7 key lessons from Orlo’s BIG Social 2024: building trust in public sector communications

Last week, Orlo welcomed the country’s community of public sector comms professionals to our third annual BIG Social. On Tuesday 22nd October, almost 200 attendees gathered at Birmingham’s Hippodrome for a day packed full of inspiring sessions and opportunities to network with public sector peers.

Our speakers, panellists and attendees descended to Birmingham en masse – marking 2024 as Orlo’s biggest BIG Social in history. Throughout the day, the atmosphere was buzzing with comms teams from across the length and breadth of the UK representing healthcare, housing, local and central government, policing, transport, education and beyond. Delegates came ready to reflect on the challenges of the past year and the opportunities to come.

Given that 76% of the public don’t trust MPs and 32% see loss of trust as the biggest threat to democracy, the theme of this year’s event was how comms teams can foster trust in order to build stronger communities.

If you missed out on attending the day, or if you’re looking for a recap, here are our seven key takeaways.

As part of her interactive quiz, Social Media Consultant Luan Wise shared that people use an average of 6.7 social media platforms. However, that doesn’t mean your organisation needs a presence on every single one. Public sector comms teams should identify their goals; be realistic about available resources, and pick a few platforms to focus on.

Although many platforms have a significant audience overlap, it’s important to consider where your target users are actually spending time. For example, Alice Skeats highlighted that 42% of neighbours that visit Nextdoor each month do not also visit Instagram. The team at Nextdoor also ran through the benefits of the platform in enabling teams to geotarget specific communities, for example in the event of a local emergency public sector organisations can opt to push a message to neighbours in a specific street.

Phoebe Russell from In The Style uttered these immortal four words in her Q&A and they set the tone for the day. As Luan noted, “there’s no ‘hack’ to meaningful engagement with communities – it’s called ‘social’ media for good reason”. It requires listening; spending time engaging in the comments; setting clear, realistic expectations and delivering open and honest communication.

Julian Pike from housing organisation United Welsh also reinforced the value of two-way dialogue when managing feedback. He explained that trust is built incrementally when United Welsh acknowledge and act on all of their community’s input and experiences – whether positive or negative. Julian’s team makes sure to close the feedback loop, so that residents know for sure that their voices have been heard. Ultimately, trust is born from authenticity and transparency.

With changing governments and other financial constraints, public sector comms professionals are currently grappling with where they can save money and boost efficiency. Understandably, these limitations can make teams feel like their hands are tied. The good news is that significant cost savings can be unlocked when teams focus on prevention rather than intervention, with the average cost per year to achieve good health sitting at £3,800 versus £13,500 once a health issue has presented. Social media can be a useful tool in encouraging people to change behaviour to prevent health issues, for example as a platform to run quit smoking or healthy lifestyle campaigns.

In answer to a question from the audience about motivating people to change a specific behaviour, Phoebe recommended taking a creative approach and looking to creators who have influence within the target community. Rather than engaging in top-down broadcast of messaging, delegates discussed successful public sector case studies such as an influencer-run campaign to reduce knife crime. Tapping into small-scale, local influencers with the right following can also make these campaigns fairly inexpensive.

Often, a message is better received by a community when it’s delivered by someone they already trust. BIG Social attendees heard that, when planning your campaigns, it’s crucial to listen to your communities to drive decision-making. Even though leadership or local councillors may wish to put their name and face behind a public initiative, your audience may well engage more deeply with front line workers or representatives from their own community. It’s important to put egos aside.

During our panel discussion, Helena Hornby from Staffordshire County Council explained that her team is often under pressure from members wishing to front campaigns in the lead up to elections, however data shows that the public are more likely to engage with person-led stories. In a recent campaign, her team managed to develop a story that ticked all boxes, with a local councillor supporting an initiative to provide care leavers with prom dresses. Another example came from Ross Wigham (Director of Communications for Northumbria Healthcare) who worked with a local ice hockey team to front a men’s health campaign.

In his inspiring afternoon session, Ross dove deep into the strategy behind Northumbria Healthcare achieving 78% trust – which sits in stark comparison to the national average of 25%. He explained that its success came down to simple, old school engagement.

Switching from virtual community meetings to in-person events enabled the team to gather invaluable insights and intelligence, more than had been possible through video meetings. Their winning strategy relied on everyday public relations, such as meeting with communities face-to-face. Ross also discussed the Trust’s plans for a new hospital in Berwick, describing the sheer number of events, briefings and drone views carried out with the local community in advance of its opening event. Ross emphasised that open and honest communication is key and that it needs to flow both ways.

Note that although this shift sounds simple, it’s by no means the easy option. Northumbria Healthcare serves an incredibly vast geographical area, so in-person meetings regularly involved Ross’s team travelling hundreds of miles.

A common theme for this year’s BIG Social centred around using data to shine a light on where you need to focus. Many of our speakers explored the benefits of uncovering exactly what your community cares about either by leveraging social listening; running surveys; engaging with them online or meeting them in person.

Julian Pike described housing organisation United Welsh’s journey towards improving trust amongst its communities. By measuring and benchmark resident trust, United Welsh learned that there was an opportunity to improve the way they acted on feedback, particularly in relation to repairs and maintenance. This insight gave the team a crucial focus in terms of where to direct their efforts in order to improve trust long-term.

Finally, many of our speakers emphasised that fostering stronger and more resilient communities needs a long-term commitment. It requires incremental, daily work, rather than large ‘firework’ campaigns. There’s no silver bullet.

Our third BIG Social closed on a hopeful note, with Orlo’s Managing Director Phil Evans noting that the trust levels achieved by Ross’s team at Northumbria Healthcare signal a compelling opportunity within the public sector. The work of Northumbria Healthcare shows that when a team opens up dialogue with their community, listens to and understands their needs and acts on feedback, their experience can be improved immeasurably. Ultimately, this is the foundation upon which trust is built.