Better #25

Kia ora friend,

Next week I’m sharing everything I know about government social media. Well maybe not everything, but the stuff that matters.

The second cohort of my online course, Social Media for the Public Sector, kicks off on 25 October. All the details are here: www.seamus.nz/course

The course is designed specifically for public sector professionals looking to:

• Use social media more strategically

• Advance into more senior or team leader roles

• Better support or guide colleagues who manage social media

• Speak more confidently and effectively to senior leaders about social media

It includes live group sessions, weekly office hours with me, a private LinkedIn group, and a final one-on-one session for tailored advice.

The first cohort of NZ and Australian pros gave it a double thumbs up, too (check out the testimonials).

Have a look, email me with any questions, and hopefully I’ll see you online real soon.

Cheers,
Seamus Boyer 👋

This week I’m talking with Caitlin Cash, a Social and Digital Media Team Leader at Queensland Health.

Queensland Health has done amazing things on social media for a long time, with clever, relevant content that get huge amounts of positive engagement.

They also recently did the brilliant ‘pooing at work’ posts which resonated with people the world over - and for good reason.

Caitlin was incredibly generous with her insights into those posts, plus a whole lot more, including tackling taboo topics, trend guidelines, behavioural science, and leadership techniques.

I hope you get as much from this interview as I did.

👇👇👇

Firstly, Caitlin, where do you work, and what do you do? 

I am a Social and Digital Media Team Leader at Queensland Health. It’s an incredible, but busy role. I am responsible for overall strategy, curating a stacked content calendar, managing and negotiating client and stakeholder requests, crisis comms, leading and supporting the team, and approving around 4,000 content pieces a year. I truly love my job; it’s the perfect mix of chaos and strategy, creativity and impact. I adore my colleagues and truly believe that we make a difference. IMO they are the best in the biz. 

I’ve worked in socials for just over 12 years, but started my career in government media. I have worked across the emergency services, corrections and regulatory bodies, managing media and socials during major natural disasters, crises, and legislative changes. 

What’s your team set-up? How do you differentiate roles and tasks?

My team manages Queensland Health’s owned social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and LinkedIn), and digital projects (podcast, video series, EDM, blogs and advertising services). 

Our team has clearly defined, individual roles. We have a dedicated community moderator who leads our community management and positive engagement. She’s on the mods daily and deeply understands our community. We have officers who lead our content creation and operate under a ‘content rounds’ model. They are responsible for a segment of our 20+ health topics which include categories like sexual health, cancer screening, sun safety, mental wellbeing, and alcohol and other drugs harm minimisation. They rotate their rounds every 6 months to keep our content fresh and officers engaged. We also have officers who manage our larger digital projects, for example: the It Can’t Hurt to Ask podcast and ED short documentary (which hasn’t dropped yet – watch this space).

Let’s go straight into the ‘pooing at work’ stuff, which was absolutely amazing. How did that come about, and what was it like unleashing that on the world?

What might surprise some people is that the ‘it’s okay to poo at work’ message was first released into the wild as a LinkedIn poll back in August. The incredibly talented Lauren Murray ideated and wrote the post, and it performed pretty well. I scheduled a repost on Facebook as I knew our audience would love the topic. We brainstormed how to make the post more provocative and engaging by turning it into a simple status update, adding ‘discuss’ as a CTA, and ‘Sent from my iPhone’ as a not-so-subtle link to our community engagement strategy (more on that later).

The idea for the Instagram reel came next. We wanted to jump on the dolphin trend and pooing at work just seemed like the perfect topic; surprising, slightly unhinged and absolutely juxtaposed against the montage of dolphins and rainbows. Because all the hard work had already been done on the Facebook status, the reel only took around 30 minutes to pull together.

We create a unique community engagement strategy for much of our content. It might be a persona (a mozzie is replying to the comments), or an action (deliberately misspelling pregnant in response to the ‘am I pregante?’ status). In this case, we decided to respond to comments on both posts telling people that we were pooing at work ourselves. In fact, right now! It sounds wild, but this strategy is rooted in behavioural science. After all, the core intent of each of our preventive health posts is to change health behaviour. By replying to people with ‘We’re doing it right now’ or ‘It’s only natural, everybody poos’, and praising people who shared that they, too, poo at work (‘We stan a poo king’), we aimed to shift social norms, remove stigma, and signal that it’s normal, everyday behaviour. 

The experience has been a wild ride! I am super proud of the team and so grateful they are getting the recognition they truly deserve. The story has remained in the news cycle for more than 3 weeks (insane) and we’ve reached publications in Norway, New York and the UK [and New Zealand]. Locally, it was exciting to see our work featured on The Project, and in The Betoota Advocate. I still can’t believe how far and wide the message went. 

