Journal of Experiences

Dialogue and simplicity: Ulss 2 and information in the days of Covid-19

What do people want to find when looking for health information online? Undoubtedly this is the first question to ask when designing a content strategy for a local healthcare company. And this is what we do in our daily work together with Ulss 2 Marca trevigiana, with whom we have been working since 2017 to create valuable content for the company’s Facebook page.

What is the answer to the first question? Simplicity, dialogue, reliability. These words have always been the basis of our job together with Ulss 2, words that become even more important when you have to communicate to people during an emergency like the one we are coming out of little by little.

Reliable information starting from a shared language

What we have experienced over the past few months has undoubtedly been an unexpected, unimaginable and unprecedented situation for most of us. A situation that made us forget for a while our usual habits and personal worries in order to make room for doubts, fears and thoughts of much wider range. Not to mention disorientation. Information and updates, decrees and regulations have followed one another continuously over the past few months, communicated and commented on by every front and in every way. The result? A myriad of data and indications to be quickly understood and assimilated in a continuous cycle. A mass of information that is not always easy to understand. In certain fields, bureaucratese is still spoken too often: a language that is far removed in terms of terminology, expressions and structures from the language commonly used by people. Large amounts of information communicated in a complicated way: this is how to create doubts and disorientation.

But the authoritativeness and reliability of the source need not necessarily be synonymous with complexity and verbosity. On the contrary, a communication with a simple and direct tone can even be perceived as more authoritative, as it promotes transparency, which certainly risks getting lost when using a language that is too specific, complex and, above all, not shared with the recipients of the message.

Our collaboration with Ulss 2 has always aimed at this: communicating reliable information with clear content that is really useful for people in an important area such as healthcare, an aim that has become even more fundamental in the months of health emergency that have just passed.

How we communicated during Covid-19 emergency on the Facebook page Ulss 2 Marca trevigiana

First point to clarify: during the period of coronavirus emergency on the Facebook page Ulss 2 Marca trevigiana we continued to operate following the communication line always adopted for the project. A line that aims at the pure information of citizens, adopting a simple and clear language, which includes images and videos that help to spread data and indications in a more immediate way.

A communication that has always had, as a further characteristic, the promptness of publications with respect to the arrival of news, both when it comes to internal company news and updates from external sources. One factor, rapidity, that has become even more important during the period of health emergency, since it is essential to immediately clarify incomplete or even incorrect information that sometimes spread on the web during this period.

But let’s now take a closer look at some of the content created for the Facebook page Ulss 2 Marca trevigiana in recent months. What have we done in concrete terms?

Official updates by the local health company

The activity of adapting the company press releases for the Facebook channel has continued over the past few months in the same way as it has been done since the beginning of the collaboration between TSW and Ulss 2: a summary of the news and an explanatory photo to communicate the news immediately, then a short link to the original press release on the Ulss 2 website. This type of content has allowed us to keep people up to date with the latest news, even with more issues per day, in step with the publication of the company press releases.

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Information infographic

Immediacy and simplicity: these are the characteristics of infographics, which represent a content able to mix images, graphics, numerical data and text in a clear formula.

On the Facebook page Ulss 2 Marca trevigiana we have very often used this type of content – previously and in the latest months – as it allows us to communicate complex information in a clear and recognizable format for everyone. It must be specified that, due to the very nature of the information to be conveyed, the infographics created for Ulss 2 are often more textual than numerical, except in some cases, where the format is used to capture, for example, useful telephone numbers and contacts of health facilities.

Therefore, during the Covid-19 period, the infographics on the Ulss 2 Facebook page have had different objectives:

communicating rules and behaviours to be followed from a preventive point of view;
clarifing common doubts about Covid-19 in a “question & answer” format;
explaining the proper use of protective equipment;
describing how to access and contact health care facilities.

Therefore, infographics have represented the most present type of content in the planning of the emergency period: a solution that – in our opinion – has made it possible to achieve the objective of reliable and comprehensible communication, being able to respect the required promptness of the publication during a period like the one we have already lived.

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Videos: the contribution of doctors and health professionals

Alongside the static formats, during the Covid-19 period we also produced some video content: the contribution of the health care staff was fundamental, because they shared with us useful materials which to start from. Not only informative content on the activities of the facilities, but also targeted advice from doctors, such as those dedicated to stress management during this phase, or those to prepare healthy and tasty recipes, at a time when physical activity was certainly reduced for many people.

Do people appreciate the communication of the Ulss 2 Facebook page? Some data

We have already mentioned the important increase in the number of likes to the page during the months of emergency: this is certainly a sign of appreciation from people, but, for further confirmation, let’s take a look at the other metrics reached during the period, comparing them, above all, with the previous quarter data.

Let’s start with the total coverage of the posts: in the period between November 19, 2019 and February 19, 2020 it stopped at 682,284. Between 19 February and 17 May, however, the indicator reached the peak of 5,999,295 (+779%). Looking instead at the interactions related to the posts in the two quarters, we see that it went from 19,994 to 207,456: a growth of +938%. And the same is true for comments and shares: a growth of 1384% and 1344% respectively.

But we must remember that the Facebook page of Ulss 2 Marca trevigiana has always achieved excellent organic performance: the trend has simply strengthened in the last 3 months, when people probably had an even greater need for authoritative, reliable and clear information.

TSW and Ulss 2 Marca trevigiana: a partnership that represents a perfect example of content strategies applied to make pure information, which is made for citizens, in the language spoken by citizens.