Category: Social Media
Farmers Branch Aquatic Center
Farmers Branch, Texas
Year Awarded: 2020
The mission
The beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic may seem like a fever dream, but they were all too real. Before we knew what was happening, the world stopped. While we were told it was just a few weeks, most people knew better.
In the aquatics world, stay-at-home orders left professionals scared about their futures and worried about their local residents and customers, who couldn’t turn to their local centers for escape, respite and grounding.
At Farmers Branch Aquatic Center, events that had taken months to plan were cancelled, and the normally bustling center was empty. “The staff felt lost and confused about the journey ahead,” said Aquatics Manager Paul Macias at the time. “But the team quickly realized that the members of the Farmers Branch community were feeling the same way.”
They wanted to do something.
Brilliance at work
To help keep spirits up among the community — and staff — the Farmers Branch team decided to continue engaging via social media.
Videos and photos were posted on the facility’s Facebook and Instagram accounts to educate, connect, keep employees and community members abreast of what’s going on — and lighten spirits.
This also provided a way to help seasonal lifeguards and employees as they waited for their jobs to open up. Through the social media accounts, they could keep track of the aquatics center. For full-timers, the act of generating and suggesting ideas for social media campaigns supplied an antidote for the isolation, Macias said.
Special highlights
The staff even was able to convert some of the planned in-person events into virtual ones. For instance, every summer the center held a program called Ribbit Reading, where staff read to children poolside. During the pandemic, Ribbit Reading (named as a tip of the hat to the center’s frog mascot) became a weekly virtual event. Each week the reader was given a list of themes to help choose that week’s books, such as animals, water safety and the anniversary of women’s suffrage. The reader’s brother filmed her at home, and the video was posted each Monday.
In lieu of the annual Easter Egg Splash, where children search for plastic eggs hidden throughout the facility, then exchange their findings for prizes, the team organized a photo campaign and food drive in the hopes of maintaining the spirit of the in-person event. They solicited canned-good donations for a local food bank, and gave participants plastic eggs filled with candy. More than 200 cans were collected and more than 1,000 eggs given. Staff decorated the facility for Easter and posted pictures. Community members were encouraged to share photos of their own Easter decor and celebrations.
The latest
The approach that Farmers Branch took to strengthen its bond with the community has had long-term
impacts on the center that remain to this day.
First, the Ribbit Reading program drew so much engagement that Farmers Branch has continued it as a virtual program. During summer, the team posts weekly readings; in the off-season, readings come monthly. They usually are done by staffers who volunteer, but occasionally an interested child will do it. Readings are chosen to fit with scheduled themes, which are based on nearby holidays, water safety or other concepts appropriate for that time of year.
The campaign’s success also changed how the team approaches social media, Macias says.
Before lockdown, the team usually posted photos to Instagram. During lockdown, they switched to predominantly using videos. During the pandemic, it proved a more personal and effective way to congratulate team members who were deprived of a high-school graduations ceremony or demonstrating cleaning protocols the team followed when the facilities could open on a limited basis. They’ve kept this up as a more engaging alternative to still photos.
“We used a lot of reels to highlight things like the [unveiling] of fitness classes and other programs,” Macias says. “We still use photos every now and then, but we transitioned to using more reels to get our message across.”
In addition to giving the facility a sense of purpose and standing in the community, the COVID-era social media campaign positioned it to do well once things opened up. “The past two years have been the highest in revenues, so we’ve increased in revenue since 2020,” Macias says. “We came out doing very well.”
