Social Media Management Plan

Introduction

Social media has transformed the way we, as a Council, communicate and engage with residents, partners, businesses and visitors. It is now our main platform for communities to receive information and news from us. All of our social media channels have grown over time, and we continue to use these to their potential to keep our audiences connected more than ever.

Since we began our social media journey in 2009, we have built up a substantial audience and now directly engage with over 60,000 users across our corporate X, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, You Tube and LinkedIn accounts. We support Services to create their own accounts where there is a clear need and have created a strong family of social media accounts across the Council providing best practice, advice and guidance.

Social media is embedded in our communications approach and each of our channels are an extension of the Council brand. We appreciate that social media is an ever-changing landscape, so we will review and adapt to ensure that we manage our social media presence effectively. There will be developments that will inform this plan in the future, so it is likely that this will be an evolving document that will respond to changes in the social media space.

Objectives

This plan is aligned to our Corporate Communications Strategy and supports our core principle to be digital by default - placing the strongest emphasis of our work on digital and social media activity. This increases efficiency, reduces costs and is environmentally friendly. It also helps us focus on target audiences, be insight driven and enables us to fully evaluate communications activity.

Social media is a key communications channel for the Council to engage with people who live, work, and visit here. To do this effectively, our social media channels will:

• Deliver timely, clear, and concise messages to our audience.
• Provide accessible and inclusive content designed to reach different audience groups and their needs.
• Build a trusted relationship with our communities by sharing jargon free and factual information.
• Listen and learn from our audiences using insights to inform future messages and campaigns.

Our Approach

Our social media audience is big. We have over 60,000 followers across our accounts and our content generates on average 760,000 impressions per month. We are reaching a lot of people. Our content needs to be social; we need to engage with our audiences and create content that is relevant to them. Our social media feeds should not be a stream of information updates, they need to have a human element and include content that audiences can relate to and that hopefully inspires them to share and positively engage with us.

As a team, our operational objectives for social media are to:

• Develop a strong social media presence by continuing to grow our channels. We will do this by innovative content creation. We will strike a balance of ‘call-to-action’ content and community / people-focused content to ensure that our channels are interesting and, more importantly, engaging.
• Adopt a human and trusted tone of voice across our channels that encourages conversation and engagement.
• Set protocols and have our social media guidelines clearly available on our channels. We will monitor our accounts and take action where appropriate.
• Focus on quality rather than quantity. Too many messages can cause people to disengage so we will make sure that we deliver content that is appropriate to each of our channels.
• Tailor content for each channel. We use a variety of social media platforms, and each has its own purpose and audience. To keep our engagement rate high, it’s essential that content shared is relevant and of interest to that audience.
• Share trusted information in a timely manner. This is particularly important when dealing with crisis communications and providing regular updates, emergency response and resilience messages.
• Evaluate regularly and learn from insights to make improvements. By regularly reviewing our performance we can adjust our channels and the content we share.
• Provide leadership and strategic direction in our social media practice and management. We will share learning across our team and with our wider network of account admins. We will also conduct regular audits of the entire Council network to ensure that Council teams are using social media effectively and in line with our strategy.

Our Channels

Facebook

North Ayrshire Council on Facebook

Facebook is our community focused channel. This audience engage most with Council news, community stories and people-centred content.

Photo and video content performs well on this channel and followers regularly react, share and comment on matters that have that resident focus, for example Council policy, project announcements, community stories and case studies.

As an example of the impact human-interest content can have, a story featuring a young local resident was posted by the Communications team, he was pictured beside one of our waste collection team, with his ‘mini’ blue bin.

The post resulted in over 274,700 impressions and 4,098 engagements showing that ad hoc personable posts are well received.

Recent evaluation has also shown that breaking news and emergency information performs well on Facebook with an impressive share rate, meaning that key messages are being disseminated much wider than on other channels.

Emergency and resilience information shared about Storm Eowyn (January 2025) over a 7-day period on our Facebook page alone resulted in 811,251 impressions (opportunities to see), 1,528 reactions, 1,150 comments and 2,326 shares. Content most engaged with was around service updates and closures, demonstrating that Facebook is a useful platform for sharing urgent updates with our communities.

To continually improve our Facebook channel, we will:

• Share content that is proven to work. Ensure that all content shared on this channel has a community element by shaping corporate policy, announcements and developments into clear messages that communicate the impact on people within North Ayrshire.
• Give the Council a personality. Share human interest stories about how our Council teams are working in the community and how the services they deliver make a difference.
• Continue to use the platform for Council news, including emergency and resilience communications, tailoring messages as appropriate to provide a local angle to show the benefit and impact on our communities.
• Be innovative with content. We will share content in various methods including photo, video, reels and stories to boost engagement.
• Monitor the account and engage with our audience providing transparent information to comments and direct messages. We will enforce our social media guidelines to safeguard users and our online community as appropriate.
• Conduct regular evaluation and share insights within our own team and services we work with to help us make improvements to future communications and campaigns.

X (formerly Twitter)

North Ayrshire Council on X

While X is decreasing in popularity globally, it still functions as one of our corporate accounts. By evaluating our X account, we have insights to suggest that it isn’t the best channel for communicating with our residents.

