News
Using social media to tackle Sheffield’s sugar problem
Most of us know having too much sugar is bad for us, but do you know how much is too much? This was one of the red flags that came out of our research for Sheffield City Council. They appointed us to create a five-year behaviour change campaign to help the people of Sheffield reduce their sugar intake and bring down the high rates of obesity and tooth decay in the city.
During the research phase, it became apparent that most people didn’t know about Public Health England’s recommended daily limits of sugar for adults and children. Those that did, found the information confusing.
We set out on a mission to raise awareness and simplify some of the messages around sugar. It began with a dedicated campaign website and, following an initiative in schools in Feb 2020, we started building the campaign’s presence on Facebook and Instagram.
We curated a monthly social media calendar by defining five key themes for our day-to-day social posts, including facts on sugar, healthy swaps and what the council was doing to support the campaign. These five topics are used as a guide to help us plan posts each month while keeping an eye on current affairs to ensure we can tie in content and always have something relevant to say. We also mix these posts in with regular campaign work. We’re currently asking our followers to share their low sugar recipes for a chance to be featured in the Sheffield Family Guide to Smart Sugar Swaps.
With full-time ownership and management of the campaign we follow accounts that align with our thinking, such as local Sheffield groups and anything focused on healthy eating. We actively like, comment and share content regularly to increase followers and keep ‘Sheffield is Sweet Enough’ at the top of people’s minds.
We’ve learnt a lot of good practice tips for each social channel and try to apply them to our posts. Such as, focusing more on video content for Instagram, keeping posts short and specific on Facebook and always responding to messages promptly. We’re also keen to keep things on-trend, so we always look out for initiatives we can piggyback, such as Love Your Gut week or the Government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme.
One thing that really helps with engagement is sharing other people’s experiences or creating polls on stories to get regular interaction. We’ve also had great success with sharing low sugar recipes – creating and sharing photos and videos of the finished dishes on the Sheffield is Sweet Enough social channels.
Everything is in-house – all videos and images are developed at a low cost by our creative team and are then posted out by us up to three times a week, with additional activity on stories. As prolific users of social media, it’s a dream job to be trusted with a client’s social media accounts and have the creative freedom to keep coming up with fresh content. We love it!
Whether you already have a social media presence or want to get started, we can help with everything from brainstorming, strategy development and planning a campaign calendar to copywriting, creative development, and day-to-day management. You can get an idea of what we do in our social media blog post. Give us a call if you’d like to find out more.
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About The Foundry
The Foundry is a strategic communications agency, based in Manchester, delivering fully-integrated marketing campaigns for B2B, B2C, public sector and healthcare clients.
Marketing services that support patient education include qualitative and quantitative research, social media campaigns, educational websites, CPD programmes, online learning tools, in-clinic training materials, posters and patient literature.
For more information, call 0161 926 8444.