Using Twitter Messaging to Reach and Engage Public Health Audiences about Topics Related to Obesity: A Case Study.

The purpose of this case-study is to evaluate the effectiveness of messaging, using Twitter, to reach and engage audiences on topics related to obesity. Messages (tweets) from the Twitter account, @CDCObesity, were collected during the period of May 6 - May 15, 2012. We used federally recommended metric categories (breadth, depth and direct engagement) to organize data in the assessment of user engagement. Breadth was measured by community size (number of followers), and community growth (increase in followers). Depth was measured by a click-through rate (percentage of followers who click on a hyper link). Direct engagement was measured by the number of mentions (including @CDCObesity in tweet body), retweet rate (retweets to tweets sent) and a conversation ratio (total number of mentions divided by total number of tweets sent). In total, 189 tweets were analyzed. @CDCObesity sent 96 tweets (50.8%). For breadth, the community size increased from 869 to 1101 (27% community growth). For depth, the click-through rate was 1%. For direct engagement, @CDCObesity was mentioned in 93 tweets (93/189 = 49.2%); retweet rate was 46.9% (45 retweets of @CDCObesity tweets/96 @CDCObesity tweets sent); conversation ratio was 0.97:1. Based on an increase in followers, the number of @CDCObesity mentions, and robust retweet and click-through rates and conversation ratio, @CDCObesity appeared to effectively reach and engage Twitter users. Our findings suggest Twitter is an effective platform to reach and engage audiences in a public health setting. Public health organizations may use these findings to evaluate their efforts using social media.