How Doncaster Council is smashing social to earn an army of engaged followers

by Steff Parker

“Wow, this Council’s Twitter feed is amazing - it’s hilarious, I’m gonna share it with everyone!”, said no one. Ever.

Until a social whizz at Doncaster Council ripped up the rulebook about how a local authority should engage with its community and injected humour and humanity to their social comms around COVID.

The result? Thousands of people not only engaging with them, but sentiment for the Council sky rocketing and a whole lot of people now a whole lot clearer on the Government guidance around the lockdown restrictions, which frankly, can’t be a bad thing.

What did Doncaster Council do?

It all started with Boris’ announcement on May 10th about how the lockdown measures were set to be relaxed. As the country collectively flocked to social media, scratching their heads about what the update actually meant, Doncaster Council cut straight through the confusion.

Instead of applying the standard local authority lingo, which tends, dare we say, to be a bit bland and lacking much shareability, the comms team at this council embarked on a simple, yet powerful GIF-based campaign to turn a hugely topical and complicated conversation into something engaging, funny but ultimately useful.

‘Stay Alert’
Don’t worry - this doesn’t mean that you should be walking around like a ninja for the next few weeks, ready for a big cloud of #covid19 to pounce. pic.twitter.com/q8KuCgR4Go
— Doncaster Council (@MyDoncaster) May 13, 2020

The GIF-centric campaign explaining the relaxing of lockdown measures is engaging, funny and useful.

Did the campaign resonate?

The GIF-centric campaign struck a chord with its audience - it used inoffensive humour-packed content and as a result, Doncaster Council has been inundated with messages of appreciation, support and enthusiasm.

Should we be going outside?
Again, the short answer is: yes you can.
You’re allowed to leave your house multiple times a day for walks, jogs, and can sit in public places (at a safe distance from other people). pic.twitter.com/EuoaZD2viF
— Doncaster Council (@MyDoncaster) May 13, 2020

Doncaster, your communications are great, really clear & the sense of humour a joy in these dark days. Just a pity I don’t live in Doncaster. Have you thought about doing masterclasses for authorities & organisations who would like to match your standards?
— Christine Morgan (@Chris5anne) May 13, 2020

Through the Maybe* lens . . .

Looking at the content through the Maybe* lens shows the staggering impact the campaign has had on the Council’s engagement levels with the spikes reflecting the increase in discussion around their COVID content.

As you can see their level of organic engagement reached close to 7,500 people - and what's more served them all a little bit of fun. The light purple represents "engagements" that likes, shares or retweets.

To be precise, 18,708 engagements from 127 posts. That's great by anybody's standards.

The Maybe* See what works report showing the social media activity by Doncaster Council and the engagement on it during May 2020.

Enagagement tools

When looking at the activity in context through our Comparison Tool we can see that Doncaster’s content is outstripping that of the neighbouring City Council in Sheffield which despite having a substantially larger audience, is seeing 2000% fewer engagements on their content over the same timeframe.

Coming soon: The Maybe* competitor tool, an update on our existing Benchmarking tool.

Benchmarking tools

The key takeaway

Simply, Be More Doncaster! Whatever content you’re creating ensure that it's engaging, shareable and relevant - this will drive engagement across your channels and make your content work harder for you and in turn drive improved results.

There are some great learnings to be had from Doncaster Council’s social media strategy around COVID. If you’re keen to make social media work for your organisation sign up for your free Maybe* account - you’ll have access to engagement tools, actionable insights, reports and training.

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How Doncaster Council is smashing social to earn an army of engaged followers

What did Doncaster Council do?

Did the campaign resonate?

Through the Maybe* lens . . .

The key takeaway

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