Quality over Quantity: Building Engagement on Social Media Platforms

Background:  Million Hearts^® leverages popular social media platforms to disseminate messages and increase awareness of resources related to heart disease and stroke prevention. Audiences range from consumers to clinicians to public health professionals working at the local, regional, and national levels. Since 2011, the initiative has gained nearly 100,000 social media followers. In the past year, however, Million Hearts^®—per the recommendation of industry experts—has turned its attention away from gaining followers to finding ways to boost engagement with important cardiovascular health content. The purpose of this poster is to share strategies and tactics for motivating audiences to take action on Facebook and Twitter posts and tips for evaluating results.  

Program background:  Heart disease and stroke are the first and fifth leading causes of death in the United States, respectively. Million Hearts^®—a national initiative co-led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services—aims to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes by 2022. The Million Hearts^® team relies on social media to connect and communicate with consumers, health care professionals, health systems, nonprofit organizations, communities, federal agencies, and private-sector organizations working together to achieve this goal.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Million Hearts^® social media managers follow a content development and outreach strategy that focuses on increasing social media user engagement versus gaining followers. Social strategy decisions are based on whether or not a user is likely to like, click, share, or comment on a post, and are informed by data gathered through regular social listening and sophisticated analytics tools. Strategies and tactics proven effective include the following: posting timely, targeted content; packaging content in appealing formats such as short videos, animations, polls, and quizzes; utilizing proven conventions and trends (e.g., tagging, hashtags, memes, gifs); leveraging targeted paid promotion opportunities; and participating in social media events with influential partners. Incorporating these tactics into the initiatives’ social media strategy helped increase total engagements in 2016 by 132%. 

Conclusions:  Taking an audience- and data-centric approach to social media content development and dissemination has allowed Million Hearts to better engage with and motivate action among key audiences—increasing the chances that the initiative will reach its goal of preventing 1 million heart attacks and strokes in 5 years. 

Implications for research and/or practice:  Organizations should leverage available data and consider best practices when creating social media content and devising outreach strategies. An audience- and data-centric approach will ensure maximum impact of social media efforts.