Aside from the mainstream interest in the content, I loved hearing from people with inflammatory bowel disease who were grateful for the content and that we were working to reduce the stigmatisation of what is a normal human bodily function. Poo paranoia or parcopresis is a real thing. And holding it in can lead to real health problems. It’s been such a career highlight to change health behaviour one poo at a time. No, seriously.

Describe your overall social strategy for us. How much do you stick to the strategic script, or can you veer off on occasion?

We’re on socials for good reason: to reach as many Queenslanders as possible to improve their health and wellbeing. Broadly, the QH social content mix can be categorised under three core pillars: 

• Preventative health, aiming to promote positive behaviour change and reduce the risk of Queenslanders needing to access the public health system, particularly EDs.  

• System literacy, aiming to enhance the ability of Queenslanders to understand when and how to access our public health system. 

• Hero stories or first-person testimonies that tell of staff experiences or life-saving treatment. This content showcases our talented and innovative staff, programmes and initiatives, and technological or medical advancements.  

We stick to the script 100% of the time. We have strict criteria that every piece of content must pass. First, it must have a preventative health or system literacy message. We don’t post engagement pieces to enhance our reach; every post must have a deeper purpose. Second, it must adhere to our style guide. Third, it must be accessible and inclusive. Finally, it must have a key target audience, be backed by market research and behavioural science and work towards a behaviour change goal. 

Misinformation is rife particularly within health comms, and we aim to do our bit to combat it with well-researched and sourced content. We’re fortunate to have a wide variety of market research, world-class clinicians, and SMEs available to us which we certainly take advantage of when creating our content. 

How do you balance the use of humour with some traditionally taboo topics? 

As a team, we’re immersed in internet culture and stan a meme. Our audience responds well when we’re silly, unhinged, or relatable. We strategically use humour and pop culture references to reach those people who ordinarily wouldn’t consume health comms on topics like sun safety, food poisoning or STI testing. We’ve found a healthy dose of humour enables us to share complex, scientific, or medical information in an entertaining, easily consumed way. It’s well known that humour helps to make content more shareable, relatable, unique or memorable. We know that people use socials to be entertained, so… give the people what they want!

There are some health topics that we play down the line (like vaccinations, or disaster messaging), and just don’t go there with humour. We’re sensible and know what are our ‘safe’ topics, and what are our ‘no-go’ topics. We’re acutely aware of messages that may trigger or distress a segment of our audience and we respect them by tailoring our content with that in mind. 

We don’t take our audience for granted. Pre-pandemic, QH had a social audience of around 400,000. Fast forward to 2024, and we now speak to a highly engaged audience of more than 1.4 million and reach around 8 million people each year. Typically social channels haemorrhage followers after a crisis, be it a bushfire, flood or pandemic. We’re proud that not only have we been able to retain and further grow that audience post-pandemic, but we’ve converted these followers to fans who we connect with daily and value so much. 

People can get hung up on imagery - but you prove you don’t need any at all on Facebook to stop the scroll and get huge engagement. Describe your approach for us?

We’ve been using status updates on our Facebook channel since mid-2022. Content Queen Sophia Sorensen came up with the idea to post a simple status: ‘Good morning to everyone except those who didn’t apply sunscreen this morning’. It popped off, receiving 1,800 comments. 

Since then, we’ve found a formula that works and the continued engagement on these posts blows my mind. Status updates are among our highest performing content on Facebook. They seem to ‘wake up’ our audience and stand out in-feed. We are able to have genuine conversations about health issues in the status’s comment sections with hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. 

We do around 3 status updates per week on Facebook. They’re short and simple, usually one or two sentences. The status copy is written to provoke a reaction or response. It could be surprise, shock (that a government channel has posted it), or amusement. We encourage our community to play along in the comments section. They could give us a Mean Girls quote, and we make it health related, share how they quit smoking or vaping, tell us if they’ve ever done a weird poo after drinking alcohol, or finish the song lyrics to ‘It’s just (ahh), a little thrush (thrush)…’. We follow the status with a first comment that provides more context, preventative health information, a CTA, and sources.

The comments on our status updates can serve as powerful social proof for Queenslanders looking to change their health behaviour. For example, if they are on a quit-smoking journey but are not as far along on a behaviour change journey as someone who quit 5, 10 or 20 years ago, they can read personal testimony from these people in the comments, comment with their own questions and feel a sense of community and belonging which normalises their personal experience.

How do you choose which trends to jump on? What kind of due diligence do you do, and how do you balance that with reacting quickly?

I feel that remaining relevant and current and showing personality without losing credibility and/or trust is an ongoing challenge for most government social media content creators. Trends help us to grab attention and do enhance the relatability, shareability and entertainment-value of the content. It is common practice for brand socials, and I think we’d get left behind if we didn’t jump on the trend train regularly.

We know it is crucial though to strike a balance, ensuring that our trend content remains accurate, respectful, and meaningful, while being entertaining. We stick with the criteria of topical, timely and tasteful before deciding to use a trend.

