Useful websites, online tools and apps for communication professionals.
News Media Association
The News Media Association is the voice of national, regional and local news media organisations in the UK – a £5 billion sector read by 48 million adults every month in print and online. The NMA exists to promote the interests of news media publishers to Government, regulatory authorities, industry bodies and other organisations whose work affects the industry.
SurveyMonkey
Free online survey tool – send surveys, polls and questionnaires, generate customer feedback, carry out market research. You get access to sample survey questions and professional templates and there’s a guide to analysing results.
Home - Office for National Statistics
The Office for National Statistics is the UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics and the recognised national statistical institute of the UK.
Government Communication Service
The GCS is the professional body for people working in communication roles across government. Its aim is to deliver world-class communications that support Ministers’ priorities, improve people’s lives and enable the effective operation of our public service. The GCS serve both politicians and the public.
Piktochart
No complex design software. No heavy designer fees. Just a simple, intuitive tool that helps you tell your story with the visual impact it deserves.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service. It sends emails to the user when it finds new results—such as web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, or scientific research—that match the user’s search term(s).
IrfanView
Irfanview A very useful free image editor which allows you to crop and edit almost any kind of image file. A great alternative to Photoshop.
Canva
Canva is a free graphic-design tool with an easy to use drag-and-drop interface and access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts. It is used by non-designers as well as professionals. The tools can be used for both web and print media design and graphics and are particularly useful for creating social media graphics.
Chartered Institute of Public Relations
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) is a professional body in the United Kingdom for public relations practitioners. As of late 2012, CIPR had 10,095 members. The association provides training and education, publishes a code of conduct and hosts awards and events.
Slack
Slack teams allow communities, groups, or teams to join through a specific URL or invitation sent by a team admin or owner. Although Slack was originally meant for organizational communication, it has been slowly turning into a community platform, a function for which users had previously used message boards or social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn groups.
Open Data NI
The Open Data portal has been created to allow easy access to Northern Ireland public sector data for both reuse and redistribution. There are datasets available from across the public sector in Northern Ireland. The data that is available will not be of a sensitive or personal nature, but is the raw data that drives the public sector and its services. The data sets available can be usedto build useful applications that help society, or investigate how effective policy changes have been over time.
Spatial NI
Spatial NI is the Northern Ireland portal for Geographic Information (GI). The portal was initially developed by Land & Property Services (LPS) in order to comply with the EU INSPIRE Directive. It allows easy access to LPS base mapping and NI Geographic Information to the public sector and the citizen. It has been designed so it can be used by both technical and non technical users who want to make use of the full potential of GI within their own business areas.