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INFORMATION
Social media strategy
Matthew Floratos
14 October 2022
Version 1.0
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Current state

Our channels
Waka Kotahi has 19 active social media channels across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and
TikTok. We also have a YouTube channel currently used for storing video rather than as a social channel
where we’re actively engaging our followers.
Most of our presence and activity is on Facebook and Twitter; we have eight channels on each of the two
platforms.
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What we publish
Of our eight channels on both Facebook and Twitter, each platform has one main corporate channel,
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where we publish updates from projects and other work happening around the country, news about our
services, educational content, marketing, and media releases. We also have seven regional pages on
both platforms, where we predominantly publish traffic and travel updates, along with information about
planned works. Some of our corporate channel content is shared across to our regional pages.
Our LinkedIn channel receives the same corporate content as Facebook and Twitter, as well as updates
promoting our careers portal and current job listings. We also use the channel to publish updates relevant
to transport sector professionals and other professional audiences.
On Instagram we currently publish the same educational and marketing content as on Facebook.
We’re in the process of trialling different content types on TikTok to determine the value of this channel.
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Followers
We have 505,000 followers across our channels, the bulk of them on Facebook (389,700). Twitter
(72,050) and LinkedIn (38,030) also have a substantial following, while Instagram, our newest channel,
has a small following (5,150). Our following has maintained a consistent 13% 12-month rolling growth rate
since the beginning of 2021.
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Reach
Social media allows us to reach New Zealanders in great numbers, and inexpensively compared to
mainstream media channels like television, print, and radio.
Reach on Facebook
In the 2021/22 fiscal year, we reached people 121 million times on Facebook. Reach is measured as the
first time a person views one of our updates. If someone looks at 10 of our updates, they count as 10
towards our total reach.
Of the 121 million reached on Facebook, 62% (74 million) were reached organically—i.e. for free. These 1982
people either follow at least one of our Facebook channels, or saw at least one of our updates because
their friends or family shared it. The remaining 38% of people reached (46 million) were through paid
promotion of our content.
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Advertising on Facebook
Internally in the 2021/22 fiscal year we spent $86,000 on paid promotion of our updates—typically referred
to as boosting—with almost all our boosts being focused on driving reach. Our ad agency partners
manage the promotion of our marketing content, which is where most of our paid reach comes from.
Our internal boosts are spread across our educational content, project updates, and planned works
updates. Our educational content is usually promoted to all people nationwide from the age of 15 up,
because our messaging applies to virtually everyone. However, we do tweak our targeting when
appropriate—for example, our planned works updates are almost always regionally focused, and so will
only be boosted to the community where the work is happening. INFORMATION
Combined reach between Facebook and other channels
Cumulatively across our 19 active social channels, we estimate we reach 130 million people a year (this is
an estimate because Twitter doesn’t report reach).
At the moment we don’t boost content on Twitter or LinkedIn, but we do boost our Instagram updates—
and as with Facebook, our ad agency partners manage the promotion of our marketing on Instagram.
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Engagement
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Engagement is a way of describing any action someone performs in response to one of our updates—e.g.
commenting, liking the update, clicking a link, watching a video, or following us.
As an example of the engagement across our channels, in the 2021/22 fiscal year, we received 264,000
reactions, 146,000 comments, 63,000 shares, and 350,000 clicks. Most comments left in response to our
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updates are neutral in tone. 19% of the 146,000 comments were negative towards us or the topic being
discussed, while 9% were positive.
When people leave negative comments, they’re most often complaining about the perceived state of our
roads, about safety improvements (like safe speeds), about how Waka Kotahi spends its budget, and
about social issues like the cost of living (often referencing fuel taxes and RUC) and the performance of
the government. Social media allows us to reach New Zealanders in great numbers, and inexpensively
compared to mainstream media channels.

