Better #9

Kia ora!

Get yourself comfy because I’ve got some big news for ya… 😱

From today, Better is going to be coming to you fortnightly. Yep, after 6 months of learning and refining, I’m ready to get my shit together and commit to sending out the goods on a more regular basis.

So what does that mean for you?

Well, every second Tuesday you’ll get an edition of Better delivered free to your inbox. Half of the editions will feature an interview, the other half will feature an example of great content I’ve spotted, some analysis or insight, or a brand new article or resource I’ve created. All editions will feature a quote that I hope you’ll find inspiring.

“But Seamus, that’s way too many emails, count me out you spammy jerk.”

I get it, this move won’t be for everyone, so as much as I’d love you to stay, you can of course hit that unsubscribe button at any point 💔

If you do stay, however, know that I will do everything I can to make it an interesting and worthwhile experience for you. That’s my Better promise ™️

And with that in mind, I have a couple of really quick questions before we get underway:

What would you like to see in future editions? What parts do you look forward to most? Any creators I should approach? Or maybe I could occasionally do something different like a strategy break-down?

If you can spare 2 mins to help, please hit reply to this email, smash out a few suggestions, and I’ll be super grateful. It’ll improve the content and make Better a bit better for readers like you.

Now enough of that, let’s get on with it!

Cheers,
Seamus Boyer 👋

Well, isn’t this exciting - our first Australian guest!

Heather Lansdowne and her team have been doing incredible things with the Australian Bureau of Statistics social channels.

So much so that when I asked around for examples of top notch Aussie public sector socials, ABS was recommended time and time again. And it’s easy to see why. Their approach is fun, vibrant, super smart, takes the right amount of risk, and is achieving staggering results (as you’ll soon discover).

For me the best part is that once you see it, ABS’s approach not only seems like the best approach, but also the ONLY approach to communicating statistics. That’s how natural their strategy feels.

In this interview, Heather gives insights into fun content, creativity, tooting your own horn, always learning, and how to get your bosses on board.

Enjoy 👇

Hey Heather, firstly, where do you work, and what do you do?
I’m the Social Media Manager at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). I run the social media program, and create strategies and content to help everyday Aussies understand the value of our statistics, where to find them, and how to use them. I’ve previously worked in events at the University of Canberra, as a freelance journalist, and in communications and social media for tech companies.

What’s the team set-up?
The team currently has four people, and I couldn’t be more proud of their creativity and intelligence. Whether it’s a rap parody of Eminem’s Lose Yourself, or a stat about what percentage of Aussies will get Taylor Swift tickets, my team never fails to impress me with their creative ways of making ABS data relevant to everyday Aussies.

ABS has a pretty bold social strategy, weaving in information and entertainment. Describe the approach and the results you've achieved? 
Our strategy heavily revolves around having an audience-first approach rather than just promoting ABS data releases as they occur. We audit our content constantly to see what our audience is resonating with and what they aren’t.

We look for creative and interesting ways to bring our data into current topics of conversation, whether that’s the women’s football World Cup or Taylor Swift visiting the country. We try to jump on conversations that are already happening and put in some little educational nuggets using ABS data.

In 2018 we conducted an audit of our social media performance, resulting in a refreshed strategy and style guide for 2019. After that, we continually audited and adjusted our social media strategy accordingly, generating very positive results. Here are some metrics comparing the 2018 and 2023 calendar years for context:

• We grew our total followers from 188,615 to 377,802. An increase of 100%.

• We grew our total annual impressions from 11,024,375 to 28,205,753. An increase of 155%.

• We grew our total annual engagements from 341,262 to 1,182,515. An increase of 246%.

• We increased our engagement rate from 3% to 5%.

Big government departments can be pretty conservative places, do you ever get pushback on your approach? 
We do often get asked by other government departments how we get executive on board with our strategy. We’re really lucky to have a very supportive and innovative executive team who understand what we’re trying to do and support the vision we have for social media. We’re lucky that they trust us and our expertise in this field, which probably seems a little bit counter intuitive compared to the way that a government department normally operates on social media.

We like to have a much more fun and casual tone because we want to relate to people who are using social media as a way to relax and have fun, and sneak a little bit of education in with the entertainment that we give.

For anyone who is trying to have a little bit more fun with their social media but are having pushback from their bosses, I recommend starting small, tracking the results and then reporting back to your management about the positive results that fun and humorous content can have. It’s hard to argue with the numbers, so if something is working and resonating with your audience, why not keep doing it? Even if it means just suggesting a “trial” or adding some puns into your captions, you should be able to show pretty quickly the benefits of having a “fun” strategy.

Do you regularly report into senior leadership to keep them across your work/successes? 
Yes, we always like to “toot our own horn” with our senior managers and executive team whenever we get really strong results on a post, positive feedback in the comments, reshares from prominent people, or any news coverage of our content. We also hold annual social media awards where we award our top subject matter contributors for their efforts and help in validating posts. We also invite senior executive to these presentations and show them our results for the last year as well as discussing all the relevant updates to the social media landscape. This year’s presentation will focus on authenticity, short-form video content, and the impacts and use cases for AI.

