Youth Health 2011 Sydney conference presentation

This post is in conjunction with my presentation on the utilization of social media in health communications targeting youth for sexual health promotion, given at the 8th Australian and New Zealand Adolescent Health Conference in Sydney, November 2011. The abstract can be accessed here.

Introduction

Rietmeijer and MacFarlane in their journal publications drew attention to online social networking sites and mobile technology as important areas for sexual health awareness and prevention campaigns. With this in mind, the Studio 34 Project was set up between July  and December 2010 in order to anlayse and map the social media communications strategy that would be required to engage with young people in Darwin.

Two blog posts (July 2010 and September 2010) were written describing the journey, observations that were made and the challenges we faced in the process of engagement during the pilot. Today I would like to focus on the insights we gained regarding the skills and resources that are required by health professionals to create engaging content for online sexual health promotion. In this project we used a Facebook Page and loaded videos either directly onto Facebook or a posted link from YouTube; and the learning is as follows.

Creating content – This is where it all begins

Online sexual health promotion targeting young people requires content that is original, preferably made by youth for youth, locally produced and in a variety of media format. Consistent posting on Facebook is essential. The health professional working on using Facebook must decide the frequency of posting and strive to maintain a steady flow of information either weekly or fortnightly to start off with.

Any camera can be used to take photos that are relevant to sexual health. The purpose of using still shots is to be able to give young people a clear picture of:

• What is a  sexual health service?
• What are swabs and jars for a urine specimen?
• What does the clinic space look like and,
• Where is the clinic located.

Video content is the next step up from taking still shots. This is where young people can watch videos of young people, thereby de-stigmatizing the issue and promoting ‘safe sex’ among peers. Videos can be shot or recorded with a camera, camcorder, Flipcam or your very own smartphone. It is always important to plan your video content a few weeks in advance and write out your storyline. After shooting material for your video, do not post them immediately. You can use simple video editing tools like Windows Movie Maker or the Apple iMovie to make a good product. Be sure to add titles, credits and a credible author before uploading.

Facebook  information section

In your information section of your Facebook page is it important to clearly state, what or who your organization is. Credibility cannot be an overemphasis. Give a short description of your aims and objectives and provide contact details. More information can be provided under the ‘Discussion’ tab. Designing a “Welcome” tab is optional and in the case of Studio 34, we chose to have a “Comment Policy” tab which was initially implemented by the American Center for Disease Control Facebook Page.

Facebook metrics – are we doing it right?

The analysis

The screen shots above and below of the Studio 34 Facebook page provides basic analytics to tell you whether the content that you are producing to create engagement is effective or not. This is available under the “Insights” tab. This is the data that I used to know what kinds of media content creates or spurs the engagement from the people who “liked” the page.

Daily story feedback: Tell me how many new subscribers we have everyday and who have unsubscribed. It also tells me how many people are commenting. “Comments” is the secret sauce of Facebook. According to BJ Fogg, if you can create content that spurs commenting, then you have definitely achieved an engaged audience.

Page Posts: For each time I post, whether it be a status update or an article, a variable called ‘Impressions’ tells me how many times a post was viewed on a user’s wall, shared by a user, maintains an active presence on user’s wall. For more information please read this article.

Activity: By correlating and comparing posts by date to the number of page views and unique page views, you derive information on what type of media is easily consumed. Remember you’re shaping or sequencing a behavior so the output has to be simple to perform. From the graphs above, photos are the most popular content accessed by the users.

Demographics: We aimed for the 16 – 20 years age group but we got mostly the 25-34 age group. Through Facebook advertising you can target the precise age group but in this pilot we wanted to see the flow of word of mouth marketing on Facebook.

Interactions: From the graph below, I would say that it is better to make quality posts every week as there are more weekly to monthly active users and that they all reacted as soon as a new post was live. In our case we posted  in the beginning of every week. It is possible that if had a post every day we would have more daily active users but that would require more content production which can also be  sustainable .

C onclusion

With the development of the Facebook Social Graph, there is plenty of opportunity to market sexual health services through peer influence by including the Facebook comments tab  or a ‘Like’ button to your sexual health on your website. The main purpose of using social media in sexual health promotion is to sequence or shape a desired behavior and not just promote knowledge and improve attitude (“Dont eat the apple Eve”). Some of the behaviors that can be shaped is:

• Contacting a sexual health service via mobile device either with an SMS or email for appointment easy to do.
• Contacting a sexual health service via mobile device either with an SMS or email for personalised  answers to questions etc.