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Channel management
Our channels are used by teams across Te Waka Kōtuia, Transport Services, and Te Rōpū Waeture,
along with our ad agency partners.
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The Channels and Standards team in Te Waka Kōtuia is responsible for the overall governance and
management of our channels, along with publishing educational content, project updates, news about our
services, and other corporate updates. Channels and Standards also develops small marketing
campaigns internally (campaigns typically up to $30,000), and also leads community management (i.e.
comment moderation, and warning and banning people who are abusive).
Also in Te Waka Kōtuia, communications and engagement teams provide much of the content published
on our channels, and the Education and Marketing team leads the development of marketing campaigns
published by our ad agency partners. Our ad agencies have direct access to our channels and publish
marketing content to our pages independently of the Channels team, in coordination with the Education
and Marketing team.
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The traffic operation centres in Transport Services (ATOC and WTOC) are responsible for all content on
our regional Facebook and Twitter pages about events that affect people’s journeys across the state
highways. They publish updates about unplanned disruptions like traffic incidents and weather events,
planned events like roadworks, and projects that are affecting state highways. They also help with
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community management across the regional pages.
The Customer Response Team in Te Rōpū Waeture manage the direct messages across all our
channels. They primarily respond to queries about our services, queries about our work, and feedback
about conditions on the state highways.
Our social media policy sets out rules and accountabilities for staff using social media as part of their role.
Further structure and guidance is provided in our social media guidelines, outlining how we do our work,
what tools we use, and our best practice, among other business as usual considerations.
•  Social media policy
•  Social media guidelines
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Guidelines for how the public interacts with us, including appropriate conduct in the comments sections on
our updates, and what the public can expect from us in return, are outlined in our social media community
guidelines, available publicly on our website and linked to (where possible) from our channels.
•  Social media community guidelines

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Tools
We use Sprinklr to publish to our channels, moderate comments and reply to comments and direct
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messages, to analyse commentary across both owned and not-owned social media sources (typically
referred to as listening), and to report on our growth, engagement, reach, campaign performance, and on
listening results. Separately from Sprinklr, we use Facebook’s Business Manager to run internal ad
campaigns and to boost posts.

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What’s going well
We’re delivering creative content with the right tone
We have both the creative and technical expertise internally to produce high-quality, cost-effective
content, ranging from artistic compositions for marketing campaigns to educational video series like Merge
of the Month. Key internal stakeholders are happy with the tone we use in our content—conversational
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while being clear, simple, and authoritative, like a trusted advisor or friend.
Our channels are valued internally
Our people readily approach us with content for publishing on our channels, and love seeing their work
reflected online. We have buy-in for our approach. It’s well-appreciated that in a crowded media market,
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our social channels are vital owned channels for Waka Kotahi, with the ability to reach people widely and
cost-effectively.
Sprinklr is a great social media management tool
It’s helped us save significant resource by cutting down on the time it takes to publish content, moderate
comments, escalate issues between teams, and produce reporting. Since deploying Sprinklr in June 2021,
we’ve invested time in building an auto-comment moderation function within the platform, so that it
essentially acts as an additional staff member for us.
Reducing digital harm is an emphasis for us
We take a zero-tolerance approach to abuse in the replies to our updates, both towards our people and 1982
between commenters, and move quickly to delete abusive comments and caution or ban people who
repeatedly break our community guidelines. Sprinklr automatically prevents the overwhelming majority of
abusive messages ever being visible to the public.
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Our following and engagement is healthy
Our follower growth is steady and above expectations, and we work hard to ensure we’re driving good
engagement across our content. Our regional pages in particular show very high engagement on local
content.
We’re making Waka Kotahi more accessible to New Zealanders
We’re quick to respond to queries and to escalate issues presented by the public, and our Customer
Response Team rapidly responds to enquiries across our channels.
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What we could improve on
We’re great at producing content, but not as good at engaging after publishing
While we produce high-quality content, we know we’re missing the opportunity to proactively engage
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people in the comments—to build conversations and continue educating people. We have the expertise
and skill to do this, but not the resource.
We don’t have a centralised content calendar
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No centralised content calendar between teams means we can inadvertently have scheduling clashes,
and that our communications and engagement teams can’t see upcoming events and posts.
There could be greater consistency in tone and style across our regional pages
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While there is general coherence in the updates the traffic operation centres publish, there are some
differences in style between the teams.
Our marketing, when it appears on our channels, isn’t social media-first
For major campaigns, our ad agency partners often rely on assets generated from TV commercials. This
typically results in content that isn’t fit-for-purpose on social. For smaller campaigns they take a social-first
approach, and this isn’t a concern. It can also be a challenge for agencies to understand our audience.
The public’s reaction to our content is heavily influenced by current transport issues, and especially by the
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public perception of how Waka Kotahi is performing. Internally, we have the institutional knowledge to
design our content so it can be as well received as possible by our audience—not being embedded with
us, our ad agency partners understandably lack this knowledge.
We lack a comprehensive approach to archiving
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We’re required to maintain an archive of our communication with the public, but we currently have no way
to retain deleted comments or posts other than screenshotting them and saving them internally, a very
resource-intensive process.

