Background:
A key factor underlying health disparity is the lack of interrelatedness. Social Media has become a very popular form of interaction among both minorities and non-minorities. Any single day millions interact through social media reducing the distance between people from diverse cultural backgrounds. We hypothesized that targeted social network intervention strategies effectively reach minorities to promote cardiovascular disease awareness.
Method:
We used the popular social media platform Twitter to deliver content during regular times or during major events involving people with mixed backgrounds. We first developed a diverse social media community; we then engaged with the audience, identified influencers and delivered different types of content at different moments, linked or unlinked to trending hashtags. We evaluated general social media metrics including impressions, engagement and behavior.
Results:
There was a significant variation in our ability to reach the audience, cause an impression and trigger a behavior. Trending Hashtag targeting was associated with the highest exposure, however with low engagement rates. Influencer-driven content delivery was linked to highest enrichment and intermediate exposure while non-targeted content delivery was associated with the lowest exposure and engagement rates. Other factors including the time of delivery, quality, type and content were also important determinants of effectiveness. The figure shows an example of a single “tweet” during the May 2, 2015 Mayweather-Pacquiao Box event and the exposed network.
Conclusion:
Carefully planned Social Network Health interventions are highly effective to reach and engage mixed audiences and influence peers to increase awareness about cardiovascular health. Social media and big data analytics allows the development of novel strategies responsive to the specific needs of culturally diverse audiences.
SAViNE: social network analysis - inspired content delivery network deployment and experimentation
