Strategic health communication on social media: Insights from a Danish social media campaign to address HPV vaccination hesitancy

• Published in: Vaccine Vol. 38; no. 31; pp. 4909 - 4915
• Main Authors: Pedersen, Eva A., Loft, Louise H., Jacobsen, Stine U., Søborg, Bolette, Bigaard, Janne
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier Ltd 26-06-2020; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Brain; Cancer; Cervical cancer; Cervix; Child; Children; Communication; Content analysis; Denmark; Digital media; Empirical analysis; Evaluation; Facebook; Female; Health Communication; Human papillomavirus; Human papillomavirus vaccine; Humans; Immunization; Issue management; Medical personnel; Mothers; Papillomavirus Infections - prevention & control; Papillomavirus Vaccines; Professionals; Resource management; Social Media; Social media strategy; Social networks; Strategy; Subgroups; Uterine Cervical Neoplasms; Vaccination; Vaccine hesitancy; Vaccines; Websites; Denmark; Human papillomavirus vaccine; Vaccine hesitancy; Issue management; Facebook; Social media strategy; Health communication
• ISSN: 0264-410X; 1873-2518
• DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.05.061

•A social media strategy proved useful in a campaign about HPV vaccination.•Heart-brain communication is effective in creating dialogues with target groups.•Community management resources are vital to restore confidence in HPV vaccination.
To evaluate whether the social media strategy developed for the campaign Stop HPV – stop cervical cancer was successful at engaging target groups in communication regarding HPV vaccination.
In 2009, the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine became part of the Danish childhood vaccination program to protect Danish girls from cervical cancer. In 2015, after a period of massive media coverage questioning the safety of the HPV vaccination, a rapid decline in HPV vaccination coverage was observed. An information campaign was therefore launched in May 2017 to address HPV vaccination hesitancy.
‘Heart-brain communication’ combined facts and emotions through varied content. Community management guidelines were worked out to ensure that there was positive dialogue. Key Point Indicators (KPI) for Engagement Rate (ER) and Click Through Rate (CTR) were chosen to uphold engagement and traffic from Facebook to the website. The KPIs were used to measure effectiveness.
In January 2019, the social media campaign had reached 8,020,000 people with an average of 127 comments per post. The average ER from May 2017 to halfway through 2018 was 6.07% and the CTR was 2.09%. The content subgroup personal stories was the most effective in creating positive dialogue. One year after the launch of the campaign, the number of positive comments had increased from less than 50% to approximately 75%.
A comprehensive social media strategy using ‘heart-brain communication’ proved useful in a campaign for HPV vaccination. The success of the social media strategy was due to meticulous planning prior to launching the campaign, the use of content subgroups, the allocation of adequate resources for community management, the empirical analysis of content, and the use of evaluation results as guidance for the production of new content.