engagement with stakeholders is far-reaching – but you must be strategic, savvy, and willing to work to longer timelines.
From a public sector communications perspective, here are our thoughts on the opportunities and challenges facing the communications industry in 2024:
1. Collaboration is key:
Leveraging existing expertise within your organisation will be essential to developing a hard-working PR strategy in 2024. The savvy communicator knows the importance of collaboration with teams and sections across the company. They seek out data to produce good news stories, achievements, and milestones – many of which will be readily available or consistently generated within the organisation.
Consider how such data could be harnessed and better utilised for campaigns. Working in collaboration with other teams can lead to communications opportunities for an organisation and help to alleviate a siloed approach to how data is currently being used, if at all.
Many businesses struggle with thought leadership, because to be a thought leader is to identify and articulate genuinely new ideas. Does your organisation have an expert in a left-field topic? A senior staff member with an interesting vocation or role? People relate best to other people, so seize the opportunity to advise, support, and collaborate with your internal stakeholders in 2024.
Following an organisation-wide transformation during 2022 – 2023, in 2024, we’re looking forward to collaborating with colleagues old and new alike to harness the knowledge of the many talented individuals at the Medical Council.
2. Communicate responsibly:
Comms professionals play an important role in providing strategic advice to their colleagues. Horizon scanning and staying informed is an essential part of such advice. On a related note, misinformation, particularly on social media, continues to be prevalent in society. In Ireland, unfortunately hostility and discrimination are rising towards immigrants and those seeking asylum – not only from far-right groups, but from entire communities. Misinformation and destructive online commentary often have devastating results.
It is our responsibility as communicators to remain objective, seek to report the truth, and actively call out misinformation and harmful false narratives. This is one area that comms professionals will find challenging. We’ve seen it with COVID vaccines, we’ve seen it with face masks. Communications professionals must lead in ensuring messaging is factual and responsible and play a key role as advisers to an organisation’s leadership on how to combat misinformation.
3. Short-form Digital Content:
With an ever-increasing array of digital media platforms, capturing public attention is becoming more difficult every day. It has always been important to create informative and engaging content, but the key is to experiment with multiple creative formats, testing and learning to see what works for your organisation or brand in capturing and maintaining user attention and engagement on digital platforms. Short-form video content is becoming increasingly important for the Medical Council as we move into 2024. It’s easy to watch while out and about, visually appealing so it holds user attention, and it tends to have better engagement rates than long-form or static content.
4. The Growing Importance of Data Privacy:
Moving into 2024, concerns about data privacy are only continuing to grow. There’s a need for organisations to be more transparent about how we use and collect customer data going forward. For us, this means continuously reviewing and updating our Data Protection and Cookie Policy, focusing on gaining consent from users before collecting their data, giving them more control in customising their data preferences and how their data is used and anonymizing data wherever possible to protect user privacy.
5. AI-Driven Conversational Communication:
The impact of Artificial intelligence (AI) will become even more prevalent on the digital comms landscape in 2024. It will continue to be used to automate tasks where possible, personalise experiences and improve customer support. One area where we hope to leverage the value of AI in 2024 is improving our relationship with the public by utilising AI to optimise our user support services. We expect Conversational Marketing in particular to become even more important in 2024, as we hope to explore opportunities around the use of AI powered chatbots to improve our web user support and help to answer user queries in a more efficient and timely manner, wherever possible.
6. Action speaks louder than words:
Meaningful communications matter, now more so than ever before. It’s all well and good to land your press release regarding an announcement or marking an international day for something, but its value doesn’t exist unless you, and your organisation, actually care about the issue and engage more widely on these matters.
Unfortunately, in 2022 and 2023, global conflict continued to grow and spread. The “down with this sort of thing” or “war is bad” generic press release fills space, but is it meaningful? Actions speak louder than words. Yes – denounce the violence, express your support and solidarity for the people impacted, but do more than a press release. What can your organisation do? How can you as a communications professional advise your leadership? Engage, meet with, write directly to the people impacted to express your support. An example of that for the Medical Council is our ongoing work in supporting doctors from Ukraine and Sudan who arrived in Ireland fleeing war, and the partnerships we have made with stakeholders to develop these supports.
In summary, many opportunities for earned thought leadership exist within public sector organisations. Linking back to our point on collaboration, these opportunities won’t be possible without organisational buy in, support, and understanding of the value of the role of the communications professional. Those in a leadership position must step up to be an active participant in the organisation’s communications activities. They have a duty to do so, to the organisation, their stakeholders, their colleagues and in the case of this sector – the public.
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