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What Works
Knowing what resonates with your audience is important. Avoiding what puts an audience off is equally as vital.
Knowing what resonates with your audience is important. Avoiding what puts an audience off is equally as vital.
Here are practical tips for engaging on social media about health to foster a positive discussion.
Here are practical tips for engaging on social media about health to foster a positive discussion.
Key Tips
Key Tips
AUDIENCE INSIGHT - Tap into what is important for your audience. A simple poll or some research can give you some strong insights into what works for your audience. Realise that your audience may think about health in a different way to you, so it’s important to tap into the aspects that are important to them. See segmentation for more.
LANGUAGE - Match your language to the people you want to target. For example young adults are more likely to respond to positive messages about health that will give them impacts now, rather than long-term messages about preventing disease.
TAILOR CONTENT - Know what platforms your audience use and why they use them so you can tailor your content to their needs.
ASSESS IMAGES - Be critical of the images you share on social media and the unintended consequences that the images may have. Build yourself a library of images that avoid stigma and celebrate diversity in all its forms that you can rely on for your posts.
CAREFUL MESSAGING - Keep it positive and provide a practical and balanced approach when talking about health on social media. Be mindful about how your language on social media can impact body image. Avoid messages and images that use shame or guilt.
INSPIRE - Provide messages that inspire through strategies that fit within the lives of those you are targeting. These could include healthy ideas that are achievable and help overcome the barriers to things like healthy eating, such as money and time.
PLATFORM - Spend time getting to know the platform you are using, what it can do and how to best create content (both style and message) to have the right impact on your audience.
DATA & TRACKING - Regularly look at data and track your engagement. Continue to adapt your content based on what is working for you.
Foundations
Foundations
Understanding what works and what doesn’t work on social media is multi-layered. Consider:
The platform - are you using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok or a combination?
The format - is the content video based, image or text based?
The message - what are you trying to communicate and what tone and style will work with your audience?
These key things are inter-related. For example, if you know most of your audience are on Instagram then you will need to make sure that you use images as your means to get the majority of your message across.
The following tips give you some further details on what works and doesn't work on social media based on three studies conducted through our Communicating Health work. The full studies can be found in the Links & Resources section below.
Helpful Approaches
Helpful Approaches
When it comes to health and nutrition, there is a lot of information being shared on social media - and a lot of it is not evidence based. Yet, many people use social media as a source of information and contribute to this information daily by sharing food and exercise accomplishments.
Communicating Health research identified that when it comes to the topics of health, food and nutrition, there are particular elements that are more likely to engage audiences and other elements that are likely to put people off.
We found that these approaches work when talking about health, food and nutrition on social media:
A Balanced Approach
A Balanced Approach
Our research with young adults identified that they see health as holistic with an interplay between different aspects including mental, spiritual, physical, social and emotional wellbeing.
Immediate vs Long-Term Outcomes
Immediate vs Long-Term Outcomes
Some audiences will respond differently to immediate versus long-term outcomes.
E.g., messages that talk about long-term disease prevention will not resonate with young adults but messages that focus on immediate outcomes, such as feeling fitter, do.
Diversity
Diversity
Representing different body shapes, sizes, ethnicities and gender identities will resonate with a larger audience on social media.
Positive Messages
Positive Messages
Celebrating wins and keeping things positive resonates with audiences and can also help increase trust.
Encourage Sharing
Encourage Sharing
Sometimes the expert in what works for a particular audience is the audience themselves. Use social media to encourage your audience to share what works for them.
Simplicity
Simplicity
Keep your message and writing style simple.
Use bullet points, short sentences, leave plenty of white space, and avoid complicated language and acronyms. See more tips on Finding Time.
Approaches to Avoid
Approaches to Avoid
Our research identified that discussions about the topics of health, food and nutrition on social media can have negative consequences, especially when it comes to the sharing of image-related content.
Social media is a breeding ground for comparison to others and we found exposure to image-related content (particularly images of idealised lifestyles) on social media may negatively affect body image and disordered eating behaviours.
