How the trust went about setting up one of the first successful Instagram accounts for an NHS acute hospital trust. This case study forms part of our social media strategy resource.
Objectives – what did you want to achieve?
We wanted to set up and establish one of the first successful Instagram account for an NHS acute hospital trust. Research showed successful NHS Instagram accounts were from ambulance trusts or national NHS bodies – which have a far greater population base than an acute hospital trust. The account was set up in December 2014 as part of our new Social Media Strategy (2015- 2019), where we committed to increasing the use of high-quality visual content across all of our social media channels to drive engagement. The four-year strategy set out our aim to reach 200 Instagram followers by April 2016 and 1,000 by April 2019.
Audiences – who did you target and why?
Before September 2016, Instagram hadn’t made analytics services readily available, unlike other social media channels. This made it difficult to know who was using the platform. However, it had often been reported that the majority of Instagram’s users are under 35 and predominantly female. This was quite close to our Facebook audience demographics, so we had an idea of the kind of content that was well received by this group, albeit on a different platform. We therefore took a similar approach and sourced content that would be overwhelmingly positive, featuring our staff and patient, and celebrating the incredible work we do in our hospitals.
Strategy – how did you make this happen?
We decided we’d try and post at least twice a week, meaning there would be a consistent stream of posts from our account. We also looked for mini campaigns we could run to try and encourage followers and engagement. Two of the campaigns we ran were a mystery photos competition to celebrate the 10th anniversary of University Hospital, Coventry and #MaternityMarch which saw us create 26 posts during the eight hours we spent in our Maternity Department, featuring new mums and dads, as well as staff and the photogenic facilities in our birth centre and labour ward.
Tactics – what channels, tools, platforms and content did you use?
We used a wide range of content which was already part of our wider PR material, and looked for ways in which we could include extra content which wasn’t available elsewhere. This included a video of our daVinci robot cutting the ribbon at its own official launch and the late Dr Kate Granger opening our Lucina Birth Centre. We also posted spur of moment images like when it snowed, if there was an epic sunrise/sunset over our hospital or if a ward has received a special celebration cake as a thank you. We got on board with things like #ThrowbackThursday too, which really helped as it generated extra content – without too much work – and these have proved to be some of our more popular posts.
Did it work? What were the outcomes?
The outcomes were great, we surpassed our follower targets reaching 1,000 followers in September 2016, well ahead of our original April 2019 target date. Our engagement rate was really difficult to measure due to the lack of insights on post reach and impressions, but since we’ve had access to insights (September 2016) we’ve seen levels of around 8 per cent and we suspect our most popular posts (pre-Insights) could be as high as 15-20 per cent. Our #MaternityMarch campaign was a huge success, increasing our followers by 25 per cent in four days, this campaign also saw some of our most popular images.
What did you learn?
The biggest thing we noticed is the lack on negativity on the platform. We haven’t had any negative comments on any of our posts, which in comparison to Facebook and Twitter (when at similar followers) isn’t the case. We learnt using hashtags and also tagging the location can have a big impact and help new users find your account. Now it’s more widely available, it is definitely worth switching your account to become a business account. This gives you access to Insights – you can see user demographics, post reach, and when your followers are online – meaning you can tailor posts even more, which can reap big rewards.
Would you do anything differently?
We would have liked to have posted more frequently, as one of the largest hospital Trust’s in the country we’ll never be short of a brilliant photo and story, but you can’t cover everything. We’d like to use more video clips in the future too. We didn’t use as many as we probably could have and this is something we’re looking to increase over the next 12 months.
Want to know more?
Contact:Tom Phelan, Communications Officer, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, via email or by calling 02476 967598