Better #3

Hello!

Can’t believe it, but Better now has more than 125 friends out there. Thank you for subscribing and for your encouragement.

Today is Part 2 of my interview with Lachlan Forsyth and Matthew Floratos from Waka Kotahi. It’s all about TikTok, video, and the creative process 📽️🤔

A couple of things which have stayed with me since the interview: 1) Matthew’s no-bullshit take on why TikTok is crucial, and 2) the ways that Lachlan draws inspiration (I’m now slightly obsessed by the idea of music sparking creativity).

Coming up, I’ve got more superstars lined up for the next three editions, but if you have ideas for possible people or topics to cover, please flick me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

Cheers,
Seamus Boyer 👋

I feel like no one really talks about this part of social, like it’s just accepted that it’s simple even though it’s not, but how do you go about writing posts? Do you agonise over it or just let it flow?

Matthew Floratos: We spend a lot of time on the copy that accompanies each post. The process always begins with asking the ‘why’ question — why does this matter to the public, and what do we want them to get out of the update we’re publishing. That gives us the structure for a post — put the most important message up top and then the accompanying context beneath.

We spend a lot of time making sure we’re talking in plain language. That even means breaking down terms that might be relatively common. A good example is a bridge ‘pier’, which we talked about a lot in the Cyclone Gabrielle response. We’ll talk about a bridge pier, but we’ll define the term the first time we use it (it’s a support column the bridge sits on) because we can’t assume everyone will know what a bridge pier is.

I probably do agonise about little things — for example, making sure we’re using contractions as much as possible in our writing to keep a relaxed tone. But all those marginal changes combine for a bigger overall value add, so I think it’s worth it.

It’s been a year since you launched your TikTok channel. What have you learned about the platform in that time?

MF: TikTok is a really fun channel, I think our most important lesson has been to experiment. We tried a whole bunch of things early on that didn’t quite work for us, until we found our lane: us praising good driving, and behind-the-scenes footage showing work that the public wouldn’t normally see.

Sometimes you publish something and it tanks - only gets a few thousand views - but if it had a clear and relevant and important message behind it, then it really doesn’t matter. It’s just about returning to that message later and trying to find another way to share that message in a way that’ll be more engaging.

Do you reuse the videos across Instagram and Facebook reels?

MF: As much as possible we try to share the same content across all channels, because if a message is important then by definition everyone should be seeing it. At the moment, still images seem to be outperforming video on Facebook, so if we’ve got some great traffic camera or dashcam footage we run on TikTok and Instagram, we might also post it across Facebook and Twitter, but we’ll also take a step back and say — how can we take the message from this video and condense it into an infographic or some other still image? 

What about YouTube Shorts?

MF: We use YouTube as basically a repository for video, but it's on the list of channels to explore more at some point. We did try putting TikToks on Shorts, but we just didn’t get the results.

Do you ever delete the ones that don't work, or aren't getting traction in those first few hours?

MF: No, we don't. They are what they are. We only delete them if there's an inaccuracy or we didn't produce it well enough so the message isn't clear. 

Lachlan Forsyth: I have the proud record for easily the lowest-performing TikTok so far [laughs].

What’s your advice to organisations still weighing up whether to dive into TikTok?

MF: I often think of this as, what’s the risk of us not being on TikTok? Anyone under 35 is increasingly shifting their time to TikTok, and young people joining social media now are essentially only on TikTok and Instagram, so the risk of not being on TikTok is not being able to talk to a massive part of the population. There’s also the risk of not being on a mainstream channel. TikTok isn’t fringe or emerging anymore, it’s very much here.

But you also need to consider whether you have the resource to manage it as a channel. You need a stream of video content to post, and the time and capacity to produce and edit video.

One thing you don’t need is to be across trends - we’ve had great success sticking to our bread and butter basics. We barely engage with trends, so you can do a great job on TikTok just being yourself and telling your story in a compelling way.

What about Threads? Were you tempted?

MF: We get asked if we’re going on it but what works for us on Twitter is the chronological feed and the fact that you can rely on that to discover information in the order it’s meant to be discovered. That’s really important for breaking news, crashes, and weather updates. With Threads at the moment we can’t guarantee that our message will be seen in the way that it was intended.

