Public Sector Comms Tools in 2025

Communications and marketing teams in public sector organisations such as local councils, central government, the NHS, the Bank of England, emergency services, and schools, need to keep their citizens informed and updated, to ensure that their communities are safe and function smoothly. 

For example: if people are given clear information about how to access healthcare, it’s likely that the overall health of that community will increase. And if we can reach audiences that need to be kept up to date on the latest bus delay, it’s likely that trust and customer satisfaction will go up. 

But how can comms and marketing teams convey their messaging in a time where time, resources and budgets are often limited? Keeping up to date with the different platforms your team needs to achieve their goals can be pretty time consuming, so that’s why we’ve put together a list of tools we believe will empower your team to achieve those goals and ultimately improve your community engagement, simplify your social media management and build trust within your communities. 

Whether you’re a local council campaigns officer, a social media manager for a police constabulary,  or a head of comms looking for tools your team can use, here are some suggestions from us that will help you keep the public informed and engaged.

Orlo can help you to manage your social media accounts all in one place, gain valuable community insight through social listening, and build trust by using our analytics to improve your campaigns and communications. Orlo isn’t just a social media management tool it’s a valuable team member of your team. 

Our platform has benefited over 400 public sector organisations across the UK, from building trust, to driving recruitment campaigns.

Wakefield Council used Orlo to boost trust in their community by 30% using our Insights tool, which is a combination of AI and social media listening.

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) managed to fill 98% of vacancies using Orlo to deliver their recruitment strategy which involved multi-media messaging of real stories told by real people.

There are plenty more examples of how Orlo has helped public sector organisations in both preventative and reactive communications so, if you want to join in and achieve greater success for your organisation, get in touch with us for a free personalised demo of the Orlo platform.

Canva is a free design tool that allows you to create stunning graphics for your campaigns. You can easily create eyecatching content for your social media management platform and deliver your campaigns with consistent branding and engaging visuals. Our own Orlonians with experience in the public sector swear by Canva. They understand not all public sector organisations have the luxury of big budgets to spend on design tools or an in-house designer.

Canva, which has free and premium subscription options, has an extensive library of designs and templates that you can use for inspiration. Or create your own, upload your brand kit, and collaborate on designs with your wider team. Another plus for boosting efficiency!

COMMS:FILES is an online bank of shared knowledge pulled together by comms industry expert, and Orlo community partner, Darren Caveney of Comms2Point0 powered by CAN. This tool is a valuable source for public sector comms teams to generate ideas, share their own successes and discover what they can improve upon. It includes entries from winners of the industry-leading annual UnAwards, giving you valuable insight into what organisations like yours are doing to deliver impactful comms work. 

Using COMMS:FILES to inspire communications and campaign strategies will fast track your team’s industry knowledge, upskilling them to be aware of what has and hasn’t worked throughout thousands of other comms examples.

Use this tool to help plan your campaign delivery, creatives and what you should be reporting on.

The Meta Ads library is exactly what it says on the tin, a library of all the ads that are running on the Meta platform, which consists of Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Comms and marketing teams can use this library to see what other organisations are doing when it comes to paid advertising on social media, which can also give a competitive advantage. 

There are also loads of benefits to using this library to get inspiration on what type of messaging and which kinds of visuals and messaging might work for your paid advertising campaigns on Meta.

Just like Meta, LinkedIn also has an ads library! You can apply everything we said above to this one as well, but we thought it was worth its own mention. LinkedIn is a valuable platform for communications and marketing professionals in the public sector, and this library will allow you to see what other organisations are doing in the paid advertising sphere on LinkedIn.

For those of you who want to find positive and real imagery of over 50’s, this free library is a go-to source for your campaigns. Whether you’re working in communications for care homes, in the NHS, or local council (to name but a few), you’ll likely need to engage older audiences online and offline. It’s certainly true that many public sectors have a huge effect on the livelihood, health, and wellbeing of the older population. So, this resource helps to make sure your imagery is relatable when publishing your campaigns targeted towards older generations. It’s also great to use positive images of older people in your general campaigns so it normalises them for other generations.

Of course we can’t do a list of valuable comms tech tools in 2025 without mentioning AI, and ChatGPT shows no signs of slowing down when it comes to effective and efficient tools for professionals. ChatGPT can be used as a great way to generate content ideas and even start writing that content for you.t is important to note however, it is important to re-write this content in your own tone of voice to make sure your content is natural and engaging to other humans, and to fact check everything that ChatGPT produces. 

There are plenty of other benefits to using Chat GPT, from research to image generation, this tool really helps comms professionals to be at the forefront of social media. Whether that’s publishing valuable insights or jumping on a trend, for example when we turned the Orlo team into dolls, which you can see on our Instagram.

As you’ll no doubt be aware, there are now many AI tools available to communicators, including Google Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot…and more. Your organisation should have a policy in place about what you’re able to use so find it and make the most of it. Learning how to prompt AI should be high on everyone’s personal development list because it’s not going anywhere, and the most effective teams will know how to harness its power for good.

While some of you may be thinking this is a no-brainer, we still think it’s worth a mention! Google Analytics has been an important part of the digital marketing and online communications industry for a long time and, although it’s changed a lot throughout the years, it still provides valuable insight into what users do once they’ve left social media and landed on your website. Make sure your setup is in tip top condition using accompanying tools like Google Tag Manager, and ensure you’re reporting on your user behaviour with Looker Studio. All of these tools together help paint the picture of user behaviour generated from your social media communications strategy. 

A little bit of insider info from me, (the digital marketing guy) if you want to get up to speed and earn some free, industry recognised qualifications, make sure to check out the Google Skillshop to get started or enhance your Google Analytics knowledge.

If your team is thinking about paid advertising, or haven’t thought about doing it and want to know more, then speak to CAN. They offer the opportunity to generate income, boost the reach of your communications, and as public sector experts, they understand the outcomes you’re trying to achieve. Get in touch with them for advice – they will build you a free plan and show you how their services can make a difference.

e-shot™ is a secure and user-friendly digital communication platform trusted by public sector organisations to deliver effective email and SMS campaigns. Designed with the public sector in mind, e-shot offers tailored solutions that ensure messages are accessible, GDPR compliant, and impactful. With features like automation, audience segmentation, and a library of professionally designed templates, e-shot empowers communications teams to engage communities efficiently and effectively.

We’ll be updating this article with the latest and best communications tools to use for your public sector organisation, so make sure to keep coming back and checking in. Or, even better, sign up to our mailing list and get all the latest news and updates directly to your inbox.