The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) is a government organization that manages Oklahoma’s fish and wildlife resources and habitat. The organization states its mission on its website: “We manage and protect fish and wildlife, along with their habitats, while also growing our community of hunters and anglers, partnering with those who love the outdoors, and fostering stewardship with those who care for the land.”
They use all of the most popular social media platforms to connect with that community. Their biggest following is on Facebook with 191k followers, their iconic Twitter account is currently at 155k followers and on Instagram 36k people are interested in what they post.
Surprisingly, they have a TikTok account followed by 186k followers and they have 4.4 million likes on videos in total. You can also find them on YouTube where their channel has 22k subscribers.
ODWC’s Twitter is really a masterpiece, so today we are dedicating our attention to this social media platform. The strategy of posting funny tweets was seriously considered after their first humorous tweet went viral. It was a photo of a mountain lion who was rolling in snow being all cute, but the caption said “YOU are cold. They have fur. Do not let inside.”
The Oklahoman discussed the tweet with the person who approves all the posts on all social media accounts that belong to the Wildlife Department, Kelly Adams. She said that she believed it resonated with so many people because it was simply funny.
After this tweet, the social media team realized “We can be funny. It is OK. It is great for relevancy. It is great for engagement. This is who we want to be on Twitter.”
The outcome was higher engagement and it invited people who aren’t specifically interested in wildlife to a new world for them. Kelly welcomes those people with open arms, “That's exciting. It's tough sometimes to go beyond your traditional audience, especially when you are so niche like we are. It's been exciting to engage with these people."
To discuss the benefits of implementing humor in posts on social media of governemnt organisations or businesses Bored Panda reached out to Charlotte Silverstein, founder and CEO of Lena Rose PR who is also a public relations specialist. She explained to us that "Implementing lighthearted and funny language can be a strong social media strategy for certain organizations. If done right, the posts should be funny and relatable to your audience, while still getting your key messaging across. The organizations that have adopted this are seeing a clear rise in engagement across accounts, and most of the feedback from their followers seems to be positive."
The state agency finally saw success with these types of posts and found what would bring them engagement, but it was a long journey. If you look at when the Twitter account was created, you will see that ODWC joined the platform in 2009.
Only in 2020 did they hire a dedicated person for social media and the tweet with the mountain lion was posted in January 2022. The person who changed things up was Sarah Southerland. As she told Route Fifty, she came to the Wildlife Department in 2020 and she started coming up with ideas to make Twitter work for them because, “honestly, Twitter is very hard for government agencies.”
Sarah wanted to define the voice of ODWC and started writing out bullet points. The most important thing was “to change the language that we use, and step away from kind of this foreign government speech habit, and start talking more like the Oklahomans around us. [We] adopted a voice that is very similar to how we speak to each other and how we speak in the office.”
The social media coordinator revealed to the local Oklahoma news channel KOCO that “The most viral stuff that we’ve ever put on our Twitter account has come from just a random idea that somebody has and we’re like cool, why not?”
Bored Panda also contacted Sarah and she told us that when she first presented the idea of making the content more lighhearted her colleagues accepted it very positively and joined the project, "The fun thing about this is how we get to make it inclusive. Our coworkers come up with Tweet ideas allllll the time and we gladly use their ideas. People really like to jump in on the fun! We host contests. We post personal stories. We gather around one computer, hit send, and laugh at our hilarious and witty followers who make all this so great."
Sarah describes the process of a funny tweet coming to life to Route Fifty: “So what we have is this pretty janky whiteboard where people walk by my desk and write down just dumb things. <...> And then we go from there; our boss will send us emails, we have contests. <...> Everyone really, really contributes, and then we reward that contribution by actually using it. We're not pretentious about what we put on the Twitter account, because it's a group project.”
The social media coordinator revealed to us that she has been using Twitter for 11 years and the majority of her teammates are also Twitter lovers so they enjoy this social media platform even outside of work. But what they enjoy most while working on it is "reading all the comments and getting to interact directly with people from all over the globe about the awesomeness of wildlife conservation."
Although it’s a group project, it all goes through Sarah who makes the tweets in the same style and in the same voice that is recognized as the ODWC Twitter. Her colleague Daniel Griffith, who is the webmaster and manages the website, thinks that this is their key to success, “We've got multiple people contributing. And one person is kind of taking all those ideas, and making sure that they all stay in line with each other versus how we used to do in the past.”
But don’t be fooled. Although the tweets are very funny, the people behind them are pretty much winging it as they go. Sarah commented, “I think sometimes when people interview us, they expect to be talking to, like, marketing geniuses or a giant agency team. And we're not—we’re just a group of government employees.”
The tweets are really funny and entertaining even for people who aren’t interested in wildlife, but they are also educational and this kind of exposure just helps the people passionate about it to spread the message beyond just those who are already listening.
Kelly Adams stresses that behind those silly messages, more often than not, there is a purpose. She gives an example of when in spring, a lot of animals give birth to babies and people mistakenly think that they are orphaned.
They could just write to not worry about it, but would it reach the people who need to hear it? They didn’t think so based on previous experience, and what they posted instead was, “It looks like a lovely day to REMIND YOU HEATHENS TO STOP ‘RESCUING’ BABY ANIMALS. THEIR MOMS ARE MOST LIKELY NEARBY SO JUST MIND YOUR BUSINESS. FAWNS, DROP EM'. BIRDS, LEAVE EM'. RACCOONS, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT. ARMADILLOS?¿? ARMADILL-NO.”
We asked Sarah if the team is ever afraid of not being taken seriously because of the tone of the tweets and she explained, " It's our policy to make sure that jokes are obvious, do no harm to wildlife, or would encourage anyone to put themselves in danger. Our followers enjoy flipping that on its side as often as they can - but we make sure to affirm that any alternatives to safe instruction are STRONGLY discouraged."
We wanted to know what a public relations specialist thinks about how such content affects an organizations image and in Charlotte's professional opinion, "Organizations, especially government organizations, can sometimes feel scary or unapproachable. The use of funny social media posts (as long as they are tasteful and don't cross the line) is a great way to engage with the public while drawing attention to their message. It creates that human rapport that is often missing."
Sarah assured us that when they post something, "[They] just try to be good humans and make [their] moms proud." She also adds, "The internet is forever, for everyone. We like to keep it lighthearted, so there's always something we think will be a banger that flops - but it's okay. We persist. We like to have fun with it! As long as we're in it together it's hard to go wrong."
Could you imagine more governemtn agencies adopting this style of content on social media? Sarah definitely does, "Organizations are just people. Any group could benefit from allowing their personality and authenticity to shine through."
Charlotte noticed that it is already happening, "We have definitely seen a rise in companies and organizations adopting a playful social media approach. Right now it is fun, and fresh." But as with everything, when it's too much, it becomes less special "Like with anything, audiences get bored easily, so if this strategy is overused by a lot of accounts too quickly, it could lose its 'wow' factor."
This strategy is workig out for and proof of it is that even Ryan Reynolds tweeted at them and model Chrissy Teigen retweeted one of the posts. But what is your opinion about government agencies having a bit of fun on Twitter and posting important information with a twist of humor? Let us know in the comments.
P.S. Sarah's team loves wildlife puns, so if you have any, send them OSWC's way!