Public Health Communication and Marketing - Beyond Social Media

How many health organizations do you follow on social media? Why do you follow them? Are they influencing you to make a change in behavior? If so, what are they doing to make you consider making a behavior change in your personal life?

Nowadays, health organizations at large are using social media as a means to raise awareness and interest in a variety of health contexts. This existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but we can’t ignore the game-changing nature of its influence on public health communication and marketing (PHCM).

Public health has done an exceptional job of raising awareness of and creating interest in communities for health issues that need to be recognized as critical issues. Social media has allowed health organizations to do that on a larger scale. With an increase in access to health information, how can we move folks to make long-lasting behavior changes?

There are many things to consider when leveraging social media to disseminate health information. From information overload, misinformation and varying levels of health and media literacy – the pros and cons list can be extensive. It’s important to recognize that social media is just one channel that health organizations and research projects can consider when trying to reach, engage, and inspire their intended audiences.

Although COVID-19 has made it a social norm to search for health information on social media, how productive is this information? How effective is using social media beyond just promotion and awareness? Is that all social media is good for? What other communication and marketing channels, strategies, and tactics are you implementing to move folks through the stages of behavior change? 

PHCM is not just about creating the branding, messaging, and graphics that get uploaded onto a social media platform – although that’s very important. It’s all about strategy! Have you optimized your health website for search engines? Is the content you’re producing resonating with your audience? Is there an opportunity for cross-channel promotion? These are just a few strategies that come to mind.

Health communicators should think of their PHCM activities as a system of moving gears that interlock with one another and use each other to make the whole system function. If all the gears in our system are functioning — ideally — we would get closer to changing behavior.

Let me paint a picture for you with The Let’s Talk Public Health Communication and Marketing Funnel.​

This funnel connects each stage of change (right) with a corresponding stage in the marketing funnel (center) and provides the specific message and material type (left) needed to engage the process(es) of change for that stage and move people closer to behavior change.
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Social media can provide an opportunity to disperse the types of information outlined in the funnel, or you can implement strategies where these types of information are shared on multiple channels that interlock with one another. Relying solely on social media for PHCM or only sharing one type of information makes it easy to become stagnant with your audiences and limits your potential to inspire impactful behavior changes.

By: David M. Hernández