An overview of quick tips and tricks to make your communications strategy land and work effectively.

If you could hand your children one skill, and only one, what would it be? Storytelling? It might be the single most useful thing a human being can do.

A first-time public consultation needs a single, experienced communications partner managing engagement from the start, not a form thrown online and a press release announcing it afterwards. Here is what to look for in a partner if this is the first major consultation your team has run.

audiences respond to defensiveness and euphemism far more negatively than they respond to an admission of fault. If people already know something went wrong, telling them it didn't, or that it wasn't that serious, doesn't reassure them. It irritates them.

A step-by-step guide to preparing police, council or public sector spokespeople for difficult media interviews, written from the journalist's side of the table.

Most people working in communications are trying to do the right thing. They want to steady the situation, reduce harm, and keep trust intact. But "strategic comms" can slide into defensiveness easily, and the response can end up sounding more like protecting credibility than listening.

A housing association posted recently about the work it had done for tenants during the heatwave, and the work itself was genuinely good. In the same list they reminded contractors to follow guidance...

People are very good at answering the question in front of them, and not nearly as good at telling you what they actually need. This is not a flaw in your residents or your service users. It is simply how human beings work.

This guide explores practical ways to build public trust through communications and highlights actions organisations can implement immediately.