Examining Collaborations with Influencers: Reviewing #NurseTok Scenario
In the heart of Australia's most populous state, the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) has taken an innovative approach to advocating for fair pay and improved working conditions for its members. By engaging with influencers on the popular social media platform TikTok, the union is building grassroots support for its cause, particularly among younger demographics.
Nurses and midwives themselves, as well as allied creators, have been using TikTok to share powerful strike signs, slogans, and personal testimonies. These grassroots-style messages have helped raise awareness and garner support for the demand for fair and equal pay and improved working conditions.
The NSWNMA's strategy on TikTok does not involve maintaining an official account. Instead, the union supports and encourages nurse voices on the platform who communicate the union's core messages. This approach has organically amplified the campaign for fair compensation for nurses and midwives in NSW, as evidenced by high engagement on nurse-related posts discussing pay and workplace issues.
The union's "members first" approach aligns with collaborating with content creators instead of maintaining its own TikTok account. The NSWNMA trusts influencers to engage with the content in a way suitable to their audience, based on their personal relationship with their followers.
The union approached two types of influencers for the campaign: nurse influencers and regular influencers. Nurse influencers were tasked with educating and engaging fellow nurses and healthcare professionals, encouraging union involvement and collective action. Regular influencers, on the other hand, were intended to educate the general public and garner community support.
The NSWNMA's Value Us Public Health Campaign does not rely on influencers as its core focus but instead complements the strategy. The campaign, which includes two strikes and other protests, is ongoing at the time of publication. The focus of the campaign is on positioning the NSW Government as responsible for addressing the ongoing pay disparity and for not remunerating essential public sector nurses and midwives fairly.
The campaign's goal is to bring wages for nurses and midwives in NSW up to the level of other Australian states, where the baseline rate of pay for Registered Nurses is 8-18% higher than in New South Wales. This wage disparity, coupled with the state's worst housing affordability crisis, neighboring states offering higher pay, better staff-to-patient ratios, and a lower cost of living, has led to a significant exodus of nurses and midwives from NSW.
Maddie Lucre, the Campaigns and Communications Coordinator at the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, leads the team creating engaging social media campaigns to support nurses and midwives. The union chose to engage with #NurseTok, an existing online space where nurses and midwives are already creating content and sharing their experiences working within the sector.
While the influencer market can be expensive and saturated, with influencer managers adding complexity and costs, the NSWNMA's approach has been successful. By connecting with individuals genuinely interested in the issue and willing to create content without heavy expectations, the union has increased the visibility of the campaign for fair compensation for nurses and midwives in NSW.
TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms among Gen Z, with 52% of users aged 18-24. This demographic is a crucial audience for the NSWNMA, as they are the future of the nursing and midwifery workforce. By engaging with them on TikTok, the union is not only building support for its current campaign but also fostering a new generation of advocates for fair pay and working conditions in the nursing and midwifery sector.
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