Developing a Sharing Network to Increase Facebook Likes

Summary

Impact Statement: 
Developing effective public health communications via social media is very much a work in progress. One critical success factor is the ability to converse with a broader audience and to create messages that allow interaction between the messenger and the audience. During the test phase of Kane County Health Department's (KCHD's) QI project, the reach of the planned Facebook post was 6,066, making it the post with the highest reach in KCHD's history of using Facebook. Even more importantly, more than 20 partner groups also shared the post, further extending the reach of public health to citizens within the county. The number of Likes on KCHD's Facebook page also increased, allowing new posts to appear on individuals’ news feeds.
Summary: 

Beginning in August 2015, the Office of Community Health Resources (OCHR) at KCHD completed a Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle with the intention of developing a sharing network to increase Likes to the KCHD Facebook page. At that time, the KCHD Facebook page had a total of 549 Likes.

The team developed an aim statement: Increase the total number of Likes on the KCHD Facebook page by 10% by November 4, 2015. To do this, the team decided to create a sharing network of local organizations that were also active on Facebook. These organizations could help promote the KCHD Facebook page and related content. Once the sharing network was developed, the communications coordinator connected with the agencies using Facebook messaging and alerted them to the upcoming campaign to increase Likes. 

Using the sharing network, KCHD launched the campaign message (to Like the page and share the post) to multiple audiences and ultimately increased Facebook Likes from 612 to 687 from October 30 to November 4. During this testing phase, KCHD saw an increase of 12.6%, which surpassed the aim statement goal of 10%.

Organization that conducted the QI initiative: 
KCHD
Citation: 

Wamhoff, B. Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange. Developing a Sharing Network to Increase Facebook Likes. Fri, 04/01/2016 - 15:52. Available at http://www.phqix.org/content/developing-sharing-network-increase-facebook-likes. Accessed March 29, 2024.

Submission Status: 
Completed
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Comments

4Sloan's picture
Submitted by 4Sloan on

Very interesting and worthwhile project. We're a jurisdiction of just over 200,000 with 393 Facebook fans and 366 Twitter followers. Our highest "distribution" on Facebook was 15.8K. That post was a notice about a road closure on a well-traveled road that leads to the Mt. Baker Ski Area. There are a couple of things that I've noticed regarding our Facebook Insights. We have certain dedicated fans who regularly share our posts. So, I try to "feature" these organizations in a Facebook post as an appreciation for their enthusiasm and loyalty. Sometimes it seems impossible to predict what will have limited action and what has the potential to go viral (well, we haven't done that as yet!). However, what I have noticed is that the average number of person's "served" our content by Facebook seems to be on the rise. So, we don't have many posts that go over 1K but we do have more and more posts in the 200-500 range. Also, I really like using Twitter because it's more the "go to" place for government and it's much more democratic in that anyone can converse with anyone. Also, we tend to get direct media coverage on Twitter. Just some miscellaneous thoughts. Thanks for your good work. 

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Submitted by tkane on

Thank you for sharing your story about this project on PHQIX. While reading your project description I began to wonder what other measures could be used instead of "likes"? Did your team consider other measures? In "future plans" you mentioned the term "sharing network"; I suppose a measure could be developed around that concept.

Ty 

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Submitted by brandi_wamhoff on

Thank you both for your comments!  I am going to share this feedback with our PIO who is also in charge of our facebook activities.  We did also monitor the reach of our FB posts but for the purposes of this project, focused on the "likes".  However, you are right that a measure could be developed around our "sharing network".  We definitely hope to increase the number of sharing network partners as well as our interactions with them consisting of content they share for us and vice versa. 

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Brandi Wamhoff, MPH
Kane County Health Department
Data and Quality Coordinator