EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO BUILD A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY | WORLD SOCIAL MEDIA DAY 2025

“Social media is the ultimate equaliser. It gives a voice and a platform to anyone willing to engage.”

Amy Jo Martin

Having now been blogging for over twelve years (it’ll actually be thirteen in January!) I have developed a huge passion and interest in the communications and marketing industry. This is why I’ve now had a number of voluntary roles in that sector – with my new one being announced on my start date of July 8^th – as well as having also completed a number of online courses relevant to it too. Over the years, my career experience, and education, I’ve learned how to create Strategies in this industry: particularly around marketing and branding, but I’ve also picked up how to create a Social Media Strategy and I thought with today being National Social Media Day, it was the perfect opportunity to share this knowledge and understanding…

EVERYTHING THAT WENT INTO CREATING A SERVICE USER APPROVED MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY | IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”

Andrew Carnegie

In 2021, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) conducted a mental health themed review in acute settings. From this review, CQC made three massive recommendations: that mental health care in acute settings should meet nationally recognised standards and that acute staff should have the training to feel confident in meeting mental health needs as well as being able to support their own wellbeing. Then, the third recommendation was that acute Trusts should have a Mental Health Strategy that has board level oversight and clear governance over administration and monitoring of the Mental Health Act. And so, NUTH set about creating a Trust-wide Mental Health Strategy, and almost immediately, they knew that including service users would be incredibly useful to the creation of the Strategy. I was honoured to be chosen to be in the ‘Expert Refence Group.’ This collaboration post will celebrate today’s official, internal launch of their Strategy by sharing my thoughts on all the steps NUTH staff have taken to ensure that it is service user approved. I do this, with the sincere hope that the Trust’s service user approved Mental Health Strategy will inspire others to adopt a similar approach in their Strategy creation processes as well as perhaps developing ideas to take even more action around mental health within their own organisation…