1. +
Using social media for
messaging about healthy
eating and active living
Ben Harris-Roxas, Urbis & UNSW
Becky Freeman, University of Sydney
Sian Rudge, Sax Institute

2. +
What is social media?

3. 3

4. How has the web changed?
 What is Web 2.0?
 User generated content
 Interaction
 Exchange of content
 Social
 Dialogue
 The mass adoption of online social networking means that providing
quality content is no longer sufficient. Users are used to interacting
with other site users and sharing quality content outside of the sites
where they first locate it.
4

5. What is social media?
 “Social Media is a group of Internet-based applications
[Facebook, YouTube, Twitter] that build on the ideological and
technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and
exchange of user generated content.”
 Source: Kaplan AM, Haenlein M. Users of the world, unite! The
challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business horizons.
2010;53(1):59-68.
 New media is the combination and convergence of computing and
information technology, communications networks and digitised media
and information content. The interlinking of these three key pillars has
arisen due to the development and popularisation of the Internet coupled
with the accessibility of activities, products and services within the digital
media sphere
5

6. 6

7. 7

8. +
Your experience

9. Limitations of the data and research
 Design: largely case studies
 Changing platform landscape
 Relevance of principles
 Links to principles of effective messaging
9

10. +
Who is using social media?

11. +
Internationally

12. +
Age groups online (US)

13. +
(Australia is similar)
Source: ABS 8146.0 - Household Use of Information Technology, Australia, 2010-11

14. +
Evolving picture

15. +
Gender
Source: Johanna Blakley, USC Study data posted at @Mojojohanna

16. +
Australia

17. Internet use in Australia
 In 2010-11, 6.2 million households had broadband internet access
 This is an increase of over one million households since 2008-09 –
almost three quarters (73%) of all households now have broadband
 Over two thirds (68%) of internet users made a purchase over the
internet in 2010-11. The most popular types of purchases were
travel, accommodation, memberships or tickets of any kind; and
CDs, music, DVDs, videos, books or magazines.
 One of the most popular activities performed on the internet was social
networking.
17
Source: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/8146.0Media%20Release12010-
11?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=8146.0&issue=2010-11&num=&view=

18. Social networking and online
gaming
18

19. Households with access to a home
computer, by State or Territory, 2010-11
19

20.  How and when Australians access the Internet changed significantly in
2011:
 Time spent accessing mobile Internet continues to increase: 4.2 hours
per week, up 20% from 3.5 hours in 2010
 Multi‐screen behaviour is now a daily habit. Six in ten online Australians
have used the Internet while watching TV, more than one third do it on a
daily basis.
20

21.  Australians are increasingly embracing the content creation and
interactive aspects of social media:
 39% post to websites that invite participation
 46% post on online forums
 65% update their social networking profile, while 72% browse others‟
posts, photos and messages
21

22.  In general, Australian Internet users welcome organisations and brands
onto their social networking sites and are happy to engage and contribute
to dialogue about products and services. In 2011:
 43% discussed or added personal comments about brands online
 39% posted reviews of brands online on a regular basis
 47% connected with an organisation via a social networking site
2

23. Facebook
Australians are among the world‟s most
enthusiastic Facebook users, spending an
average of 7 hours and 43 minutes per month of
the social networking site
25% of Australians „Like‟ or interact with a brand
on Facebook on a weekly basis
57% of Australians participated in „Liking‟ brands
during 2011 – up from 46% in 2010

24. +
Priority populations

25. +
Aboriginal groups

26. +

27. +
Rural and Remote

28. +
Older Australians and people with
disabilities
2003 2006/07 2009 2010/11
Older Australians (SDAC) 29% 54%
People with disabilities (SDAC) 41% 62%
General population (MPHS) 64% 79%
Source: ABS 8146.0 - Household Use of Information Technology, Australia, 2010-11
Internet access at home

29. +
People with disabilities
Source: ABS 8146.0 - Household Use of Information Technology, Australia, 2010-11
Purpose of internet use

30. +

31. +
Social gradient in use
Source: ABS 8146.0 - Household Use of Information Technology, Australia, 2010-11

32. +
What strategies and actions for
using social media have been
effective (and ineffective)?

33. How many can you name?

34. + 34

35. +
Collaborative projects
35

36. Organizational websites
36

37. +
Twitter
37

38. +
Online news
38

39. YouTube
39

40. Online petitions
40

41. Facebook
41

42. +
Blogs
42

43. Apps
43
(Ben will revisit later)

44. +
Systematic review findings
Moorhead SA; Hazlett DE; Harrison L; Carroll JK; Irwin A; Hoving C. (2013)
A New Dimension of Health Care: Systematic Review of the Uses, Benefits, and Limitations of Social Media
for Health Communication, Journal of Medical Internet Research, 15(4):e85. doi:10.2196/jmir.1933

45. +

46. +
Typology of use

47. +
Benefits

48. +
Limitations

49. +
Impact and outcome evaluation

50. Evaluation
Neiger BL, Thackeray R, Van Wagenen SA, Hanson CL, West JH,
Barnes MD, et al. Use of Social Media in Health Promotion
Purposes, Key Performance Indicators, and Evaluation Metrics.
Health promotion practice. 2012;13(2):159-64.
 1) Low engagement: an agreement or preference for content
 2) Medium engagement: people are involved in creating and
sharing content with the capacity to influence others
 3) High engagement: actual participation in off-line interventions
that results from some exposure to a social media campaign
50

51. Process Indicators
51

52. 52

53. 53

54. Outcome evaluation
 Content analysis
 Surveys
 Qualitative approaches
54

55. +
Case studies

58. Lessons Learned
 Integration
 The effectiveness of social media campaign can be positively
affected by the use of traditional media
 Integration with broader campaigns seems to be useful
 social media greatly benefits from traditional media, including
earned news media, that helps drive awareness
58

