The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) was founded in 1957 in order “to manage state trust lands for the people of Washington.” The Department overlooks 5.6 million acres of forest, range, agricultural, aquatic, and commercial lands.
Its primary mission is to “Manage, sustain, and protect the health and productivity of Washington’s lands and waters to meet the needs of present and future generations.” One of the ways to do so is to educate people, but knowing that people don’t like paragraphs of safety precautions, the organization thought that it’s best to adapt their language to their audience if they want to get their point across.
That is why if you go to DNR’s Twitter, you will find some funny posts telling you what to do and not to do in forests as well as giving you knowledge in that small Twitter format. They are just as funny on Instagram, sharing what type of mushroom you are based on your zodiac sign.
However, it wasn’t like this from the start. The Twitter page was created in 2009 and the social media team, including Mary Watkins and Rachel Terlep, took a risk for the first time in August of 2021 with a tweet saying “As temperatures rise, remember to treat hydration like you'd treat dating: Don't wait until you're thirsty.”
Senior Social Media Manager Rachel Terlep told King 5 that there was a bit of deliberation whether they should post the tweet, “We were like, 'Should we do it, should we not do it?’” As it is evident from the tweets, they changed their approach to their posts and noticed that it piqued people’s interest.
Rachel said, “I've never expected people to be this excited about their state agency, their state natural resources agency. We're talking about things like geologic hazards, forestry, and wildfire safety. The funny parts are great, but when people take those actionable items and apply it to their lives, so they learn something, that's the most rewarding part.”
When Bored Panda contacted Rachel she said that when they started changing up their style of language, "the change in engagement was pretty pronounced, and the reception was overwhelmingly positive. It’s what empowered us to keep pursuing that voice on Twitter."
Every time you see a state agency being sarcastic, passive-aggressive or referencing to pop culture, you catch yourself thinking, "Who allowed them to wrote that?" Because we assume that the organization wouldn't want to be associated with silly tweets.
Rachel told us that it was quite the opposite, "My then-communications director bought in right away. I was fortunate that she understood the culture of the internet - for better or worse. There were certainly some long-tenured members of staff that had a few hesitations because they didn’t want our approach to damage the reputation of the agency, but I think many of them have come to see the value in what we do and how it ultimately supports and amplifies the agency’s mission."
Rachel explained to Sea Today that they use this kind of language that includes jokes, funny posts about astrology and associations with bad relationships because they feel they “have to speak in the language that people are used to seeing their messages in.”
If they posted funny dog videos and memes unrelated to what they do and then squeezed in relevant information in the standard format, Rachel believes that “those tweets that are competing for attention, people are going to look right over them.” So they needed to combine the two.
Mary adds that “humor really sticks with people. Like if you see a funny post about recreation and then you’re hiking, and you pass a bag of dog poop on the trail, you might think of that funny post that we made about the starving trash cans and pick it up. I think that humor is a really great, subtle way to remind people of the important messages that we need to tell.”
When asked how the DNR tweets are different from what the Oklahoma Department Of Wildlife Conservation and National Park Service posts, Rachel said that they all are actually forming a new tweet style, "There’s definitely a certain 'Twitter style' of humor that government agencies have started picking up on because, at the end of the day, we’re all trying to educate folks and we know the best way to do that is to draw them in with something entertaining or funny."
And the thing that makes DNR different is that they have their own way of delivery, "some of us are deadpan, some of us are unhinged, some of us are punny. We’re also often talking about different things. We - for example - are a natural resources agency. So we’re finding ways to teach folks about forestry, geology, wildfire, aquatics, recreation safety. Whereas other agencies are talking about parks or wildlife."
The posts are funny not only because they are unexpected for a government agency, but they are actually genuinely funny. It might be due to the fact that Mary and Rachel often get ideas for a post randomly. Mary told Sea Today, “I find inspiration just while I’m scrolling on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. But it will also hit me when I’m doing something random like exercising, or when I’m hanging out with my kids. And I just think, oh, this could be a catchy Instagram post or this could be funny on Twitter.”
Rachel explains that there are even more people involved in the process because there are a lot of fields to cover, like wildfire, geologic hazards, forestry and others. Some ideas are born in brainstorming sessions, so it’s not always random.
To a degree the team now feels that they are expected to keep up the tone and feels a bit of pressure, "while that’s empowering in some ways because it’s thrilling that people see what you create and want more, there’s also a degree of 'Well, I better deliver.' And some days - some weeks, even - you’re just not feeling funny or you’re busy with other work and don’t have time to be funny."
Good news is that people now are more interested in what the organization posts and it doesn't actually need to be in a meme format, "I’ve also noticed that we get a pretty great response when we switch up our delivery a bit - like posting an educational thread or playing around with creative writing. It’s a reminder that we don’t have to play one note to get people’s attention."
That is why in the future Rachel thinks that there is room for evolving their content on social media, "we definitely never want to get stale or become too one-note. I recently dabbled in a creative writing thread to promote a children’s art contest, and that got an incredibly receptive response, so I’d like to dabble in that style some more."
You will also notice that when a tweet gets a lot of attention and people raise questions, the Twitter account will respond with more information in all seriousness. Rachel and Mary told The Urbanist that they want to show that the Twitter account is managed by people and that it is an actual means to get official information.
The social media specialist noticed that both humor and this kind of engagement from their side increased the engagement from people and their proof is that “Every once in a while we’ll slip our job opening link, you know, at the bottom of a Twitter thread or something, and it’s pretty bonkers the kind of engagement it gets.”
One of their most popular tweets is the screenshot of an empty playlist titled “Songs people on the trail want to hear from your Bluetooth speaker.” It has over 160k likes. A tweet that has not that many likes but was seen by 1 million people actually throws shade on Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating tendencies. A tweet about firefighters being influencers making forests stop being on fire reached even over 8 million people, so it’s safe to say that the team is doing a great job.
Rachel told us that she is thrilled to see "government social media is having its renaissance moment" and points out that "For the most part, the posts you’re seeing are coming from one- or two-person in-house teams and they’re doing social media management on top of copywriting on top of video editing on top of graphic design. What we all have in common is that we’re passionate about the work our organizations do and we want to share it with you."
The account now has over 134k followers but we expect the number to grow. Will you follow DNR for their genius sense of humor? What do you think about government agencies loosening up their presentation on social media? Let us know what you think and don’t forget to upvote the tweets that made you laugh the most.
