Social media delivers engaging health messages using different creative elements, inspirational images, and focus a new product.

Edney S and team has conducted a study to examine the social media activity of commercially available wearable activity tracker brands. This study aimed to understand which creative elements they use to communicate with their audience, which social media platforms and which creative elements attracts the most engagement from users.

It was a cross-disciplinary study, which analyzed the social media posts (n=509) of wearable activity trackers brands, Fitbit and Garmin in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They coded the posts for the presence of creative elements for a period of three months. The total number of likes, comments, or shares for each post were recorded to determine user engagement. Creative elements that attracted most engagement was analyzed using negative binomial regression.

The study revealed that Instagram attracted 30-200 times higher engagement of users than Facebook, or Twitter. Different creative elements were used in each social website to prompt engagement. Posts featuring the product image, highlighting new product features and with themes of self-improvement (P<.01) demonstrated higher engagement.

The study concluded that Instagram demonstrates a successful platform for delivering engaging health messages. Inspirational images and focus on a tangible product achieves the highest engagement. Different creative elements used were likely to reflect differences in their target markets. 

References:

Edney S, Bogomolova S, Ryan J, Olds T, Sanders I, Maher C. Creating Engaging Health Promotion Campaigns on Social Media: Observations and Lessons From Fitbit and Garmin. J Med Internet Res. 2018; 20(12):e10911. Published 2018 Dec 10.