Community content and service call-to-action posts are consistently under-performing. However, capital investment project information, key service updates, emergency and resilience messaging, event coverage, regional and partnership working content still generates engagement.

Short form content performs best on the platform with text, photo and video format well received by followers. Our follower network mainly consists of partners, elected members and staff and so content should be tailored to meet that audience expectation.

Regular top posts on our X channel include recruitment posts advertising Council vacancies, Election results and key announcements around service updates and closures. There is room for more partnership working on X and we will engage more with partners and stakeholders to share information relevant to our followers.

An example of the difference between breaking news versus community content, was a post that announced free sanitary provision to tackle period poverty. The original national news story announcing that North Ayrshire was the first local authority to implement the scheme received 296 engagements. Follow up posts aimed at our communities to promote where to access provision were less effective on this channel often receiving under 10 engagements. This demonstrates that we receive good audience engagement on X where we can break news or show we are the first at delivering a new policy initiative or project. The ongoing promotion directed at our communities with the call-to-action would perform better on Facebook.

To continually improve our X channel, we will:

• Share content relevant to the audience. We will shift our focus on this channel and only share content that fits into the following categories - Capital and infrastructure project information, key service updates, event coverage, regional and partnership working. Council campaigns, regular call-to-action posts, community stories will be shared on other channels unless deemed appropriate.
• Continue to use the platform for crisis communication, engaging with partners and sharing information.
• Be innovative with content. We will share content in various methods including photo and video to boost engagement.
• Continue to review and research the platform. The perception, performance and popularity of X as a channel is changing and we will act on any updates where necessary.
• Monitor the account and engage with our audience providing transparent, trusted information. We will enforce our social media guidelines to safeguard users and our online community as appropriate.
• Conduct regular evaluation and share insights within our own team and services we work with to help us make improvements to future communications and campaigns.

LinkedIn

North Ayrshire Council on LinkedIn

Over the past couple of years, Linked In has been one of our fastest growing channels and there is a lot of potential for engagement here particularly with businesses and stakeholders.

The content we share on this channel is filtered so that it specifically fits with Linked In’s purpose of engaging with the business community. Successful content themes on this channel are recruitment, capital projects, infrastructure and regeneration news. Having tested service update content in the past this often results in little or no engagement.

Recently, by tagging partner accounts in relevant posts, we have boosted our visibility, engagement rate and undoubtedly this has resulted in channel growth. Most of our top performing posts in terms of impressions and engagements are features on recent construction developments e.g. Flood Protection Scheme works and Solar PV farms.

One example was a news article about our three flood protection schemes, this post included links to construction partners and generated 12,000 impressions and 2,145 engagements – extremely high statistics for our performance on this channel.

To continually improve our Linked In channel we will:

• Share content relevant to the audience. We will only share content that fits into the following categories - Council news, capital and infrastructure project information, event coverage, regional and partnership working. Council campaigns, regular call-to-action posts, community stories will be shared on other channels unless deemed appropriate.
• Be innovative with content. We will share content in various methods including photo and video to boost engagement. Long form text and news articles also perform well on this channel.
• Monitor the account and engage with our audience providing transparent information. We will enforce our social media guidelines to safeguard users and our online community as appropriate.
• Conduct regular evaluation and share insights within our own team and services we work with to help us make improvements to future communications and campaigns.

Instagram

North Ayrshire Council on Instagram

Our Instagram account is named Love North Ayrshire and has a specific purpose of sharing tourism content, encouraging visitors to the area and those who live here to share their experiences. This is a space for visual storytelling of what North Ayrshire has to offer and no Council service content is shared on this channel e.g. resident updates, news, etc.

Often we share crowd sourced content i.e. images from our followers. This is gathered from Instagram when people use #LoveNorthAyrshire or #VisitNorthAyrshire.

We continue to create engaging new content to share on this channel and have experimented with reel video and stories to showcase the area. Our top performing posts in 2024 were reels – Visit to Arran and North Ayrshire Landmark videos both resulting in high engagements and views of over 6.4k and 4.6k respectively.

To continually improve our Instagram channel, we will:

• Share content that is relevant to our audience – scenic and informative posts using photo and video to encourage visitors to our area and boost civic pride.
• Engage proactively with relevant users (visitors, tourism agencies, partners etc) to ensure access to quality content and grow followers.
• Reach non-followers through keywords, tags, shares from other accounts (e.g. Visit Scotland) and utilise the stories function to increase reach and engagement beyond our posts.
• Monitor the account and engage with our audience. We will enforce our social media guidelines to safeguard users and our online community as appropriate.
• Conduct regular evaluation and share insights within our own team and services we work with to help us make improvements to future communications and campaigns.

TikTok

North Ayrshire Council on TikTok

Although TikTok is our youngest social media channel, we have seen impressive results from this to date. We continue to grow our follower base and learn how to use it in a way that will resonate with our audience.

This account, again named Love North Ayrshire, is the younger sister to our Instagram channel. We continue to test and trial content that works. Initially we have focussed on tourism content, however we intend to explore a broader offering which covers North Ayrshire as a welcoming community, showcasing the best, the unusual and the unique aspects of life within our area.

