Dan Love, digital communications officer for Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, shared his creative view on communications. He tells us about his singular focus on storytelling and relationships, and how in tandem those lead to comms success.
1. Why did you choose to pursue a role in communications? For example, has it always been your passion or was it pure happenstance?
I started off studying a pharmacy degree at university, having always been interested in health and medicine, before switching to study journalism. It sounds quite random, but I’ve always been fairly outgoing, creative, and into writing too; so after some reflection and encouragement from a friend I went for it. Turns out I was pretty good at it and enjoyed it far more.
After graduating I found myself somewhat ironically working in a pharmacy again, which is where I became aware of NHS/ healthcare communications. It seemed a logical marriage of all my learning to date, and I haven’t looked back since.
2. What personal skills or attributes do you think are most important for a communications role? Why these skills/attributes in particular?
You need to be creative and really good at making complex information short, simple and interesting. Most people we target are incredibly busy themselves, so there’s the added challenge of competing for their time and attention.
You also need to be a good storyteller, with a keen eye for a story and a knack for asking the right questions. You can bring the most boring and turgid topic to life with a good personal story to back it up!
It helps to be good at planning and balancing lots of competing demands. Priorities change all the time too, so without a plan you’ll end up overwhelmed or working hard in all the wrong places.
I find being positive, hardworking and having a sense of humour are key to the relationship building side of things too.
3. What sort of challenges do you face in your role? Is there a particular challenge that you experienced in the past that stood out?
Social media can be quite relentless at times. It's a constant balancing act between monitoring current trends and trying to predict or plan what will be popular in the future. I also find some posts or topics perform better outside of typical working hours, which means scheduling content in – though this loses some of the ability to tweak and tailor based on live trends.
An example for our organisation is with mental health awareness campaigns. You can plan to a certain extent, but if something unexpected becomes really popular then you need to react quickly to keep ahead of it.
One of the internal challenges I think comes from communications being such a broad term. Sometimes it’s tough to draw the line between things we support with and things outside of our remit. This can mean getting embroiled in really random queries, which take time away from the areas where we can add value to the organisation. In reality, communicating is everyone’s business.
4. How is the role of communications perceived in your organisation?
We have a good relationship with our senior management teams and are generally well regarded by staff at all levels, based on the regular feedback we get. With our staff facing immense pressures, good communications has become central to lifting morale and making sure everyone feels valued. It’s really rewarding to hear when we achieve that.
I also think the reason we get some of the random queries I mentioned is because we’ve built relationships on being quick, helpful, and doing a good job.
Some colleagues probably think we sound like broken records, as we’re always asking for stories to back up any messages they want us to share. But the majority are on board with that, as they see we care about making our communications channels the best they can be – which is ultimately for their benefit.
5. What advice would you give to those at the start of their career in communications?
It’s so important to build relationships with other colleagues and to make as many connections as you can. They are invaluable in so many ways.
I would also say start off by trying a bit of everything available, to develop your ‘all round’ communications skills; press releases, reactive press, social media, video, writing for websites, features, internal comms, etc. (whatever is relevant to your field).
When you find an area that interests you most, work hard at becoming an expert and someone that others (particularly communications colleagues) come to for advice. You will need to be somewhat diverse and adaptable though, so keep practicing other areas and training where you can.
6. What do you think the secret of success is when working in communications?
Start by looking at the goal or objective, then work back to see how you can achieve it. Have a clear strategy and a plan.
This means using evidence and insight as much as possible - base decisions on what channels, formats, methods and language works best for the target audience. Ask those people what works for them, evaluate when something goes well or badly, speak to others who’ve tried an approach before.
You also need to keep on top of trends, be creative, and be bold. Use powerful and personal stories, where you can, to bring your messages to life. No one wants to read, watch, or stop to look at something dull and complicated!
7. We at React & Share live for helping communications teams through understanding website content sentiment and improving it off the back of feedback. How do you and your team approach content improvement?
We use the same approach, by regularly looking at analytics to see how things are performing and also tapping into representative groups to get feedback — whether that’s patients, carers, staff, or other partners.
Quite often it’s just about using time efficiently and seizing opportunities. We catch up regularly as a team to understand what projects everyone else is working on, and who they are due to meet with/speak to. That way we can bring back bits of feedback for each other while we’re at it.
With our own website, we also have lots of page managers who are prompted to review their own page at least twice a year. As part of this, they bring any feedback to us and we work with them on the updates and improvements.
Another example is that we have a ‘virtual insight group’ for our internal campaigns, with staff from across the organisation. We often send them a few different concepts or designs, and ask them to give feedback or pick their favourite. That way we know the campaigns will land well with as many people as possible.
