Building Online Communities: Social Media Strategies for Health Promotion

Background:  The HHS Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) works on a number of initiatives, including Healthy People 2020, healthfinder.gov, Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, patient safety, and health literacy. To support communication around these initiatives, ODPHP follows a comprehensive social media strategy to reach and connect with various audiences, which span from health professionals and policymakers to general health consumers. Currently, social media messaging falls under one of two brands – healthfinder.gov and Healthy People 2020.

Program background:  healthfinder.gov is a user-tested federal Web site whose mission is to help the public make informed health decisions by providing accurate, timely, and actionable information. The site was designed based on formative and usability research with over 700 people, including those with limited health literacy. To reach and engage the healthfinder.gov audience, which is composed of health consumers with limited to proficient health literacy skills as well as professional intermediaries, ODPHP manages an active social media community on Facebook and Twitter. The social media strategy centers around encouraging small steps to improve healthy behaviors via weekly Facebook challenges, which are supported through related posts and tweets throughout the week. The topic for the weekly challenge is selected based on national health observances, popular public health issues, or timely events or news, to leverage conversations that are already taking place. Healthfinder.gov social media messaging is written in plain language, and the format and timing of posts are adapted to the audience’s interactivity (e.g., sharing posts, retweeting, etc.).   Healthy People 2020 (HP2020), a set of evidence-based, 10-year national objectives for improving the health of all Americans, has a diverse group of stakeholders, including health professionals, policymakers, advocates, community leaders, government, and academics. Since these professional groups populate LinkedIn and Twitter, ODPHP leverages these platforms to engage HP2020 audiences in conversations related to recent data, target setting, community stories, the leading health indicators, and other HP2020 topics. ODPHP appeals to its HP2020 audiences by inviting and monitoring discussions, posting timely news and information, and continuing the conversation from events and Webinars.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  As of March 2014, we  had more than 11,000 healthfinder.gov Facebook fans, 227,000 healthfinder.gov Twitter followers, 51,000 HP2020 Twitter followers, and 8,400 HP2020 LinkedIn members. ODPHP assesses monthly metrics on reach (e.g. followers, fans, etc.) and engagement (e.g., shares, likes, retweets, etc.), and adapts its strategies to fit overall communication goals. This includes exploring and tracking the impact of new technologies and content (such as infographics), experimenting with group moderation techniques, and integrating audience insights from channels such as Google analytics and Webinar polling. ODPHP continues to track popular tweets and posts to increase engagement metrics every week.

Conclusions:  ODPHP’s social media engagement serves as an ongoing case study of a successful and evolving federal social media strategy.

Implications for research and/or practice:  When implementing a social media strategy, it is critical to assess and evaluate audience needs in order to maximize engagement, and ultimately, influence behavior change.