Presentation at the Sydney social media forum by Yves Calmette from ACON Health, titled 'The power of Facebook and Twitter for reaching and (re)engaging about HIV prevention: Is social media the new holy grail?'

1. The Power of Facebook and Twitter
for Reaching and (Re) Engaging about
HIV Prevention:
Is Social Media the
New Holy Grail?
Connecting Up, 14 November 2012

2. About ACON

3. About ACON
ACON is a health promotion organisation based in the gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities with a primary
focus on HIV prevention.
ACON provides HIV prevention, health promotion, advocacy, care
and support services to members of our communities including
indigenous people, people who inject drugs, sex workers and all
people living with HIV.

4. Everything has
changed…

5. Everything has changed
SOCIAL MEDIA
AUSTRALIAN MARKET
FACEBOOK

6. Everything has changed
SOCIAL MEDIA
AUSTRALIAN MARKET
FACEBOOK

7. Social media venues
79% of gay men
are on Facebook
30% of gay men
are on Twitter

8. Campaign
background and
objectives

9. Background
• Understandings of education and prevention often rely on the
assumption of an understanding of HIV, condoms and their
meaning, which often no longer applies.
• Through conversations with gay men, the project revealed
some common misconceptions and misunderstandings about
the epidemic. These included:
‘There were more people living with HIV in 1996’ , ‘Young people are the most
at risk’ , ‘HIV is only in older guys now’ , ‘No-one dies of AIDS now’, ‘The
number of infections was much higher in the nineties than now’.

10. Objectives
• The Big Picture campaign seeks to bring the knowledge
of gay men about the HIV epidemic in NSW up to date.
• The campaign also aims to provide a basis for re-initiating
conversations among gay men in NSW about the HIV
epidemic.

11. Objectives
A fantastic opportunity to start building
online communities on gay men’s sexual health.

12. Campaign primary resources
Booklet
Online banners
Website

19. FACEBOOK

20. Building the FACEBOOK community

21. Building the FACEBOOK community
FACEBOOK UPDATES

22. Building the FACEBOOK community
• A mix of formats
• Open Questions
• ‘Myth or Fact?’ questions: a more playful format
• Poll Questions (YES or NO): to encourage fans to
participate.
• Text-only posts: to encourage fans to make a specific
action.
• Infographics
• Several times a week
• Some posts will promote the twitter account.

23. Building the FACEBOOK community

25. Building the FACEBOOK community
FACEBOOK ADS

26. FACEBOOK ads
14 ads using different design, copy and targeting techniques:
• Targeting men according to their interests related to gay clichés
such as ‘fans of Lady Gaga’ or ‘George Michael’, targeting men
who specified in their profiles that they were ‘interested in men’…
• Design featuring infographics, symbols like ‘?’, photos of men…
•Copy with or without words related to HIV, gay …

27. TWITTER

28. Building the TWITTER community

29. Building the TWITTER community
• Tweets in line with the Facebook posts.
• However, content has to fit within a tweet (due to
character limit), they will include a link either to the website
or to the Facebook page
• Additionally, some tweets will also include an attached
graph taken from the website and/or printed material.
• Some tweets will promote the Facebook page.

30. Building the TWITTER community

32. Results

33. Traffic to website
NUMBER OF VISITS
• More than double traffic than for previous websites
• Almost 50% of visitors used mobile devices to access the
website
TRAFFIC SOURCES
• 3rd source: FACEBOOK!
QUALITY OF TRAFFIC
• 3 to 4 pages visited on average
• 2 to 3 minutes per visit on average

34. Results on TWITTER
Tweets Re-tweets Mentions Followers
120 27 31 54
+87%* +285%* +121%* +107%*
* January vs December

35. Results on TWITTER
ACTIVITIES
• Modest but it takes time
Is TWITTER the right venue for this campaign in particular and
for campaigns in general?
– Twitter is mainly used to share fresh content or events/news that are
occurring at the same time the tweets are posted, such as events, etc.
– Populations: influencers, journalists, media, celebrities…

36. Results on FACEBOOK
Facebook is actually much more than just
‘fans’.
•There are typically two potential audiences for branded
content on Facebook.
•The fans who have explicitly ‘liked’ the organisation are the
easiest to reach but the friends of those fans also constitute an
important additional audience.

37. Results on FACEBOOK
•Friends of fans represent a much larger set of consumers (34
times larger on average) and can receive social media content
by way of their friends.
•The level of interest of the friends of fans might be as high as
the fans’.
•They might not be willing to explicitly ‘like’ a page but they
are likely to be interested in what their friends who ‘liked’
the page see or are engaged with.

38. The power of ‘likes’

39. The power of ‘likes’

40. The power of ‘likes’
>60,000
reached
up to 3 times

41. The power of ‘likes’

42. Barriers to interaction
It’s not totally clear what the main barriers to interaction were
but research on other Facebook campaigns suggests that:
• Facebook users are typically more engaged by content that
relates to them and with which they can personally identify as
opposed to factual content (such as the Big Picture campaign).
• Facebook users also prefer the simple and clear over the
unfamiliar, lengthy and complex.

43. Barriers to interaction
The external campaign qualitative evaluation gives very valuable
insights about the relatively low level of interaction:
• Many gay men - in particular older men - have concerns about
Facebook privacy and security.
• Those who aren’t openly gay don’t want to be outed on
Facebook

44. Barriers to interaction
• Others, even if they are totally comfortable with their sexuality,
aren’t entirely open to talking about HIV-related topics in a
public space such as Facebook.
• They don’t want their work colleagues, potential recruiters or
families, to make assumptions about their sexuality or their HIV
status.
• Many men will never consider adding to the conversation. They
prefer to read posts rather than contribute their own.

45. HOWEVER…
According to the Facebook Engagement Rate (Number of People
Talking About it/Number of likes x 100), the Facebook page
presented an excellent performance (11.73), even when
compared to Facebook pages from popular brands.

46. Demographic Distribution
30% 37%
25%

47. Lessons learnt

48. Lessons learnt
1. Traffic booster : definitely!
2. Reach and frequency: absolutely!
3. Engage conversations/discussions: we can do better!
4. Facebook – effective channel to reach younger audiences:
confirmed but older guys too!
5. Budget & resources:
• Low cost in terms of media spent for similar traffic rates generated
• 1 to 2 days / week

49. Social media planner
DAILY
• Monitor the online space via Google Alerts
Upload required content to online platforms:
Twitter, Facebook
• Respond to fans on the Facebook site in
timely fashion
• View analytic data at the end of each day to
analyse engagement levels
• Follow new people on Twitter

50. Social media planner
WEEKLY
• Record engagement on each platform site via
analytics program
• End of each week make an assessment as to
success of the content and refine as
necessary
• Review and compile future week content
• Identify those that are advocates for your
cause that are following you on Twitter or
engaging on Facebook; be sure to recognise
their support.
• Post a comment on a recommended blog
where appropriate.

51. Social media planner
MONTHLY
• Report on monthly statistics including
Facebook Insights as well as key metrics for
Twitter such as new followers.
• Refine future content strategy
• Create monthly content schedule

52. Acknowledgements
• Tony Tang, Digital Campaign Planner, ACON
• ComScore 2012
• Google 2011
• Spina A, Whytest Evaluation Report, 2010 / Spina A,
Drama Down Under Phase 2 Evaluation Report, 2010
• Harris Interactive 2011
• Stokes Mischewski, The Big Picture Evaluation Report,
2012

53. Thank you
ycalmette@acon.org.au