Where do your post ideas come from? Does the team get a bunch of numbers and then brainstorm? How does it work?
We plan our social media content out very roughly a year in advance. We look up any significant days, anniversaries of historical events, or pop culture events that might be happening throughout the year. Then each week we look at the upcoming week and decide which ideas we think will resonate best with our audience, and if we can come up with any ways to relate those events with ABS data.

Because we’re so familiar with all of the different data sets that the ABS releases, we can usually come up with something to link the ABS to any kind of event or anniversary. We also love to brainstorm ideas together in our team meetings and we can usually come up with something pretty cool!

You have pretty set formats and consistently use awareness days to give context to info you're sharing? Do you find that structure leads to more or less opportunities for creativity?

I find having that structure of awareness days and anniversaries gives us a lot more opportunity for creativity. Having to come up with something about ANY topic is a lot harder than looking at a specific topic and figuring out just one angle that you might be able to incorporate ABS data into.

Have you ever gone too far in a post?

Of course when you’re having a bit more of a fun approach to your social media, there are risks involved. We try as much as possible to sense test everything we post with different members of the team and diversity networks that we have within the ABS to make sure that we’ve covered all our bases, and hopefully won’t be posting anything unintentionally offensive.

Of course there are times when we haven’t picked up on a certain angle or implication of a post, and on those rare occasions, we have sometimes taken down posts or edited them to clarify. It’s good to reflect on these opportunities and make sure that we are doing everything we can to avoid any similar circumstances in the future. However, we have to accept that with a more light-hearted approach to social media, we won’t always get 100% positive feedback. But as long as we’re getting strong growth and engagement and mostly positive feedback, we feel like we’re doing a good job.

Some of your Reels take a more personal, trend-led approach - how is that going?

We’ve been having a great time experimenting with Instagram Reels over the last year. We tried some different approaches such as repurposing content used in our regular posts into a video format. We also tried a few more trending type formats and we found these to be to be received much better by our audience, so we will look to incorporate more trends into our content and tailor our content more specifically towards the short-form video format this year.

I like how your love of numbers spills into other parts of your comms. You recently highlighted your email signoffs, how else are you extending that vibe?

We love to write our content from the eyes of statisticians and people who love numbers. We sometimes write poetry incorporating our love of statistics, we do quizzes based on our recent social media posts, and we’ve been incorporating our love of numbers into our Instagram Reels content as well. I think people just love to see that there are real people behind the account, and they don’t mind if we’re a little bit cringe and nerdy because that’s what people love about us!

What is your advice to other organisations like yours who might be considering a more entertaining approach? What have you learned along the way?

I’d absolutely encourage any organisation to try a more entertaining approach on social media. We have found this approach to be exponentially more engaging for our audience compared to straight/dry content that you might expect a government department to publish on social media.

If you want people to see your important messages you need to make sure you have a large and engaged audience ready to receive those messages. And how do you create a large audience? By giving them what they want! On social media, most people aren’t looking for lecture, they want to be entertained, inspired, or distracted from their everyday lives. Making your educational content more entertaining is a great way to help get people on board with your message that they might otherwise ignore.

What are you most proud of in your work?
I’ve been at the ABS since 2016, and I’m most proud of the way the social media program has grown and improved since then. The social media team used to be one person, but with all the work we’ve put in, we’ve been able to demonstrate the value of what we do, and ultimately grow the team now to 4 people.

We’re so inspired by setting our own goals and trying to break our own records so that every year we can improve our results and gain more followers and eyeballs on our educational content. I’m so proud of my team’s wonderful strategies and creative social media posts, including our new Reels strategy which has brought in an absolutely disproportionate amount of views and followers to our channels.

Quick 6 with Heather Lansdowne…

1. Strategy or tactics?
Strategy.

2. Favourite platform?

Instagram.

3. Least favourite platform?
X/Twitter.

4. One public sector account to follow?
CSIRO.
 
5. One non-public sector account to follow?
Adam Mosseri for Instagram updates!

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

I think I always need to remind myself to take the time for continuous learning and implementing those learnings. It can be hard to make time in our schedules for non-urgent tasks like training, but I’ve found over the last few years that sometimes a single take-away from a one or two-hour course has completely changed the way I worked, or supercharged our team’s results. One example was implementing both lead AND lag key performance indicators for our social strategy last year, which definitely skyrocketed our results!

Ok, that’s it for this edition. Thanks so much for reading.

As always, please consider sharing this newsletter with someone you think might like it. These newsletters take time to plan, coordinate and write, so any help in getting the word out is really appreciated 🙌

You can also come and see me on LinkedIn where I regularly post tips and views about content, social, and strategy.

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