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Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: Social media platforms are changing how public health professionals interact with target audiences. Twitter is one platform for public health professionals to communicate information in real time and has become a valuable tool in professional and academic conference settings. The extent to which social media, specifically Twitter, is able to reach and engage public health audiences is relatively unknown. Our purpose, therefore, is to evaluate the effectiveness of messaging using Twitter to reach and engage public health audiences on topics related to obesity. Hypothesis: CDC effectively used Twitter during the 2012 Weight of the Nation (WON) conference and the HBO documentary series premier to reach and engage audiences in conversations related to obesity.
Methods: During the WON (May 6 – May 15, 2012), all of DNPAO’s Twitter account (@CDCObesity) messages (tweets) that were shared, received, and/or shared by others (retweeted) were archived. Tweets were categorized as obesity, nutrition, physical activity, conference logistics, documentary, or other. We used three social media metric categories (breadth, depth and direct engagement) as recommended by new federal guidelines to measure social media (www.howto.gov/social-media/using-social-media-in-government/metrics-for-federal-agencies). We defined the ability to reach an audience as breadth and depth. Breadth was measured by community size (number of followers), community growth (increase in the number of followers) and retweet rate (ratio of number of retweets to the number of tweets shared). Depth was measured by a click-through rate (percentage of followers who click on a hyper link). Direct engagement was measured by the number of mentions (a follower including @CDCObesity in their tweet) and by the conversation ratio (total number of mentions divided by total number of tweets sent).
Results: 189 tweets were shared, received, or retweeted. @CDCObesity sent 96 tweets (50.8%). For breadth, during the WON conference and premier the number of followers increased from 869 to 1101 (27% relative increase). Most (27.5%) of tweets @CDCObesity shared were about obesity whereas 3.2% were about nutrition, and 3.7% were about physical activity. The retweet rate was 46.9% (45 retweets of @CDCObesity tweets/96 @CDCObesity tweets sent). For depth, the click-through rate was 1% (of 49 @CDCObesity tweets sent with a hyper link, 1% of hyperlinks were clicked). For direct engagement, @CDCObesity was mentioned in 93 tweets (93/189 = 49.2%). The conversation ratio was 0.97:1; meaning for every one tweet sent by @CDCObesity, @CDCObesity received 0.97 tweets.
Conclusions: Based on an increase in followers and acceptable retweet and click-through rates, @CDCObesity appeared to effectively reach Twitter users during the case-study. Also, based on the number of times @CDCObesity was mentioned compared to the number of times their messages were sent, @CDCObesity appeared to effectively engage Twitter users during the case-study. Our findings suggest Twitter is an effective platform to reach and engage audiences in conversations about topics related to obesity.
Implications for research and/or practice: Public health organizations may consider using this case-study and the new federal guidelines (www.howto.gov/social-media/using-social-media-in-government/metrics-for-federal-agencies) to evaluate the impact of public health efforts using social media.