Less Time, More Accuracy, Peace of Mind: How This Council Transformed Their Social Media Recordkeeping

With over 20 Facebook pages and thousands of monthly interactions, Cairns Regional Council needed more than screenshots to manage their social media records. Here’s how they found their solution.

The challenge: managing social media records manually

With 20+ Facebook pages, thousands of monthly interactions, and an active community, Cairns Regional Council’s social media presence was thriving. With it came the challenge of recordkeeping.

The council was proactive in capturing digital conversations, but it was a manual process.

However, with the vast volume of daily interactions across their social profiles, the screenshot method quickly reached its limits.

“If you take a screenshot of a comment thread, what you captured is already outdated and void as soon as someone else interacts with that thread in any way – someone edits or deletes their comment, or a new comment appears. So, you end up chasing your tail all the time, trying to keep up”, the council officer elaborates.

The limitations of manual recordkeeping

• No standardised process across 20+ Facebook pages
• Time-consuming manual screenshots
• Records difficult to locate in their document management system
• Lost context when capturing individual comments
• Screenshots quickly became outdated with new comments
• Engagement volumes made archiving time-intensive
• Inconsistent archiving procedures across multiple page admins

“So, the conversation about social media archiving kept coming up,” says Norbert. “How do we record these conversations more effectively?"

The search for a smarter social media archiving solution

It was a case of perfect timing.

While attending a social media conference, Norbert came across Brolly – just as the Council was exploring ways to improve its recordkeeping.

"It was a classic case of the right place at the right time," he notes.

“After researching alternatives, we found no one else offered the same features and level of compliance we needed."

Norbert, Senior Communications Officer at Cairns Regional Council

How Brolly transformed the council’s recordkeeping

Three features made Brolly the ideal choice:

• Real-time content capture Brolly automatically archives all social media content, including images, videos, and edits or deletes – no manual effort is required. "It’s insurance," Norbert explains. "We’ve used Brolly to retrieve content several times now. It gives us peace of mind knowing that every piece of content is kept if we ever need it again."
• Full context preservation Unlike screenshots, Brolly captures entire conversations, including linked content. "One feature that’s really important for us is how Brolly preserves the context. For example, when a post includes a link, Brolly screenshots the linked website at that point in time. We can go back years later and know precisely what was on that webpage.”
• Instant search and reporting With an average of 3,076 records over 90 days, Brolly’s search and export functionality made retrieving past conversations effortless. Cairns Regional Council’s recordkeeping policy requires all records to be stored within their document management system. "Every month, we download an HTML version of all the captured comments and messages and store it in our own system. Because it’s in HTML format, anyone can use it at any time without needing the Brolly framework. This ability to store data independently was a crucial requirement for our records department."

The results: compliance, efficiency, and confidence

Since implementing Brolly nearly four years ago, Cairns Regional Council has archived approximately 367,000 social media records.

Records are captured reliably, with the surrounding context kept for secure, low-effort recordkeeping.

• Hours of manual work eliminated – tasks that took hours now take seconds
• Instant access to past interactions with exports in multiple formats
• Confidence in meeting recordkeeping requirements
• Peace of mind knowing all records are complete and accurate

Simplified and secure recordkeeping with Brolly

Cairns Regional Council now has a reliable, automated solution that keeps them audit-ready without the manual workload.

They found in Brolly an essential "insurance policy" – ensuring their digital communications remain accessible, searchable, and compliant for years to come.