• Topical: The trend must be immediately relevant to something popular that’s happening, strongly linked to a priority health topic, and be of general interest to our target audience.

• Timely: The trend must be published at the right time to maximise relevance and engagement in the context of the trend. Consideration is also given to the time of day it’s posted so we have adequate resources to moderate it.

• Tasteful: The trend must avoid topics that could be considered offensive or controversial. It should not bring any disrepute to our organisation.

Before using a trend, we also consider the fair use provision under the Australian Copyright Act, we listen to the whole song (not just the sound bite) to ensure there’s no swearing or offensive content, and we determine if we’re promoting a commercial entity (for example, we removed the Spotify logo and branding from our QH wrapped post).

Despite having a robust approvals process, we’re incredibly lucky to have supportive leaders and SMEs, who understand what we do and why, and trust us to make those judgement calls in the best interest of our organisation and goals. My team has a deep understanding of our audience, health topics and key messages and a wide variety of pre-approved content guides and key messages available for our use, which means we don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time we craft our content and rarely get it wrong. We can turn around a post in a matter of hours, which helps us to act quickly and remain relevant and on trend.

You seem to be pretty wild and free with your imagery/graphics, with lots of different styles and formats and fonts. Is that deliberate? Or just a relaxed approach to branding?

It’s deliberate. While it might seem quite different to other government channels, there is a method to the (perceived) madness. Unlike other departments that are tied to strict corporate style guides, publish highly corporate content (and as a side effect, experience low engagement), we adopt an approach where all visuals are non-branded and unconstrained by wider departmental corporate identity guidelines. 

All content published to our social media channels is governed by a bespoke Social and Digital Media style guide that enables my team to produce content that utilises a consistent look and feel (colour palette, fonts), without becoming homogenous. We use pop colours, tints and decorative fonts to add variety and personality. 

How do you get the best out of your team? What are some of the leadership techniques or approaches you’ve introduced to keep them creative and motivated?

I work alongside two incredible leaders, so we work together to get the best out of our team. What works for us is:

• Recognition – We recognise individual and team successes and celebrate them publicly and regularly. 

• Flexibility – Meeting people where they are at and tailoring our leadership approach to a person’s needs. For example, providing verbal, not written feedback or asking why design decisions were made to understand before requesting an edit. Leaning into people’s strengths and interests to allow them to shine. 

• Communication – Regular 1:1s, brainstorm sessions (both individual and group), opportunities for 2-way feedback, reporting and benchmarking, collaboration.

• Advocacy – Singing the team and individual praises to leadership and providing the data to back up why our strategy continues to work. 

• Trust and respect – We lead a team of highly-talented, creative and strategic individuals. When someone has a wild idea, we support them to run with it. We give them creative freedom. We embrace the weird and unhinged because they all know what they’re doing and they are SO good at it.

• Space – Giving them team space to collaborate and create. Time away from their desks. Time to think deeply about the content they create. 

• Fun – We take the time out to laugh, be chaotic, sing and joke, bounce ideas off each other and enjoy each other’s company. We eat lunch together as a team every day. We all really like each other and feel grateful to work where we do. It’s a joy coming into the office and to spend time with such genuinely exceptional human beings. This joy seeps into our work. Our team culture is second-to-none. 

What are you most proud of in your work?

My team! They are individually extraordinary and collectively, well, unstoppable. Their ideas, creativity, intelligence, work ethic, and dedication continue to blow me away. The content they create is iconic, hilarious, and meaningful. They all want to make a difference and they do. Aside from talent, they are all lovely people. I feel so lucky to lead them. The positive team culture we have created makes work one of my favourite places to be. To say I am proud is an understatement. 

Quick 6 with Caitlin Cash…

1. Strategy or tactics?
Depends. Both? Strategy is the backbone of what we do. My team thrives when there’s clear strategic direction driving and justifying what we do. But tactics? That’s where the fun is.

2. Favourite platform?

Personally? Instagram. I am a millennial, and it feels like home. Professionally? TikTok. It’s where we would love to be.

3. Least favourite platform?
X. I don’t enjoy spending time there. The negativity, the divisiveness, the hatred. No thanks.

4. One public sector account to follow?
The Utah Department of Transportation. A masterclass in delivering stale, corporate key messages via unhinged takes on internet culture.
 
5. One non-public sector account to follow?
KFC Ireland. So many LOLs. Inspiring, really.

6. Something you wish you’d known earlier in your career?

That being kind can take you places. You don’t need to be competitive or ruthless to move up in the world. Emotional intelligence is the most undervalued leadership skill, and (in my opinion) it’s what makes all great leaders, great.

That’s it for Better #25 (quarter of a century of newsletters!).

Please consider sharing this newsletter with someone you think might get value from it.

And remember, sometimes it just won’t work, and that’s ok. Your boss probably doesn’t understand the metrics anyway 😆

See you in two weeks for more tips on how to get a little bit Better 👋