To date, content about specific events and quirky tourism hotspots have performed best. Content picked up and shared by partners e.g. Visit Scotland has also positively impacted our reach and post-performance.

To continually improve our TikTok channel we will:

• Share content that is relevant to our audience – attention grabbing, concise, scenic and informative videos to encourage visitors to our area and boost civic pride.
• Monitor what content performs well, research trends and refine content based on this.
• Engage proactively with relevant users (visitors, tourism agencies, partners etc) to ensure access to quality content and grow followers.
• Reach non-followers through keywords, tags and shares from other accounts.
• Monitor the account and engage with our audience. We will enforce our social media guidelines to safeguard users and our online community as appropriate.
• Conduct regular evaluation and share insights within our own team and services we work with to help us make improvements to future communications and campaigns.

YouTube

North Ayrshire Council on YouTube

The aim of our YouTube channel is to be an Informative Video Resource for residents, communities, and stakeholders.

Content is audience driven and assists Council Services to share information about service delivery, facilities, developments, and acts as an educational resource for our residents e.g. how to recycle tips. A video on how to recycle food waste using your brown bin has been our top performing video since 2013 with 16,500 views and 77,200 impressions.

We’re aiming for video views on this channel, not subscribers. More views should encourage more engagements and subscribers, but it’s not our priority on this channel as we use other platforms to engage and have conversations.

We try to focus on most searched content and content that will be useful at key points within the year. Using insights from Google, YouTube statistics and insights from other channels we can see what’s performing well. There is also the opportunity to build on our relationships with Services, Customer Services and Complaints to find out what are the recurring enquiries so that we can create/share relevant video content.

To continually improve our YouTube channel, we will:

• Share content that is relevant to our audience – interesting and informative videos to educate our audience and bring Council initiatives to life.
• Continually optimise our channel ensuring that our video content is fresh, tagged, searchable, organised and visually appealing.
• Monitor the account and engage with our audience. We will enforce our social media guidelines to safeguard users and our online community as appropriate.
• Conduct regular evaluation and share insights within our own team and services we work with to help us make improvements to future content.

Wider Council Network

Where appropriate we support Services to create their own accounts and have a strong family of social media accounts across the Council providing information to our communities. We recognise that social media is not for everyone and any request for a new account requires staff to consider their objectives, implementation plan, evaluation and risk management for the social media platform they wish to use.

On approval all accounts are added to our Social Media Register document, this enables us to keep an overview of the channels being used and helps us to optimise how the Council’s social media network can work together.

New Developments

The social media landscape is always changing and as a team we keep up with trends and new channel developments. Adding anything new to our corporate network requires staff resource, content creation and management so any additions will be meticulously evaluated to ensure that the channel has a defined purpose and will serve us in achieving Council objectives.

Recent developments that we continue to monitor are new channels including BlueSky and Threads. To protect Council reputation and safeguard our social media real estate, we reserved North Ayrshire Council usernames on both platforms. Recent research and testing in relation to Threads suggests that the demand locally on these platforms is low. Evidence shows there is a very small audience base and little appetite for a North Ayrshire Council presence on this platform. We will monitor these and only activate North Ayrshire accounts where there is purpose and demand.

Another channel we continue to monitor is WhatsApp. This could be a useful platform to broadcast messages corporately and/or to key audience groups like tenants or parents for example. It’s a one-way channel and so offers a relatively low resource option and is low risk in terms of negative sentiment given that followers can only engage by reacting on the post with emojis or by sharing to other WhatsApp users. There is evidence from other local authorities to suggest that this could be an effective channel.

In our efforts to promote North Ayrshire and develop a place brand for the area, we are trialling a Love North Ayrshire Facebook page. This addition to our tourism social media channels would help us reach a larger, relevant audience; the user demographic on Facebook fits with people who are likely to make travel decisions, there is also the opportunity to promote events, engage with tourism stakeholders and local groups. The channel will be tested and monitored during 2025 and if successful adopted into our corporate social media approach.

Measuring Success

This plan will be fluid to ensure it adapts to changes in the social media environment. Our team culture of monitoring and evaluation will allow us to review our channels regularly and shift our direction when appropriate based on insights. We will listen to our audiences and respond by adapting our approach when needed. Through social media we want to continue to build relationships and have conversations with our communities, and delivering the right messages on the right channels will help us to do that.

We know we are hitting the mark when we measure our success against the following outcomes:

• We have more engaged audiences across our social media channels. This will be monitored via KPIs on our average engagement rate and impressions.
• We have streamlined, quality content across our channels. Each of our channels has a clear purpose and audience, and success is tailoring content and using each channel effectively for its intended purpose.
• Our social media following continues to grow and we reach more people.
• We can attribute our social media campaigns to behaviour change and delivery of service outcomes.
• Proactively work with partners to organise content and expand our reach.
• Build trust and positive sentiment on our channels, this can be measured by sentiment and social listening.
• Grow our own expertise and share this with our social media family. Working with network admins across the Council we can monitor and evaluate Council wide performance.