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Future state

Our principles
What we publish
We have the freedom to experiment with new and existing platforms
Social media platforms frequently change the way they serve content to people—by changing algorithms,
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updating the design of platforms, or deciding to favour some content types (e.g. video) over others—and
because what’s trendy (and what isn’t) changes just as rapidly, we have to be agile in how we produce
content for our channels.
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We recognise over time new platforms will emerge while others may become less important to us
The popularity of some platforms may decline among the public over time. Additionally, we may not be
making the most of the channels we already have—for example, we currently use YouTube as a video
repository rather than as a social channel—and so even in their present state our existing channels may
offer us opportunities for growth and development.
We have the freedom to test new ways of communicating with our audience
Some approaches will fail, while others will succeed—we’ll be brave, and will engage people where
they’re spending their time, and talk with them in ways they’ll find engaging.
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We’ll showcase the work Waka Kotahi does and tell the Waka Kotahi story
Our channels are well-placed to promote our work and what we’re delivering for people—for sharing work
we’re supporting in communities around the country (i.e. projects delivered by our partners, like local
councils) and telling human-led stories using our people, to build better knowledge of Waka Kotahi and to
build public confidence in our work.
Our regional Facebook and Twitter channels have highly engaged local audiences who want to hear about
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what’s happening in their communities—we must maximise our use of these channels to tell these stories.
We’ll ensure we have a good content mix
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Our channels should have a strong variety of material to appeal to as much of the public as possible. We
can be engaging by changing our tone depending on the content type—for example, a fun update
including memes is appropriate for an educational post, but isn’t appropriate for a traffic and travel update.
We’ll develop platform-first content that’s fit for purpose
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What works for one channel often isn’t appropriate for other channels. This could be due to the tone of the
content, or how it’s produced—for example, if it’s a long video it typically won’t be appropriate beyond
LinkedIn or YouTube.
We’ll plan our content, rather than publishing ad hoc
Planning content will improve how we work within Te Waka Kōtuia and across the work we do with the
traffic operation centres in Transport Services. It’ll help our people get a sense of our capacity and
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availability over a given week, will help everyone identify future opportunities (for example Road Safety
Week), and will help us avoid any scheduling issues between teams.
We’ll work more closely with our ad agency partners
Our ad agency partners have strong knowledge of the platforms we use, so we need to learn from them
and leverage both their expertise and the access they have to special tools on the platforms. Conversely,
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we must share understandings about our audience with them, so they can develop relevant
advertisements for our channels and deliver value to us.