59.  Personal benefits
 Successful campaigns make users feel like a member of a
community and that they can express a part of myself to others
 Opportunity to win a prize that is both relevant and desirable,
not the ubiquitous iPad of most online marketing contests
 Offer rewards for participating and spreading marketing
messages
 Participants like interacting on social media because it can be
both anonymous and personal
59

60.  Community
 Partnerships with organisations and people who already have
large social media followings is useful
 Focus on continuously building social media communities, it
may then be possible to capitalise on that support for future
campaigns
 Online campaigns communications should routinely and
explicitly ask all members and followers to help build the
community as it leads not only to more followers, but more
highly engaged followers
60

61.  Promotion
 Motivated volunteer seeders who can leverage their personal connections with
others are far more likely to generate action than impersonalised ads
 Recruiting larger numbers of seeders may assist in campaign promotion
 Users need to be able to easily receive and share valuable information with
other people
 The campaign content should promote positive discussion and sharing
 A clearly bounded timeframe for a campaign creates a sense of anticipation
and excitement among participants
 Keep track of and use champions from previous campaigns to spread the word
for emerging/new campaigns
 Viral growth cannot be guaranteed or depended on, a communications strategy
to ensure a strong launch and ongoing promotion of the campaign is
necessary.
 Promotion require continuous seeding, not as simple as one hit and then,
fingers crossed, your campaign goes viral
61

62.  Use of social media tools
 Exploit already available everyday, familiar activists, like photo-
tagging and re-Tweeting
 Do not employ any complex third party tools or require participants
to register or give any personal details this can severely dissuade
participation and engagement
 High bounce rates to external websites suggest that click through
ads on social media sites may work better if users are sent to
another social media page, as opposed to being forced offsite to
an external website. This works both ways, for example, the
majority of Facebook page landings come from another Facebook
page.
 Ideally, campaigns should spread from friend to friend through the
automated sharing process of existing social network page
feeds, and not require further action of participants
 A variety of social media vehicles and relationships can increase
the participants‟ involvement in the program
62

63.  Content
 Online campaigns work best when there is a clear and
achievable call to action
 Create fun and positive associations with your brand, or
alternatively, authoritative and trustworthy may be more crucial
for health organisations
 Generating a large number of shares or having a campaign go
viral cannot be seen as the primary, most important outcome of
a social media campaign. A campaign that is both sharable and
effective in motivating people to change is essential.
63

64. +

65. +
Queensland police
during the floods
benhr.net/qldpolicefloods

66. +
Promising new approaches

67. +
What gets shared?

68. Factors
 Encourages/promotes interaction
 Establishes credibility
 Taps positive emotions
 Simple messaging
 Create a story/narrative
 Sense of urgency (very conditional though – evidence very mixed)
 But feel free to ignore these too – high degree of variability about what aspects of
messaging between cases/contexts
 Some of these factors are also in competition, e.g. simplicity and messaging
68

69. +
App-based

70. + Mobile phone, smartphone and
tablet use
Source: ACMA Communications Report 2011-12 Series
49
74 74
57
48
33
15
51
76 78
63
50
30
17
92 99 98
97 94
88
77
25
33
30
33
30
18
8
ALL 18–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 65+
%ofpersonsaged18yearsandover
Age range
Have a smartphone Use the internet via their mobile
Use a mobile phone Access the internet via a tablet computer (e.g. iPad)

71. +
App use
Source: ACMA Communications Report 2011-12 Series
2,408
2,810
3,087
2,712
3,199
3,195
3,799 3,731
3,606
3,510
3,977
4,099
4,454
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
Numberofpersonsaged14yearsandover('000s)

72. +
Mobile data
Source: ABS 8153.0 - Internet Activity, Australia, December 2012
Volume of data downloaded by mobile handset in 3 month reporting
period (TB)
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
Dec-11 Jun-12 Dec-12

73. +

74. +

75. +

76. +
VicHealth activity

77. +
Mix of app creators

78. +
Quantified self

79. +

80. +
Source: Swan M. (2012) The Realization of Personalized Medicine through Crowdsourcing, the Quantified Self,
and the Participatory Biocitizen, J Pers Med, 2:93-118. doi:10.3390/jpm2030093

81. +
Workplace-based activities

82. +
Challenges, barriers and enablers

83. +
Audiences may be more difficult to
target and define on social media
(clustering by interest may make psychographics more relevant)

84. +
Potential to exacerbate inequalities

85. +
Resources

86.  Digital advertising has been proven to be a very cost-effective tool
 Developing and promoting a successful social media campaign may be
lower cost than a mass media campaign but it can be time and human
resource intensive
 Simple and low tech and low cost campaigns can be highly effective
when conducted through the appropriate channels
 Staff
 Staff need to be trained in online health promotion, social media analytics
and developing shareable, content
 A personal approach, from individual staff members, rather than a
„”corporate” profile page may be more effective in reaching users
86
Cost

88. 88

89. +
Risks

90. +
1. Do not mix the professional and the
personal in ways likely to bring your
employer into disrepute.
2. Do not undermine your
effectiveness at work.
3. Do not imply employer
endorsement of your personal views.
4. Do not disclose confidential
information obtained through work.

91. +

92. +
Who owns your content and
social graph?
(beware the Facebook algorithm AKA EdgeRank)

93. +
Promising areas for research

94. +
 Experimentation
 New messages
 Viral
 Funding
 Monitoring

95. +
Becky Freeman
becky.freeman@sydney.edu.au
@no_smoking_chik
Ben Harris-Roxas
b.harrisroxas@urbis.com.au
@ben_hr
Sian Rudge
sian.rudge@saxinstitute.org.au