Utah Department of Transportation’s ‘scrappy’ social media team wins national award

PARK CITY, Utah – The Instagram video starts with a Utah Department of Transportation employee slamming his hands on a conference table and exclaiming: “We’ve got a big problem here. The freeway is closing every day next week. I need ideas. We gotta get this message out.”

Another UDOT employee stands up and shouts: “A TikTok dance!”For a second, the first worker seems to like the idea, winding up a dance before shaking his head and shutting it down. “No, no,” he says. “Come on, real ideas, people.”

“We need a new spokesperson,” a Utah Highway Patrol trooper suggests. “Someone who is universally liked,” another UDOT worker says. “A local celebrity,” a second UHP trooper adds. “Someone who can really bring the heat,” the lead employee agrees.

“I know just who to call,” the first trooper says.

The frame then cuts to a sexy montage of the Kaysville Fire Department set to “Eye of the Tiger” by the band Survivor. Spraying confetti while posing on one of their engines, firefighters hold signs saying “I-15 is closing” overnight in Farmington. The video urges Utahns to read more details in the caption.

 

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The short clip posted on UDOT’s Instagram page is just one of many silly, trendy yet informative posts the department’s small social media team has become known for. The page’s follower count has now grown to more than 177,000, and some of the videos have been viewed by millions.

The page isn’t loved just by Utahns. This week, the UDOT social media team was recognized nationally for best social media team of the year as part of the Golden Post Awards by the Government Social Media network, a group that helps government agencies improve communications strategies. The awards were announced Wednesday during a conference in Orlando.

Aimee Colton, UDOT’s social media manager, told Utah News Dispatch that UDOT hadn’t applied for the best social media team award, but they were nominated by surprise. “It was really sweet,” she said. “We’re very honored.”

Who’s the mastermind behind all of UDOT’s memes and videos? Colton didn’t take all of the credit, though she’s in charge of execution, planning and strategy. “We have great team members who contribute in many different ways,” she said, also crediting UDOT director of  public relations and spokesman John Gleason for being “very supportive.”

Though Colton said her social media team is “pretty small,” made up of about four or five people, and they don’t have a ton of resources at their disposal, she said they try to inform Utahns of things like road closures, construction, maintenance and other transportation projects in fun, relatable ways.

“Because, you know, through social media, you could be sharing the most important information in the world and people are not going to pay attention unless you convince them,” she said. “We try to deliver in a fun way.”

There’s some fancier content like footage of snow plow drivers set to heroic music. But for the most part, UDOT’s posts are rudimentary. Spongebob memes make more than one appearance. As recently as this week, UDOT posted a 15-second clip made with Microsoft Paint about an I-15 closure at Shepard Lane in Farmington set to “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton. That clip “got like 2 million views,” Colton said.

“It was so low-key and quick, but it was really impactful and a lot of people loved it,” she said, laughing. “For us, that was a really cool sign of success because a freeway closure is important, and we want people to be able to plan ahead and plan around those types of things. So that was a fun one.”

Colton said UDOT was also a finalist for the “best organic campaign” award, saying they submitted another fan favorite — posts advertising “BridgeFest” last year, when crews spent the summer working on 62 different bridge projects.

 

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The King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks in Seattle ended up winning this year’s best organic campaign award for its “Salmon SEEson” campaign. The National Park Service also won the overall best social media presence award.

But when competing with other government agencies across the nation — including state, city, county and federal agencies with a much bigger footprint than Utah — Colton said she was proud to see UDOT’s ragtag social media team get some recognition.

“It really does mean a lot, we try to be scrappy,” she said. “We want people to know what we’re up to.”

It’s not the first time UDOT has been recognized nationally for its social media use. Last year, it won best Instagram presence at the Golden Post Awards.

Colton said her team’s strategy is to be relatable. Even though construction, traffic and other transportation issues can be mundane and frustrating, she said it helps to not only inform, but also remind Utahns that UDOT workers are people too.

“We’re not trying to be this unreachable government organization who doesn’t understand and relate to people,” she said. “We are also people and we know what it’s like to have some of the same concerns. … So we want to communicate to them in a way that makes sense but is also fun and relatable.”

Plus, she said people don’t tend to remember information if it’s “given to you in a boring way.”

Written by Katie McKellar, for Utah News Dispatch