Engaging our community
We’ll engage more with our audience
Despite current resource constraints we know we’re missing a big opportunity in not engaging our
audience in the comments. We can continue discussions and further education by replying to people’s
opinions, offering our own views if someone disagrees with our approach, and championing the people
supporting us. This will also help build a better connection with our audience.
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Presently, we don’t have capacity to do this at a meaningful level—but we can take small steps in this
direction by picking key campaigns where we’ll dedicate time to talking with the public.
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We’ll continue to grow our audience
Maintaining a strong level of growth is important to ensuring we’re able to communicate directly with New
Zealanders, to combating misinformation, and to provide a factual and informative alternative to detractors
who aren’t driving healthy conversations. This is especially important for our regional pages, which have
untapped potential audience (for example, there are 2 million Facebook users in Auckland, but our
Auckland channel has under 100,000 followers).
We’ll ensure we maintain a healthy community
It’s our responsibility to maintain a space where people feel comfortable engaging with us and with each
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other. Unconstructive negativity and abuse detracts from our community. While we respect everyone’s
right to share their view, we expect commentary to be respectful and constructive. We must ensure we’re
protecting our own people from having to handle abusive messages or be subject to abuse themselves.
We’ll use our channels to connect with hard-to-reach audiences
Our Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok channels can connect us with hard-to-reach audiences—like
people in high deprivation parts of the country, and younger audiences that aren’t as engaged with
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mainstream media. This requires us taking a robust approach to how we’re designing and delivering
content. We need to experiment with what works given the potential of these platforms to help bridge
these gaps.
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Further responsibilities and opportunities
We’ll meet our public sector commitments for managing social media
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We take seriously our statutory obligations and our wider commitments to upholding good standards in
managing our channels. This means handling people’s data appropriately according to the privacy act,
and maintaining an archive of what we publish on our channels and of the comments people leave on our
channels. We’re also committed to following Public Service Commission guidelines on the conduct
expected of Crown entities, and to delivering on our obligations under the government Accessibility
charter.
We’ll use reporting as a source of intelligence and insights
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Social media commentary is a quick way for us to canvas feedback on issues—and is particularly useful
for issues where traditional research, such as surveying, isn’t possible on a short timeframe or isn’t
appropriate. Sprinklr has powerful reporting functionality we’re already using to monitor our marketing
campaigns—we can apply this more widely to work across Waka Kotahi.
We’ll ensure all our people have a good understanding of social media
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Helping our people develop better content for social, and increasing their understanding of new channels,
current trends, and what our channels can offer them, benefits not only people within Te Waka Kōtuia and
Waka Kotahi more generally, but also can reduce resourcing pressures on the Channels and Standards
team.
We’ll use our tools to support our customer response team
The public finds it easy to get in touch with us using our social media channels, and may expect a quick
response via social media given the less formal nature of the channels (compared to phone and email).
We need to ensure we’re making the most of the tools available to us to support the customer response
team, and in doing so ensure we’re delivering great service to the public.
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Our strategic recommendations
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Actions
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Fit for purpose content
Output/timeframe where
Action
Benefit
appropriate
Establish a content calendar
•  Encourages forward planning
December 2022
•  To be accessible across Waka Kotahi
•  Increases visibility of social media work
•  To include BAU work, key future dates and set pieces, planned traffic  •  Makes team workload and capacity
and travel updates, and active marketing from our ad agencies
more visible
Revise our approach to Twitter
•  Content is more engaging for our
February 2023
•
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Corporate channel to be treated like a hero channel instead of just an
audience
automated feed of media releases
Identify more opportunities for local content on our regional pages
•  Local content is highly relevant and