Your health communication can alleviate these negative consequences by avoiding:
Shame or Guilt Messages
Shame or Guilt Messages
Making people feel guilty about having made an ‘unhealthy choice’ will not support their decisions to make healthier ones. Focus on the positives and help your audience celebrate wins, not losses, and avoid referring to food as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Unrealistic Lifestyles
Unrealistic Lifestyles
Your audience is likely to have differences in terms of what they can afford and how much time they have to devote to their health. Promote lifestyles and make recommendations that are within reach of your audience.
Weight & Appearance
Weight & Appearance
Avoid using weight and appearance as measures of health as this can prompt negative perception. This includes being careful about the types of images that accompany your posts. Focus on the functionality of the body, rather than what it looks like.
Check out the images below for more advice about selecting images to go with your posts.
Images of people being healthy and exercising can support your message but make sure you 'keep it real'.
Photo by Anupam Mahapatra on Unsplash
If you are promoting healthy food be mindful of your audience and the types of foods that are within their budget.
Photo by jwlez on Unsplash
Don't use shame or guilt to stop your audience from eating unhealthily. Instead, focus on promoting healthy choices.
Photo by Marc Noorman on Unsplash
Don't focus on weight as an achievement, focus on actions that people can take that will support their overall health.
Photo by i yunmai on Unsplash
Study Focus: How are organisations using social media to target young adults?
Study Focus: How are organisations using social media to target young adults?
Our research showed that while nutrition professionals and health promotion organisations have lower numbers of followers compared to food industry brands and personalities, they have a higher level of engagement. This shows that they may be connecting better with their audience. We found that health promoters are more likely to use Facebook as their primary channel. This is a consideration as not all audiences use Facebook as their go-to social media channel.
We found that the following strategies worked on social media:
● Positive tone of the message
● Prompting engagement - ie. asking the audience to sign up, tag a friend or to target them with announcements
Research found, however, that what works on social media changes over time so it is important to keep looking at the data provided by the channel that you are using, and keep track of what works for you.
Check out the full study: What People “Like”: Analysis of Social Media Strategies Used by Food Industry Brands, Lifestyle Brands, and Health Promotion Organizations on Facebook and Instagram https://doi.org/10.2196/10227
Where to Next? - Finding Time to Communication via Social Media or to helpful resources linked below
Where to Next? - Finding Time to Communication via Social Media or to helpful resources linked below
Links & Resources
Links & Resources
Ready Made Messages
Ready Made Messages
Framing Gender Equality - Message Guide - https://assets.vichealth.vic.gov.au/share/1E882A48-BE0E-410D-AB54A1FBA1597FCC/
Body image - https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/ - this site's content might make some people uncomfortable but consider how learning to sit with discomfort is often what helps people to change.
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)
What People “Like”: Analysis of Social Media Strategies Used by Food Industry Brands, Lifestyle Brands, and Health Promotion Organizations on Facebook and Instagram (by Klassen KM, Borleis ES, Brennan L, Reid M, McCaffrey TA, Lim MS,) in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (2018)
Social media use for nutrition outcomes in young adults: a mixed-methods systematic review (by Klassen, K.M., Douglass, C.H., Brennan, L. et al. ) in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (2018)
Language of Health of Young Australian Adults: A Qualitative Exploration of Perceptions of Health, Wellbeing and Health Promotion via Online Conversations (by Molenaar A, Choi TST, Brennan L, Reid M, Lim MSC, Truby H, McCaffrey TA.) in the journal Nutrients (2020)
Social media, body image and food choices in healthy young adults: A mixed methods systematic review (by Rounsefell, K, Gibson, S, McLean, S, et al. ) in the journal Nutrition & Dietetics (2020)
The use of social media as a persuasive platform to facilitate nutrition and health behavior change in young adults: web-based conversation study (by Friedman V, Wright C, Molenaar A, McCaffrey T, Brennan L, Lim M) in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (2022)
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