The Digital PR Newsletter #52

How to Spy on FOI Requests (and Why You Should)

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Hello and welcome to the 52nd Digital PR newsletter!

208 hours — that’s how long I estimate I’ve spent writing these newsletters over the past year. If you’ve read them all, that’s about 3 hours of your time.

I love writing them and want to keep providing as much value as possible. You’ve probably noticed that some newsletters have been good (maybe even great?), and some are a bit… well let’s just say they’re ‘alright’.

I don’t want to send content out each week just for the sake of it. So, I’ve decided to switch to a monthly newsletter instead of weekly. This will give me more time to consistently create more good (maybe even great) content.

So there’ll be fewer newsletters, but hey, they’re going to be better!

With that little announcement out of the way, let’s get to it.

🕵️ Spying on FOI Requests

Today I'm sharing how you can ‘spy’ on freedom of information (FOI) requests.

An FOI request is a request to a government body or public authority for access to recorded information they hold.

For example, I once sent out FOI requests to city councils to find out how much they spend on Christmas lights and decorations, and used the info to create a campaign for my Christmastrees.co.uk website, a kind of league table for who spent the most and least.

One reason I really like FOI requests is because the data you’re using is from an authoritative source. Which can give your campaign immediate trust and credibility. There’s also a chance that it’s data that is of public interest, which tends to be newsworthy. I touched on this in the ‘One way to get on the BBC — part 2’ newsletter.

You see FOI requests in the news quite a bit, like these stories below.

But there’s one way you can ‘spy’ on FOI requests that are being made, which can be useful for inspiration, or perhaps you’ve never submitted a request before and you want to see examples to help you write your own, or perhaps you’re just a bit nosey.

In the UK, that website is WhatDoTheyKnow.com, which people often use to help them submit their requests. However they also allow you to browse/search requests too (which was how I found out there was a request made about dog poo).

There seem to be similar websites for Australia and New Zealand.

The thing is when you browse the requests, you’ll see the names of the people that made them. Sometimes you start to see the names of people who work in your industry, so you can keep tabs on what they’re doing.

For example, a few years back I used to see a name pop up quite a bit for someone who worked at a competing agency. So out of curiosity I’d keep tabs on their requests - sorry Russ.

(I feel it’s ok to share that as he no longer works there, and his left request was now 3 years ago).

So yeah, that’s how you can kinda ‘spy’ on what FOI requests are being made 😈

📢 New Newsletter for Campaign Inspiration

There’s a NEW newsletter in town, The Root Report by Root Digital. Is a monthly newsletter which shares new campaigns they found, along with how they’ve performed. You can see their latest newsletter here.

You can never have enough inspiration right? To sign up, head to RootDigital.co.uk and then scroll down to their footer and pop in your email.

📖 Digital PR Playbook

A little while back I was kindly gifted the Digital PR Playbook by Jane from JBH. I’m still making my way through it, but so far it looks like a great little book, especially for beginners. If I had an agency it’s the kind of thing I’d be giving to new employees.