A social media first for one of our biggest departments

THE CHALLENGE

In 2017, our client had found itself in the throes of a growing problem. It had discovered 722 associated public – but unofficial – department social media profiles that were increasing the spread of misinformation, leaks of confidential and internal information, and resulting in media enquiries.

Without a holistic profile and consistent messaging, the pages were impacting the department’s credibility, trustworthiness, brand and identity. The department needed a social media strategy, and with it, help consolidating numerous social media profiles across the department. It was time to act.

RD Consulting organised, managed, and facilitated a social media conference in 2018 with the department to determine recommendations moving forward. We made eight recommendations:

1. Establish a social media team.
2. Create a social media playbook.
3. Implement a training program.
4. Clean and consolidate social media profiles.
5. Introduce management software and tools.
6. Resource social media team to operate autonomously.
7. Collaborate across the department.
8. Continue to manage and monitor accounts and profiles.

Following the conference, we assisted the department in implementing all eight recommendations, beginning with establishing a Social Media Hub. The Hub was staffed with five RD Consulting staff and five Australian Public Service (APS) staff handpicked for the team. We set up a functional workspace, bringing in big screens to sit above the desks and display live social media dashboards, a show reel of the latest posts and the department’s content calendar. We also set up an agile wall to keep the team on task and to track the volume of work coming through the Hub. We trained the APS team on a range of social media tools and platforms, writing posts for different channels and audiences and creating reports.