The top of the image says working with influencers and the bottom says #nursetok casestudy. In the middle there are 3 phones all with different screenshots of TikTok videos on them. To the left is a man wearing scrubs, in the middle is a woman at a protest and on the right is a woman eating 2 minute noodles.
The images of TikTok accounts are: @empathbrandon, @eswift95 & @abbiechatfield.

Working with Influencers: #NurseTok Case Study

Introduction

Explore this case study of how a union campaign engaged with influencers on TikTok to amplify their message and build support.

These key insights are based on a presentation by Maddie Lucre, NSWNMA Campaigns and Communications Coordinator, at FWD+Organise, a conference held by Australian Progress in Narrm/Melbourne in December 2024.

The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) is campaigning to get fair and equal pay for nurses and midwives in NSW to be equivalent with other states around Australia. This campaign included two strikes and other protests and is still ongoing at the time of this piece being published. Find out more about the campaign.

Background

For 12 years, the Liberal-National Government in New South Wales, Australia enforced a restrictive industrial landscape for public sector workers. This was characterised by the implementation of a public sector wages cap, which was in place for 10-years between 2011 to 2022. This cap limited wage increases for public sector employees to 2.5% per year.

The cap was particularly detrimental to nurses and midwives, who became the lowest-paid in Australia’s public health sector. Due to the compounding impacts of 10-years of wage suppression and inflation, nurses and midwives are effectively living on 2008 level wages.

The baseline rate of pay for Registered Nurses in Queensland is 8-18% higher than in New South Wales (see Average nurse salaries across Australian states, Victoria University), and for first-year nurses there is an approximate $10,000 salary difference.

In addition, NSW is grappling with the worst housing affordability crisis in Australia. Coupled with neighbouring states offering higher pay, better staff-to-patient ratios, and a lower cost of living, this has led to a significant exodus of nurses and midwives from NSW. 

#NurseTok Case Study

Why TikTok?

The question to ask yourself is where is your audience, and who are they listening to?

TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms among Gen Z, with 52% of users aged 18-24. Spaces like #MumTok, #BookTok and #NurseTok are community-driven subcultures on TikTok, created through the use of specific hashtags.

These virtual spaces allow people to share their stories, seek advice, offer support, and connect with people through shared experiences.

In the nursing and midwifery sector, the Gen Z demographic is critical, as many nurses in NSW are leaving within the first five years of their careers. Engaging with this audience on a platform they already frequent provides an opportunity to connect with them in a familiar, relatable space. 

NSWNMA chose to engage with #NurseTok because it was an existing online space where nurses and midwives were already creating content and sharing their experiences working within the sector. 

Whilst union membership remains strong among nurses and midwives, union literacy – understanding the value and purpose of membership – could be improved. Many members are unaware of why they belong to the Union or the broader impact of its advocacy. Messages directly from the Union may not be inherently trusted by young people.

However, when an influencer shares the Union’s message or advocates for its goals, it establishes a higher level of credibility and trust. TikTok creates a parasocial relationship where viewers feel a personal connection to influencers by relating to and empathizing with their stories. #NurseTok presents an opportunity for nurses and midwives to express solidarity through shared experience, building a sense of community.

TikTok presents an opportunity to bridge this gap by connecting with existing members in a dynamic and engaging way, raising awareness about the NSWNMA’s goals, and activating them in the campaign.

Traditional communication methods such as email, Facebook, and Instagram fail to reach a significant portion of the audience. By leveraging TikTok, the NSWNMA can reach young nurses and midwives in a way that feels authentic and relatable. They can educate members about the benefits of their membership, and inspire collective action in a space where they are already active and engaged.

Campaign Strategy

Here is a quick breakdown of the Value Us Public Health Campaign.

Goal

The NSWNMA campaign goal is to get better wages for nurses and midwives in NSW and address the pay disparity with other Australian states to prevent nurses and midwives from moving interstate (early career nurses in NSW are currently the lowest paid, living in the most expensive state). 

