From podcast to national TV: How The Walton Centre used social media to amplify important neuro stories

At Orlo’s BIG Social 2025, Sam Fleet (Senior External Comms Officer, The Walton Centre NHS Trust) presented a case study exploring his experiences starting a successful podcast, and working with Channel 5 on a TV documentary about the hospital.

The Walton Centre NHS Trust in Liverpool is a specialist neuroscience hospital that provides comprehensive neurology, neurosurgery, spinal, pain management and neuro‑rehabilitation services. It’s the UK’s only NHS trust dedicated solely to clinical neuroscience, and its neurosurgical units are the biggest in the country.

One of the core aims of The Walton Centre is to raise national awareness of the important work carried out by its expert staff. With a comms department consisting of only three people: Sam (specialising in external comms); an Internal Comms Manager and a comms lead, this is a hefty task for a small team.

In 2024, its comms team struck upon the idea to create a podcast – aware of other organisations’ success in this space. Sam’s background in radio was also key in defining this new scope of work. The team felt that, given their available resources and skills, a podcast was a natural vehicle to tell the stories of The Walton Centre’s neuroscientists and patients, and raise awareness of the important work carried out at the hospital.

Phase One: The Neuro Stories Podcast

The Neuro Stories Podcast was born. Initially, it focused on short interviews with key members of its medical team. After recording and editing each episode, they were published on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts.

Sam had no budget to promote the podcast, relying solely on organic social media. Nevertheless, people were hooked. The podcast quickly became an effective channel for raising awareness of the neuroscientists behind The Walton Centre, creating an engaged audience for the Trust.

Phase Two: TV documentary makers show interest

On the back of the podcast, the Trust was approached by production company Renegade Stories who were in touch with Channel 5 about creating a neuroscience documentary. They wanted to highlight the highly complex work carried out by The Walton Centre’s specialist neuroscientists, and shine a spotlight on patients’ stories.

Given that the camera crew would be on site for a minimum of six weeks, Sam and the wider team at the Walton Centre were naturally cautious about opening their doors. Their priority was ensuring that disruptions to patients and staff were kept to a minimum. However, they couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to share The Walton Centre’s fantastic work on national TV. After careful consideration, Sam and his team agreed for the documentary to be made. Trauma Room One was born.

Social media content strategy

Sam wanted to make the most of this unique opportunity to showcase the work of the hospital’s expert staff, as well as patients’ inspiring stories. With no budget to carry out paid advertising, and using Canva to create engaging social posts, Sam created a social content schedule for posting organically when each episode was on air:

• Before the Programme Started – Sam wanted to remind people to tune in, introduce the medical teams that would feature on the episode, and get audiences excited about seeing The Walton Centre’s medical team on screen.
  
• During Each Episode – Sam wanted to engage with audiences around what was happening on screen, encouraging conversation and further raising awareness of the work of The Walton Centre.
  
• After the Episode had Finished – This was an opportunity to deepen the conversation in real time around the people, procedures and stories that had been shared during the episode.
  

All series-related content was tagged #TraumaRoomOne, so that the team could analyse these posts’ performance.

As Channel 5 ran multiple replays of the series on its streaming service, the Walton Centre team have had many opportunities to engage with audiences around individual episodes.

Trauma Room One was a huge success – so much so that Channel 5 decided to run another series.

After welcoming the camera crew to the hospital to film series two, Sam delved into the #TraumaRoomOne results on Orlo to find out which social media tactics he should repeat, and which ones didn’t work so well. He discovered that:

• Each Trauma Room One post reached 4,000 people (on average).
• Posts generated an average of 73% positive or semi-positive sentiment.
• Pre-episode and post-episode social media content was effective in drawing audiences in, and then reflecting on what they had seen.
• Posts shared during the episodes proved less valuable, and were therefore not worth repeating for series two.

With these insights in mind, Sam focused his series two social media content on pre-show reminders and post-episode discussions. He also decided to make closer links between the TV show and the podcast, using the podcast to delve deeper into areas of neuroscience that were explored during the TV series.

And he brought social media audiences along, posting Q&A opportunities on Facebook and Instagram to gather the questions that would be put to experts on the podcast.

Series two: early results

Although in the early stages of delivery, Sam can see that results for series two are as good, if not better, than series one. So far, the results show:

• 12,300 average engagements (an increase of 3,000)
• Increase in positive engagement across all platforms
• Increase in positive sentiment
• Boosted podcast engagement
• More media enquiries

Although The Walton Centre is unable to link the series, podcast or social content with a direct uptick in referrals for neurological conditions, the team has noted anecdotal evidence of patients and their families participating in the chat on social, e.g:

One of the major struggles for public sector organisations at the moment is building, and maintaining trust. And social media and emails play a huge role in that. 

All the best relationships begin with listening and understanding. Simply listening to your communities, just isn’t enough anymore – you need to actively hear and understand what matters to them, what concerns them, and what they value.

Listening

There are three ways to listen effectively:

1. Direct – Surveys, and social comments allow you to hear feedback straight from the community.
2. Indirect – Social listening captures broader sentiment, helping you understand raw opinions and emotions on key topics.
3. Inferred – Patterns in service requests or recurring enquiries reveal what matters to the public, even if they don’t explicitly say it. This can be captured by working in alignment with your customer service teams.

Orlo’s Voice of the Community module helps public sector organisations listen to all three types of feedback all in one place.

Understanding

Once you have this insight, the next step is understanding. Advanced Insights tools can help you monitor sentiment, emotions, and the drivers of trust or distrust. You can track the impact of changes over time and respond in real-time to emerging concerns, such as reactions to policy updates or service changes.

However, this information and data is only valuable if you act on it. This can mean adjusting policy, redesigning services, or refining the content and messaging of your email campaigns to reflect community sentiment.

Acting

A simple but powerful approach is to close the loop. Show your community that their feedback has been heard and used to shape decisions. Whether done individually or at scale, this transparency reinforces trust, encourages ongoing engagement, and makes your community feel valued.

Social media gives you the listening and awareness; email provides the space to explain, guide, and act. If something resonates on social, it can be expanded in a newsletter. If confusion or concern emerges online, an email can clarify. If engagement spikes on a topic, it can shape future content.

In essence, the two channels create a cycle of listening, understanding, and acting, reinforcing trust while amplifying reach and impact.

This session at our BIG Social was titled “Looking back to look forward”, referring to Sam’s past career in radio igniting a spark that led to a podcast – and then a national TV series. By leaning into past skills developed earlier in his professional life, he opened up new opportunities for The Walton Centre that delivered unprecedented results. The work done by the team at The Walton Centre showcases the value of a joined-up approach to comms, across a variety of platforms to complement and also amplify key messaging, which ultimately boosts engagement.

However, Sam also stressed the value in using past data to influence future decision-making. When we move from assumptions to evidence-based choices, we can re-use tactics that have worked in the past, anticipate pitfalls, and allocate resources more effectively – crucial for public sector organisations seeking to maximise every penny of their budget.