One of their TikTok clips has chalked-up 1.4 million views alone. How is Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust using video effectively? By focussing on people. Anuji Evans lifts the lid.
I’ve always loved storytelling – just ask my nine-year-old kid. In his home made Mother’s Day card recently he wrote a list of things to thank me for. You know, the usual, like tidying his room and making his dinner. But he signed off with “telling me crazy stories”.
How I do love a good tale – even he recognises that. And so, it’s only fitting that this is what I’ve continued to do throughout my career as a journalist and communications professional. Of course, they’re true stories which I hope will make a difference.
So how do me and the team at Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust do this? Primarily through our social media channels using photographs of real people and/or capturing them on video. Whether that’s a member of staff, or a patient, it’s important to us that our comms content is fronted by faces that people can relate to.
And we are there to guide and support them in telling their stories.
As cliche as it sounds, the three hospitals, GP and community services run by the Trust is our patch and we build contacts constantly, working with them to raise awareness of services that will benefit patients, change the way the NHS works and save lives.
The Bowel Screening Service is a great example. The team have a giant inflatable bowel. And why wouldn’t that be a great opportunity to create video tour of the bouncy back end? Yes, the bowel was impressive, but even more so was Anna, an enthusiastic bowel screening practitioner who took us on the journey, explaining the importance of the test. The video was a hit – worldwide.
Millions on TikTok
It’s currently at 1.4 million views on our TikTok channel with more than 1,100 comments such as “She’s (Anna) wonderful at explaining”, “I have a kit at home, I’m definitely going to use it” and “bowel screening saved my mum. If you have this kit use it.” Anna is originally from Ghana and we saw a sharp rise in views and comments from her motherland.
Content to us is about spotting an opportunity to tell a story and seizing it. We’ve been doing that for a while now, just in different forms so that we continue to move with the times.
We began with filming our videos in landscape – but when TikTok suddenly started to soar, it was the boss who pushed us towards the portrait platform. Yes, it came with challenges. Would we have film the video twice, in landscape and portrait? Would the content have to change completely for the different audiences? How much extra work would it involve for our small team?
A hit in Bengali
But we made it work without too much extra graft. After some careful scrutiny of the data, it soon became apparent that audiences on our other channels liked the snappier and shorter films. The inflatable bowel video enjoyed a higher than usual engagement figure on our Facebook page, as did our measles symptoms explainer videos in English and Bengali. Both are doing well on all platforms and there are many others.
We now post our TikTok vids as reels on Facebook and Instagram and change the aspect ratio to square for X (formerly known as Twitter) and LinkedIn. So yes, we do two different versions but only with minor edits. And yes, it still takes time, but it’s worth it for the results we see.
Not all our videos go across all channels. And it’s not all about the reels. We use static imagery of our people and patients on Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn. The accompanying posts explain the narrative and the engagement continues to grow as do our followers.
Our latest campaign incorporating our Trust values and strategy is all about the different characters working within our organisation. We share a photograph each week of someone who has made a difference and give our audience a snapshot into their working life. It’s simple yet effective, as the data again is showing us.
Storytelling can be done in many different forms. Generic campaign material, with assets using text does have its place somewhere, but for us we must never lose sight of the most important part of our content – the people.
You can follow Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust on Facebook here and on TikTok here.
Anuji Evans is external communications manager at Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust.