Ongoing
•  Work with content team and DRRs to publish more local stories
engaging for regional pages’ audiences
•  Share more updates from partners
•  We’re supporting our partners by
sharing their work and increasing their
reach
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Ensure our content is fit for purpose (refer to Appendix 1)
•  Makes our channels engaging
Ongoing
•  Content is appropriate for the channel it’s published on
•  Minimises risk to reputation due to
•  Tone is appropriate for the subject matter and for the channel it’s
inappropriate tone
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published on
•  There's a healthy mix of content
Experiment with channels, and grow our audience with new channels
Output/timeframe where
Action
Benefit
appropriate
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Experiment with TikTok, and become the leading government TikTok account  •  We’re engaging a typically hard-to-
15,000 followers by June
•  Try a wide range of styles, and share updates on a wide range of
reach younger demographic
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Waka Kotahi subject matter
•  Be standard-bearers for a new, now-
mainstream platform
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Investigate YouTube as a social channel
•  More natural, fit-for-purpose use for the  June 2023
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•  Tidy up the channel’s home page
large volume of video content we’re
•  Experiment with running our content as ads
already producing
•  Discover any benefits to engaging
people on this platform
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Better management
Output/timeframe where
Action
Benefit
appropriate
Increase Sprinklr’s moderation capability
•  Reduces our people’s exposure to
March 2023
•  Expand Sprinklr’s moderation to all channels beyond Facebook
abusive messages and digital harm
•  Build a comprehensive profanity filter within Sprinklr
•  Strengthens process for managing our
•  Establish a three-strikes framework for banning abusive commenters
response to abusive people
Develop reporting dashboards within Sprinklr
•  Increases accessibility to insights from
February 2023
•  Build generic templates that can be deployed for all projects,
commentary on our channels
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programmes, and marketing campaigns
Investigate automated engagement systems within Sprinklr
•  Helps reduce the customer response
June 2023
•  Investigate Sprinklr’s chatbot for direct messages
team’s workload
•  Establish a knowledgebase-like library of responses and messaging
within Sprinklr, making it easier and faster to engage questions and
comments from the public
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Expand our listening capabilities
•  Improves insight into conversations
February 2023
•  Expand Sprinklr’s comment theme tagging to all comments
across all our channels
•  Develop listening reporting dashboards within Sprinklr
•  Increases our people’s accessibility to
insights automatically generated by
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Sprinklr
Establish an archiving tool
•  Meets our statutory obligations around
March 2023
•  Work with Digital group to deploy an archiving tool across our
recordkeeping
channels
•  Automated archiving allows Sprinklr to
automatically delete offensive
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comments, reducing our people’s
exposure to abuse
Update our social media guidelines
•  Ensures we have a unified way of
December 2022
•  Include advice on processes, tools, and channels introduced since
working across the teams using our
the previous update
social media channels
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Update our community guidelines
•  Helps us foster constructive
December 2022
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•  Simplify them to make them more accessible
discussion, and maintain a healthy
•  Promote them more regularly across our channels to remind people
community
of our expectations and their responsibilities
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Develop a better working relationship with our ad agency partners
•  Assists in the development of
Ongoing
•  Work with the Education and Marketing team to provide social media
marketing that’s suitable for our social
advice on campaigns as they’re developed
media channels
•  Share reporting and other intelligence with our ad agency partners to
give them visibility of our strategy and forward planning, and
audience insights
Retrospectively tag content with who’s appearing in it
•  Better recordkeeping so we can easily
June 2023
•  Use Sprinklr to tag previously published videos by role (e.g.
find and remove content as needed
contractors, elected officials, our people)
(e.g. content with elected officials
during an election)
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Consolidate and review channels dedicated to projects or programmes
•  Followers on currently inactive
June 2023
•  Merge the Waikato Expressway Facebook channel with our Waikato
channels to be transferred to active
and Bay of Plenty channel
channels where we can continue
•  Review the Drive Facebook channel
engaging them
Upskill our people
Output/timeframe where
Action