We also really try not to bite off more than we can chew.

Lachlan, tell me about your creative process? How do you come up with your content ideas? Do you schedule in time for creativity/thinking? Or is it more of keeping a notebook handy for when inspiration strikes? 

LF: A notebook is way too organised for me [laughs]. I tend to think things up on the fly. I’m fortunate that my background in daily journalism gave me a lot of practice in generating ideas at very short notice. I’m usually starting from scratch every single time and waiting for a flash of inspiration — an interesting sound or piece of music, an exciting bit of action, a great landscape, a killer soundbite.

I also consume massive amounts of media — TV, music, writing, films — and just try to draw inspiration from others’ creativity. I shudder to think how many great ideas I’ve had that I’ve then forgotten, so I probably should try a notebook.

How much of your content is video? Is that your go-to format? Do you do much longer form video?

LF: Writing is still my favourite medium, and I do love photography, but video is our go-to because it works so well for a lot of our work, especially for showing context and scale. I really enjoy the creativity of the editing process — it’s a lot of fun. Increasingly we’re doing longer form video to contextualise the big issues we face, but it has to be done with the recognition that a five-minute video on Facebook won’t fly anymore.

There are still places a five-minute piece will work, and a group of people who will welcome it, but it better be worth their while, and it better be good.

What’s one piece of content you’re particularly proud of? 

LF: I’m really proud of the work we’ve done around worker safety — letting frontline roadworkers tell their own stories in their own words. But it’s hard to go past Merge of the Month. It’s been a go-to for a couple of years now, and still gets phenomenal numbers. It’s sneaky — behind the lols, we’re delivering a really important message. Yep, it’s fun to watch, but it’s genuinely making people better and more courteous drivers.

MF: Driver of the Week, which features simply good driving. For example, footage of someone signaling for three seconds before changing lanes on an Auckland motorway has been watched 5 million times. Someone coming to a complete stop at a stop sign has been watched just under a million times.

There’s no gimmick to it, it’s just unedited footage of good driving. The fact we can frame that in an engaging way, and have people really like good behaviour and support and reinforce that good behaviour, makes me really happy.

What’s next? Can you give us a sneak peek of what we might expect? 

LF: We have enormous issues to tackle in the transport space over the coming decades, and I really want to dig into some of them in a way that doesn’t alienate, bore or confuse people. Transport choice, climate change, building resilience — they’re huge issues that affect all of us, and people need to know we’ve got amazing people working on them, doing their absolute best for the New Zealand public.

I also have a massive playlist of bangers from the 90s and 2000s I’m desperate to unleash on TikTok…

Quick 6 with Matthew Floratos…

1. Strategy or tactics?

Strategy. Tactics are for reacting ad hoc to a given situation, while strategy gives you the structure you need to respond to every situation.

2. Favourite platform:
Personally, Twitter. I love the weird sense of humour people have there. But for work, TikTok, because it’s so rewarding when you get it right.

3. Least favourite platform:
I don’t have any particularly negative feelings, but because I spend too much time on it, I’d say Twitter.

4. One public sector account to follow:

We really look at Wellington City Council and Palmerston North City Council, in particular the way both teams talk with people in the comments, as an example of great proactive and reactive engagement.

5. One non-public sector account to follow:
Sports teams do a great job pumping out content and engaging with often very-challenging fan bases. I think Formula 1 teams in general are a standard bearer for having a great mix of personable content and corporate messaging disguised as fun social media content.

6. Something you wish you’d known earlier in your career:
Don’t worry about whether something gets lots of engagement or not. If it’s an important message, it doesn’t matter whether 500 or 50,000 people saw it — it wasn’t a frivolous post so it’s not an embarrassment, just keep at it and find a more engaging way to tell the story.

That’s all for this month - I hope you enjoyed the bonus edition. Next month we’ll be back to just the one newsletter (at least that’s the plan at this stage 🙃).

As always, if you’ve read this far, and enjoyed what you’ve read, I’d be really grateful if you would consider forwarding this newsletter on to someone you think might like it.

Thanks for reading, see you next month 👋