It’s autumn innit.

And I’ve just started helping out with a bit of social media for a local theatre (Reading Rep), and yet again I’ve found that when the work begins and you’ve got very little time and you have to start posting, and keep posting, then it’s very rare that you refer back to the strategy and make sure you’re following it to the letter.

Instead what sticks with you is the vibes you establish at the beginning - how do we want to make people feel? What do we want to talk about? Then keep that in the back of your head as you fight fire after fire.

Content of this week

• I feel like I don’t see much interesting website stuff any more (barring the V&A Lookup). But I did see this page tracking the different, hilariously wrong depictions of elephants in manuscripts which was made way back in 2008. Does exactly what it needs to and I want it on a tea towel.

• Have you seen those AI videos of interviews with people in the past? The Black Country Living Museum did one, except real, and it’s great.

• The weekly reminder that MERL is the champion account for replying to people on social media and making a community.

• First: finding out the BBC newsroom pictured behind the anchors is entirely fake was like finding out Father Christmas was just my dad. But the video by the BBC motion designer explaining it is a good example of Employee Generated Content.

• Here’s Brunel doing a silly walk.

• Cozy Halloween content is here.

• This video reminds me of the walls in Sir John Soane’s museum that are only opened once a day (I think?) to reveal A Rake’s Progress. Just that little bit of exclusivity makes people suddenly think a thing is cool.

The bullet point bit

• It’s Sod’s Law that I said I’d stop giving updates on Trump putting off the TikTok ban, as it now looks like the saga is finally concluding. It’ll probably be sold to a US consortium that includes Oracle, and this is a really good analysis about what this means for the algorithm and the future of the platform.

• Lauren Pope’s had over 70 content teams respond to her survey about how their teams are organised, what helps and what harms. Centralised teams are more common in smaller places, most people don’t think their organisating structure is working, and it all comes back down to how good you are at relationships, processes, keeping to guidelines and sharing.

• OneFurther are running their Cultural Content Survey again - please fill it out so we can find out that we just need better managers, colleagues that understand us and more money. (but seriously, it is a good finger on the pulse)

Personal stuff I do for me and you can just skip this if you like

🎮📖 what I’m consuming as a consumer

I haven’t consumed anything because I’ve just been enduring a rolling attack of successive colds thanks to my daughter, like chain-smoking fags except the fags are rolled-up toddler snot.

I did go on a slight cyberpunk binge though after listening to a What Went Wrong? episode on Bladerunner, which made me watch Bladerunner again, which then made me play the interactive story/game Citizen Sleeper. I’d recommend all three.

🐕 Keith

Here he is