appropriate
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Develop a social media style guide
•  Enables our people to create better
December 2022
•  To be integrated within revised social media guidelines
content for our social media
•  Reduces workload and overhead for
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teams using social media
Run internal learning sessions
•  Increases our people’s understanding
Ongoing
•  Run a Waka Kotahi-wide lunch and learn on our social media
of social media
strategy
•  Run Comms and Engagement lunch and learn sessions within Te
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Waka Kōtuia
Support our senior leaders in their social media journey
•  Helps senior leadership be more active  Ongoing
•  Make content more readily available for our senior leaders to publish
across social media
•  Investigate Sprinklr’s Advocacy platform (see Appendix 2) which
allows us to share content with our people for easy self-publishing
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Resource requirements

Since 2019, the social media team in Channels and Standards has comprised of two roles. Collectively
the two roles handle
•  content creation (i.e. proactive publishing of their own work)
•  campaign creation for small campaigns promoting Waka Kotahi programmes and services, and
small marketing campaigns
•  reactive publishing of work provided by people across Te Waka Kōtuia
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•  community management, responding to and engaging with commenters (i.e. customer service)
•  channel governance and maintenance
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•  Sprinklr development and maintenance
•  ensuring Waka Kotahi meets its public sector obligations for social media
•  providing reporting, research, and insights to our people
•  providing advice around social media processes and content to our people, including active
involvement in large-scale and high reputational project teams (e.g. Transmission Gully, the Road
to Zero public awareness campaign).
This chart depicts the current structure of teams working on our social media channels.

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Manager,
Channels
ATOC
WTOC
CRT
and Web
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Senior
Social Media
Customer
Advisor,
and Digital
Team Leader
Team Leader
Response
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Social Media
Marketing
Reps
Specialist
Senior Travel
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S
S e
e n
ni io
or r  T
Tr ra
a ve
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Senior Travel
Advisor
A
A d
d vi
vi so
sor r
Advisor
(two FTE)
(two FTE)
(two FTE)
(two FTE)
T
Tr raave
vel l
T
Tr ra
a ve
vel l
A
Addvi
vi so
sor r
A
A d
d vi
vi so
sor r
(two FTE)
(two FTE)
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(two FTE)
(two FTE)

Demand on the services of the team in Channels has grown significantly over the past two years. Our use
of social media has increased, paired with increasing understanding of the value of our owned social
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media channels among our people. Externally, our following has increased significantly over that time too,
as has the popularity of our channels. We’ve also introduced TikTok, a new channel with unique content
requirements.
To date, this sustained increase in demand for the Channels team’s services hasn’t been matched with
additional resource.
To enable a healthy way of working given current resource demands, and to implement recommendations
from this strategy successfully, it’s proposed the Channels team be supported with an additional FTE.
Additional resource will not only support ongoing delivery of business-as-usual work, but will drive the
improvement and growth of our social media through this strategy.
It’s also proposed the existing senior advisor role is repurposed as a team leader role to provide better  1982
structure for managing the team.
The new structure proposed follows; the blue cell indicates a changed position, and the green cell indicate
a new position.
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Manager,
Channels
ATOC
WTOC
CRT
and Web
Customer
Team
Team
Team
Response
Leader
Leader
Leader
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Reps
Social Media
Senior
Senior
and Digital
Social Media
Travel
Travel
Advisor

Marketing
Advisor
Advisor
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Specialist
(two FTE)
(two FTE)
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T
Tr ra
a ve
vel l
A
A d
d vi
vi so
sor r
A
A d
d vi
vi so
sor r
(two FTE)
(two FTE)
(two FTE)
(two FTE)
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The repurposed social media Team Leader would have strategic oversight over all Waka Kotahi social
media, and would be responsible for implementing our strategy, managing social media work within the
Channels team including strategically guiding content and campaign creation, providing advice and
guidance to our people, and maintaining good governance and processes across teams using our social
media. Essentially, they would be the Waka Kotahi social media lead.
We also recommend establishing a new advisor role to help the team manage and schedule incoming
work, with community management, Sprinklr maintenance, and reporting.
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As time goes on, without more resource there’s significant risk the Channels team’s service will severely
degrade. The team needs additional resource to support the changing nature of the work Waka Kotahi
does and our organisation’s need to communicate more with the public, to support the increasing volume
of work requested by our people, and to ensure we’re continually adapting to emerging channels,
declining channels, and new trends and ways of communicating.

