Health Care

How the RACGP uses social media to build stronger connections with its audience

Using Hootsuite Inbox, the RACGP was able to simplify and speed up the process of responding to comments and messages from the community—a process that had previously required numerous touch points across multiple channels.

Prior to using Hootsuite the RACGP’s workflow consisted of logging in and out of multiple channels to review the comments, any questions were then emailed to relevant stakeholders to draft a response, this was then emailed back and the response could be made. This process, on average, would take more than 24 hours. By using Hootsuite Inbox, the RACGP team were able to streamline this process by assigning messages directly to the relevant stakeholder so that they could handle the query directly.

Since signing with Hootsuite, RACGP have received 22,200 public and private comments across Twitter and Facebook. Through the use of Hootsuite Inbox they were able to respond to users in a timely manner, decreasing their first response time by 16 hours.

At RACGP, content is now added to Hootsuite workflows by many teams—events, advocacy, practice management and technology, standards, and policy teams, to name just a few.

It’s easy to imagine that the central social media team might find it hard to prioritise which content to share to avoid overwhelming their audiences. That’s where the team’s content strategy comes into play.

“The content volume is there—the challenge for us is to make sure everybody has a voice and that we channel their content in the right way,” explained RACGP. “Our strategic plan guides where our focus should be.” The plan outlines our key content pillars and details key areas to prioritise on social media.”

The team can get a holistic view of all content in the workflow and schedule content in advance in the planner, ensuring all key content pillars are covered.

To help encourage high-performance content from content creators, the Hootsuite team delivered extensive training that focused on writing engaging social media content, as well as on the nuances of creating content for individual social media channels.

“The content training with Hootsuite was great,” said RACGP. “It has given the content creators the tools and knowledge to write more compelling social media content aligned with our brand voice. This cuts down on editing cycles, creating even more efficiencies.”

The content experts at RACGP have gained a deep appreciation for the role social media can play in promoting their work. Today, these experts are incorporating social media into their own content workflows and communications plans.

In the past, the RACGP had no way to track social media campaigns effectively. With Hootsuite Enterprise and Brandwatch, the team can now tag posts and campaigns easily, monitor conversations using social listening, and provide regular reporting to stakeholders across the organisation.

When the RACGP held its annual conference online for the first time, the social media team set up a campaign for the event and trained its content experts to tag each post on social media. With the ability to collate all content performance metrics into a single report, the team noted a 20% increase in conference mentions compared to the previous year—a huge victory, considering it was their first time hosting it digitally.

RACGP also uses Hootsuite and Brandwatch to monitor crisis situations like COVID-19, track competitors, and tune in to health-related trends. For example, in 2020 the team monitored over 2,000 mentions of “telehealth” across platforms.

“We already knew that GPs felt this was a component of care that they needed to continue providing to patients,” explained RACGP. “We provided our social listening insights to validate that the wider general practice community felt the same way.”

The RACGP has seen a substantial increase in its audience engagement and follower numbers. In the first year, engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn increased by 87%, 130%, and 370% respectively, and follower numbers on LinkedIn grew from 17,000 to 24,000. Instagram is a newer platform for RACGP, so it’s too early to report on these metrics, but initial results are positive.

The RACGP’s first year with Hootsuite was all about building content strategies, onboarding content experts, and empowering people to use the platform. What’s next for RACGP? The team plans to extend its social listening strategies further to inform better content.