The Target

The focus is on positioning the NSW Government as responsible for addressing the ongoing pay disparity and for not renumerating essential public sector nurses and midwives. The campaign frames them as the “target” who are preventing improvements for nurses and midwives in NSW.

NSW nurses and midwives are the lowest paid in the country. Premier Minns, give them better pay to stay. – NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association

Strategy

To use:

  1. Anger
    Harness the frustration and anger nurses and midwives feel about their wages and working conditions
  2. Hope
    Shift from anger to hope, providing nurses with a sense of solidarity and showing that change is possible
  3. Action
    Inspire nurses and midwives to take direct action, such as talking about their lived experiences on TikTok, joining the union, advocating for their rights, and participating in the campaign.

Tips and Tactics

Tips and tactics Maddie has learned from working with TikTok influencers in their campaign.

1. Map your Audience

Get to know your audience by addressing these questions:

  • Who is your audience?
  • Who do they communicate with?
  • Who do they trust?

In the #NurseTok campaign, this involved searching different influencers profiles, watching their content, and understanding whether their content fits your core values and strategy for winning the campaign. 

There may be different types of influencers you want to approach for different audiences.

For this particular campaign, there were 2 types of influencers that were approached for different purposes:

  1. Nurse influencers
    Educate and engage fellow nurses and healthcare professionals, encouraging them to get involved in the union, participate in strikes and take collective action.
  2. Regular influencers
    Educate the general public in order to garner community support. These influencers already have a large, engaged following and are prominent figures who can amplify key messages in the media.

2. Create a Campaign Brief

Once you have your suite of influencers, create a campaign brief including:

  1. Campaign goals
  2. Key messages and
  3. A call to action. 

3. Reach out to Everyone

  • Don’t be afraid to reach out to people.
  • Cold calling is still worthwhile.
  • Note: Many larger influencers are managed by management companies, which can make them difficult to reach.

4. Rules of Engagement: Trust the Influencers

Often communications teams in not-for-profit organisations will dictate the content they want. It is important to avoid this and instead take a step back and trust the influencer to engage with the content in a way that is most suitable to their audience.

Remember they have the personalised relationship with their audience and they know their audience better than you do, give them the brief and then trust them to create it. 

For example, in the TikTok video below, content creator @empathbrandon chose to speak about the campaign whilst preparing a protein shake, or when @abbiechatifled watched the news of the strike whilst eating noodles.

By giving them both the creative freedom to incorporate the campaign into their own own routines, the message was delivered in a way that felt organic and relatable to their respective audiences.

https://www.tiktok.com/@empathbrandon/video/7413210535950355719

5. You Don’t Need TikTok to do TikTok

For those working in communications, this can mean juggling several platforms, each with its unique set of expectations and content requirements.

Creating engaging, tailored content for each platform can quickly become overwhelming. 

Maddie emphasised that you can still tap into the vast TikTok audience without the need for your organisation to maintain its own account or dedicate significant resources to producing content specifically for this platform.

TikTok is undoubtedly one of the most time-intensive platforms to manage, requiring constant content creation, trends participation, and community engagement. Hence organisations can still reap the benefits of TikTok by working in collaboration with content creators. 

She also reflected that not having an official NSWNMA TikTok account and instead centring the content creators aligns with the union’s “members first” approach.

Final Thoughts…

Influencers can be a valuable component of a campaign, but they should never be the core focus. While they can play a supportive role, the heart of your campaign should remain centred on the message and the cause itself. Influencers should complement the strategy, not define it.

The influencer market is saturated and can be expensive, with influencer managers often adding complexity and costs.

Every influencer was once a regular person posting on TikTok. Start by connecting with individuals who are genuinely interested in the issue and willing to create content without heavy expectations. This offers a more symbiotic relationship where you can help raise their profile whilst they support your campaign. 

About The Workshop Presenter

Maddie Lucre is the Campaigns and Communications Coordinator at the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association. She joined the NSWNMA Communications team following a two and half year stint in NSW state politics, and has used her communications and political skillset to create engaging social media campaigns to aid nurses and midwives in their fight for better pay and conditions.

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