It’s the time of year when the TUC give out their awards for the best use of communications amongst unions. I’m always interested in the digital categories to see how unions are developing their websites and other tools. There is one big change this year. Previously there were two digital categories – best website and best e-communications. This year, they have been merged into one: ‘best membership communication – digital’. I think this is a shame. It reduces the proportion of the awards focused on digital at a time when unions should be encouraged as much as possible to grasp the inevitable

It's been 12 months since I last updated the Trade Union website league table, and so I've complied the latest metrics below (previous results can be seen for 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012). The league table uses established industry metrics to measure how many links (and the importance of these links) each of the TUC-affiliated unions receives from other websites and social media platforms. It does not attempt to measure the quality of the actual union website itself. Websites that score highly are much more likely to appear higher in Search Engine Results. Search engines are the biggest source

One of the latest projects I’ve been involved with has recently gone live: Prospect, the professional’s union, has just launched their new website. I’ve been helping with the website's new mobile and tablet friendly design, but also with some major changes to the information architecture. The new design is responsive, a design approach that allows the template to change depending on the screen size being used to view the website. This means that users viewing on tablets or browsers see a slightly different layout than those on desktops, avoiding the need to zoom in and out to read the content

If you want to attract more visitors to your website, then one effective approach is “link baiting”. This is where a website features content that is so compelling that people want to link to it through their own websites or social media accounts. This not only increases your visitor potential, but also boosts your website's overall performance in search engines, as sites receiving more links are ranked higher in search engines like Google. Blogging is a great platform for this. I've recently been working on the new FBU and Prospect websites, and we've made blogging far more prominent in both

Every November I look at how influential the TUC-affiliated unions are in social media (see results for 2012, 2013 and 2014). Specifically, I look at Twitter, which due to its open nature is the only social media platform that can be fully analysed. It's arguably the most important social media channel for unions as well. One big change this year is that I've used Klout on its own. Klout is a social media analytics tool. Previously I've also used Kred, but that platform can no longer be used to analyse all Twitter accounts. I considered using Topsy instead, but its 'sentiment score' is too

Recently, I’ve been looking at the sizes of union websites as a benchmarking exercise to inform a union website redesign project. I thought I’d share the results of the analysis, as it provides some interesting insights, in particular the huge variation in size. It’s difficult to say how much content a website should have. Having too much or too little content both have their pitfalls. A good range of high quality content is a positive, but too much content can bloat a website, making navigation and searching difficult and slow. Similarly, too little content will be of limited use to members

Every year in June I look at a number of industry metrics for all the TUC-affiliated trade union websites. To help unions see how their site has progressed, I compile them into a league table. The way these metrics are weighted changes frequently, so it’s important to look at them in comparison to other unions, and not just look at the scores on their own (see the results for 2014, 2013 and 2012). The metrics don’t directly measure the quality of a website’s content or design. Rather, they look at a number of off-site factors, the most important of which is how often the website is mentioned

Since 2012, I’ve carried out annual research to find out which TUC-affiliated unions are the most influential on social media. It’s been a year since the last review, and so I’ve updated the metrics to see what’s changed. This provides unions with an opportunity to monitor their progress over the last 12 months (see the results for 2012 and 2013). I’ve used Twitter for the analysis, as it’s the arguably the key social media platform for unions, and also the most open for analysis. The two main services for measuring the influence of a Twitter account are Kred and Klout. They both have a

Cloud-based services have been growing in popularity over the last few years. These services are delivered online and are usually paid for on an ongoing basis, with flexible pricing depending on the needs of the user. This usually results in lower costs and lower risks, combined with reliable and well-built software. While some unions are already using these services, their popularity will grow over the next few years. One cloud-based service that a number of unions are already using is MailChimp. This web-based application allows unions to email their members and can handle a huge number of

Every year the TUC holds an awards ceremony to recognise the achievements of affiliate unions in their communication efforts. The awards for 2014 have just been held, on Wednesday 9th July. The award categories include traditional media, like best magazine and best illustration, but I always keep an eye on the two technology categories: best use of e-communications and best website. UCATT nominated their new smartphone, widescreen and tablet friendly responsive website, which I'm proud to say I recently built with them, in the best website category. The judges chose it as the winner