 that it was inspired by the Tony Curtis film Houdini. Either way that's the Moonlight Shadow from 1983. Now Joanne Sweeney from Downings has launched a new audiobook. She is a digital marketing consultant and trainer who now lives in Salt Hill and she has written what could be described as the ultimate guide to digital marketing for government and the public sector to improve transparency and to build public trust. The book Public Sector Marketing Pro was first launched actually in 2018 but then there was a second edition after the pandemic for a post pandemic age if you like that was launched at the end of last year and now there's the audiobook version and later Joanne joins us now from Salt Hill. Joanne how are you? I'm great and there's blue skies in Salt Hill today. Well more than we have here at the moment. Well intermittently here and there so you hold on to them as long as you can. Tell us in layman's terms tell us a little because you know digital marketing it can go over the heads of well me and maybe others and just explain about what the book is about because it's not just digital marketing it's digital marketing for government and public sector. Exactly and you could probably say that I deliberately chose this niche and probably because I mean I started my career just where you are in that studio in Highland Radio as a broadcast journalist and covering the health board meetings covering the council meetings covering court cases so I've always had a massive interest in what we call public interest messaging so for every reason that the people of Donegal listen to Highland Radio to keep themselves up to date with what's happening and on things that affect their daily lives so it's politics, it's health, it's local government, it's education schools and because communications has changed and media has changed and again all of your listeners will know this because they all have smartphones they're probably streaming Highland Radio on smart speakers they're watching you or Greg or Donald earlier on Facebook they're getting the news from social media so communications has changed and I guess ever since I left you know my job in journalism I've always kept up to date with how my industry is changing and then about five years ago I decided that I'd maybe try and corner the market for digital marketing for government and public sector so not for businesses because when you're marketing businesses online ultimately you're trying to get sales but when you're marketing any public sector organization online what they are trying to get is public trust and public buying and so I link my journalism days to my digital marketing skills to create this book because it didn't exist and I guess you could say I saw the opportunity. In a way it's a battle for our hearts and minds with this sort of message that you outline or more to the point how you outline in the book how it's delivered and how it's best delivered and what's the most effective way of delivering it. Yeah I do it's essentially a handbook and I know lots of the people who bought the book say to me that they have it on their desk and they can go to a particular chapter and it will help them communicate better online because you can must understand and you said it yourself this landscape changes so quickly and it's really hard to keep up to date so I guess I thought I could create something that was really useful the other part of it is there has to be buying in these organizations to commit to being truly transparent and publishing real-time updates on social networks on websites and citizens being able to receive text messages and the best example of that was probably during the pandemic when we could get live updates of how many COVID cases there were you know receiving our vaccine certificate and all of that so there's two sides to it one is teaching people through the book how to do it right and how to do it well but secondly trying to get those organizations to buy into the ethos that they exist in the public interest and so they need to keep the public up to date. So let's go back to the pandemic how the message was in various messages were conveyed if you had to if it was an exam and you were marking various governments in this exam at the end of it all what sort of a score would you give the government? Well you know what I say it in the book and to try and remember how I quote it myself is that government and public sector agencies showed true agility almost overnight they transformed and I knew from my experience that they were really reluctant adopters of social media and digital communications but they were forced into it essentially and they responded very positively and if you think about it John you know you were broadcasting from the station probably on your own because it's social distancing but the information was coming into the news desk into the live shows and they were live streaming press conferences on Twitter and Facebook they were communicating in DMs you could send the HSE a Twitter private message and they would respond and answer people's questions you would hire education for schools and colleges who moved their courses online and then you had local government and councils who were then facilitating citizens by doing any business that they needed and keeping them updated through their website and social media so I would definitely give them a B plus if I was scoring them okay that's that's a pretty good score but it was a huge learning curve for not just the public sector but for you know so much of the population and we still you know we we're still dealing with it today and that there was a whole shift in the way many people work and a lot of people still doing either hybrid or maybe working from home yeah that's one of the remarkable changes that we're all experienced like I'm sitting in my office you're in social in my house and I used to travel in that and now I can talk to anyone across the world and we are I don't think we've found that equilibrium and that balance of how the new way of working and living and has fleshed out after the pandemic and I think that will take a while and I think just all of us need to just accept that and say yeah we're we're still in in change mode and in transformation mode but like for one I would say I'm very grateful that we had the technology that we could communicate you think about facetiming you know family and friends I couldn't get to Donegal for months I mean listen there's people in Donegal who hadn't seen family in Australia and across the world for months if not years but we had the technology of the smartphone the internet connection and then companies like Metta who you know WhatsApp and Facebook to give us that and for free so I think to a large extent we have to be grateful also you're in big demand speaking at seminars and so on and also delivering courses and I suppose a good example really of how you can sit in your office and Salt Hill and deliver courses anywhere in the world and training anywhere in the world and and and it's marvelous mind you you managed to squeeze in some time to take the book and deliver it now as an audiobook and that was that a new experience or had you done that before it was brand new John so this is my third book and I'd never produced an audiobook before but I saw the rise in audio consumption obviously radio leads the way in terms of audio but podcasting is growing and audiobook consumption is growing and so I'd sent to my publisher publishing company listen let's do an audiobook and so I started recording that late last year obviously after the book was written and published and I thoroughly enjoyed it but one of the nervousness that I had around it is that sometimes when I'm talking and people might know me better than people when Joanne goes into work mode she actually sounds like she's back in Highland reading a news bulletin and so I was worried and this is 20 years on it's absolutely mad so a guy called Stephen George was producing the audiobook and he's based in Atlanta in the United States so I was in an audio booth in Porter shed in in Galway City and he was able to coach me through it and I admitted this to him I said listen Stephen when I go professional with my voice it sounds like I'm reading an audiobook and nobody's gonna or reading a news bulletin and nobody's going to want to listen to me talking like that for six and a half hours so he was able to coach me through it and the final product I think is really good obviously it's produced to a high standard but I think your listeners and my audiobook listeners are going to have to adjudicate on whether I'm easy to listen whether you sound like a news reader or old habits die hard Joanne I know I know it's out it's out now well the audio version is out now and the book has been out for a while a public sector marketing pro and already it's it's on the it's on a on the curriculum of a university in San Francisco is that that right yeah that's right yeah and a lecturer in a nonprofit marketing degree reached out to me he said can I have a copy off the book and so it's good practice to give people copies for free if they're putting them in libraries or curriculums and so yeah so it's in San Francisco University and it's one of the of the books that the students are asked to read and and it goes to libraries and to organizations across the world it went to the houses off the eructus and yesterday so I put it in post to the houses off the eructus well there's a good there's a good chance that over in San Francisco they won't they won't be familiar with your previous life as a news reader so a new page altogether thanks Joanne best look with it thanks John if you smell gas at home or on the street don't ignore it open windows and doors