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Appendix 1: Our content and channel mix

Content types and tone
Content type
Serious tone
Neutral tone
Fun tone
Traffic alerts
20%
80%

Planned work alerts

100%

Corporate updates
15%
80%
5%
Media releases
20%
80%

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Speed reviews

100%

Service updates
5%
90%
5%
90%
10%
Workplace and culture
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Project updates

75%
25%
Educational content

50%
50%
Marketing
20%
70%
10%

Channels and tone
Channel
Serious tone
Neutral tone
Fun tone
Facebook
10%
60%
30%
Twitter
15%
80%
5%
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LinkedIn
5%
75%
10%
Instagram

50%
50%
TikTok

10%
90%

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Appendix 2: Sprinklr’s Advocacy tool

Advocacy is a content sharing tool within Sprinklr that would allow us to provide our people with ready-
made posts to share to their personal social media profiles.
Our people can be great advocates for the work we do, but we know not everyone has the time or
resource to think about crafting a post, and some people may have concerns about staying on message or
about whether they require permission to talk about their work.
By reducing the technical overhead of using social media and providing approved content to people,
Advocacy removes these barriers.
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How it works
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Essentially, Advocacy is a hub for our people to share content we provide, and to engage with content on
our owned social media channels. It’s a secure portal where the only thing users see is approved content
and messaging.
To the end user, Advocacy is a simple web page which contains a stream of social media content. After
connecting their personal social media accounts to Advocacy, users can choose to share content to their
profiles from the stream—either copying the post verbatim, or editing the post’s copy to put it in their voice
or add their own commentary. Videos or images attached to the post are copied over in full—meaning if
there’s a video update we’d like people to share, they wouldn’t have to find a way to upload the video on
their own; Advocacy does this automatically for them.
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Users can also engage with posts from our owned channels on Advocacy, meaning they don’t need to
navigate to our channels or their social media apps to engage our content—they can do it via Advocacy.
Administrators select which content appears for people to share. Content can have a scheduled
publication date and an expiry date, so it can be programmed to appear when it’s relevant and expire once
it’s no longer relevant—for example, summer safe driving tips appearing before the Christmas and New
Year’s break, and expiring after the New Year.
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Approval processes can be established for sensitive content, such as safety messaging, to ensure users
are on message when they’re sharing our posts.
THE
Users can connect their personal Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn accounts to Advocacy.

Supporting our people to leverage their voices
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Advocacy will be especially useful in supporting our senior leaders to promote our work on their channels,
making it quick and easy for them to share content.
We could provide the executive leadership team with a consistent stream of content to share to their
LinkedIn profiles, helping them engage their personal networks, in their own voice and with their own
perspective.
There is potential to expand this offering to the wider organisation, and offer people content relevant to
them. We can serve content to people based on any part of their role—for example, the tier their role is in,
the business unit or team they’re in, or where they’re based (e.g. people working on Streets for People
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could be encouraged to share stories about the programme; people in the Bay of Plenty could be
encouraged to share content about projects in their region).

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Suggested use
In the first instance, we recommend using Advocacy to support our senior leaders sharing content to
LinkedIn. In time, this could be expanded to channels beyond LinkedIn, and to tiers below senior
leadership.

Broader potential
Advocacy can be applied beyond just supporting our people to share our content. Some other uses
include
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•  Our people sharing content with us or making content suggestions to us
o  People at a work site could share photos and videos with us for publishing to our owned
channels
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o  The Comms and Engagement teams in Te Waka Kōtuia could draft their own content for
our people to share, with no assistance required by administrators
•  Our partners getting limited access to Advocacy, to share content with us, or to share our content
o  Our ad agency partners could supply us with marketing content to share on our owned
channels, or for our people to share to their own profiles
o  We could provide stakeholders like councils, our partner agencies, or our minister’s office
with content to share to their owned channels
o  For marketing campaigns using influencers, we can provide content to influencers using
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Advocacy, or use it to approve their content before publishing
•  Reporting dashboards to see how many people are sharing our content, and how our people are
engaging with the content on our owned channels
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THE
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Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency

Social media strategy - 19

Document Outline