In this video Polly Barnfield, OBE, analyses a Buckinghamshire Council social‑media post about illegal fly‑tipping to illustrate how councils can raise awareness of environmental issues. She highlights the post’s use of stark, high‑contrast images that shock viewers, concise educational copy that explains how cash‑in‑hand payments make waste carriers untraceable, and targeted hashtags that attract environmentally‑concerned audiences. The post generated strong engagement – 93 interactions, 59 comments and 58 shares – demonstrating that provocative content can spark public discussion. Barnfield suggests adding a brief FAQ link to pre‑empt misinformation and reduce disputes. She then recommends that councils monitor and optimise their social channels using a social‑media analytics platform (referred to as “maybe tech”), which provides dashboards of follower counts across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, post frequency, engagement rates, best‑performing posts, and a content calendar, enabling regular reporting and strategic adjustments.
Chapters
Today we're looking at how you can raise awareness of a particular topic on social media. This is Buckinghamshire Council and councils obviously have a lot of controversial subjects that they need to talk about here and there, but one of the things that we should all come together on is anything to do with the environment. And this post from Bucks Council was actually all about fly tipping. They were showing the images of some fly tipping which had been done in the local area, as you can see, which I think would give anybody a sort of sense of outrage and shock and shows the kind of damage to the environment. And here they are in here explaining that this is usually as a result of someone paying someone cash in hand, therefore the actual fly tipping can't be tracked and they can't be held accountable. So I think there's a few things here they did really, really well with the image contrast. These images here are clearly designed to shock and to get people's att, as you can see. And of course that's exactly what it would do. Then, of course, the post itself, you know, if you're hiring someone, cash payments make it hard to trace the waste carrier. So it's about education and then it's saying that payback transfer can stop the flight effort in their tracks. And then they've given a link to the Buckinghamshire Council website where people can find out more. And then they've done the hashtags as well, which again, um, would be anyone that's, you know, particularly interested in the environment and would be looking at these or anything to do with fly tipping. So there's lots of good things in here because I think it's about educating people rather than schooling them, which I think is really important when dealing with the public. So it helps raise awareness without actually, you know, granny sucking eggs kind of moment. And people don't feel preached at. It is, of course going to get lots of opinions. As you can see, it got 93 engagements, 59 comments and 58 shares. And that's a lot for a council post. And you'll see that with raising awareness, but anything like that, it is obviously going to get people talking, the good, the bad and the ugly, of course, which. So I think one of the things that they could have managed is creating like a little FAQ link or something in here. So maybe rather than just the website, which all about fly tipping and it may be like doing like a little FAQ or something like that. So that might fend off a lot of issues. But I think that as long as they are getting people talking and Getting people, you know, to discuss. That's exactly what this post is designed to do. It's designed to shock and get people to engage, and that's exactly what they've done. Now, if I was these guys at Buckinghamshire Council, I would want to be ensuring that I was keeping on top of my content and social in social channels, making sure that they're all performing as they should be. So I would go to my maybe platform and go to maybe tech, and then in here you can. They can see. So I've gone to maybe tech. But obviously for these guys, it would be Buckinghamshire Council that they would click on here. And then from here they can view a full report of all of their social media across all the channels. But here they can get a really good snapshot, so they can see how many followers they've got across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. They can look at the number of posts being posted across them and they can look at the number of engagement that they regularly get. They can look at the posts per day, they can look at the engagements per post, engagements per day. They can look at their best post, so what's their best post across that time period. And then they can also view their calendar and the calendar of any other business as well. And it just means that they're kind of staying on top of things and they know how they're performing. And they might use it for, for example, I don't know, like a monthly report, that kind of thing. If you've got any questions whatsoever, click on the little blue button. We love to.
