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Creating an authentic voice on social media, as well as fostering credibility and trust with your audience will help your communication stand out and have impact.
Creating an authentic voice on social media, as well as fostering credibility and trust with your audience will help your communication stand out and have impact.
Key Tips
Key Tips
EXPERTISE - Don’t be shy! Ensure your expertise is clearly stated on your social media profile and on websites to make it obvious that you are a health professional and are qualified to share health information.
YOUR SCOPE - Focus on your scope of practice. We know it can be tempting to comment on a number of areas relating to health but sticking to the area of your expertise will help your credibility. Instead, build relationships with other health professionals that are complimentary to your own practice and cross-share information that is relevant to each of your audiences.
BE POSITIVE - Share messages using positive language to inspire your audience to take action. If this feels unnatural to you, make a start by reducing negative posts. A simple example could be changing ‘eating deep-fried food is bad for your health and should be avoided’ to ‘moderation is key! Focus on increasing the proportion of wholefoods in your meal, rather than cutting out all things deep-fried’
SHARE - If you are comfortable, share some ‘human’ things about yourself to create a relationship with your audience. Social media often showcases a highlight reel, and your audience may appreciate seeing an authentic real person that they can relate to.
POST & ENGAGE REGULARLY - Regular engagement is key to building a relationship with your audience.
Why is this important?
Why is this important?
If you use social media, you will likely come across a number of ‘social media influencers’ daily, giving you health advice, promoting ‘fad diets’ or the latest health product.
Social media influencers often have a large, engaged audience who are invested in their life and actively follow their advice. In particular, young people run the risk of being influenced by unqualified social media influencers which could negatively shape their relationship with food and their bodies later in life, not to mentioned potentially damage their health.
In contrast, Communicating Health research found that health professionals, while having lower numbers of followers, had higher relative engagement with their content.
Our research identified three factors that can help health professionals to continue to increase the trust of their content on social media:
Source
Credibility
Source
Credibility
Do I trust that the person / organisation I am receiving the message from is an authority on this information?
Health professionals and health organisations start from a higher level of trust when communicating about health.
Message Credibility
Message Credibility
Focusing on the positives, rather than accentuating the negatives was found to increase the level of trust and engagement with posts.
For example, focusing on successes and wins (such as choosing a healthy option at a dinner out with friends), rather than failures.
Authenticity
Authenticity
Followers on social media will often respond better to ‘authentic’ rather than polished versions.
Personal stories and case studies allow followers to relate to content on a personal level. Sharing stories about overcoming adversity can be very engaging and effective.
Study Focus: Can Health Professionals Be Heroes
Study Focus: Can Health Professionals Be Heroes
As a part of our Communicating Health research we conducted an experimental survey to gauge young adult’s perceptions of a nutrition professional and social media influencer on Instagram.
Participants first viewed both a nutrition professional and social media influencer’s profile and posts, then answered questions about the perceived authenticity and trustworthiness of the posts. Participants found the nutrition professional’s post to be more authentic than the social media influencer, but only when a heroic message appeal was used (i.e. conveys bravery and success). This in turn led to increased trustworthiness of the post. You can find the full study here: Strategies to Improve Health Communication: Can Health Professionals Be Heroes? - https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/6/1861.
Where to next? - What Works (& Doesn't) on Social Media or Communicating with Indigenous Australians
Where to next? - What Works (& Doesn't) on Social Media or Communicating with Indigenous Australians
Links & Resources
Links & Resources
Publications
Publications
Learning the Language of Social Media: A Comparison of Engagement Metrics and Social Media Strategies Used by Food and Nutrition-Related Social Media Accounts (by Barklamb AM, Molenaar A, Brennan L, Evans S, Choong J, Herron E, Reid M, McCaffrey TA.) in Nutrients (2020)
Assessing the Credibility and Authenticity of Social Media Content for Applications in Health Communication: Scoping Review (by Jenkins EL, Ilicic J, Barklamb AM, McCaffrey TA,) in Journal of Medical Internet Research (2020)
Strategies to Improve Health Communication: Can Health Professionals Be Heroes? (by Jenkins EL, Ilicic J, Molenaar A, Chin S, McCaffrey TA.) in Nutrients (2020)
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