Online reach and engagement of a child nutrition peer-education program (PICNIC): Insights from social media and web analytics

Background: Parents frequently seek parental advice online and on social media; thus, these channels should be better utilized in child health interventions. The Parents in Child Nutrition Informing Community (PICNIC) program aims to facilitate peer-to-peer sharing of evidence-based child feeding information and support parents within their social networks. In the present study we aimed to explore web and social media analytics to evaluate reach and user engagement with the PICNIC online components.
Methods: User activity data from the PICNIC Facebook(Fb)closed group and public Page werecollected through FbInsights, and program-specific website traffic data through Google Analytics. Analytics data from Nov-2019 to April-2021 was evaluated through visualisation and summary statistics to obtain insights into program growth and current reach in Australia, compare demographics of audience reached, and explore parents’ use and engagement in PICNIC contentonline.
Results: Results showed steady program growth in the 18 months of recruitment; participant numbers grew from 102 to 261 parents while the FbPage audience increased threefold, totalling 1,615 followers. Intervention posts shared on Fb(4-5 posts/week) typically reached only a portion of PICNIC Page followers each week, but also reached a wider audience through their friends. Fbusers actively engaged in PICNIC posts, although the level of engagement varied considerably from post to post. Furthermore, results from this study suggest the strategy of directing potentially interested parents from social media to the website for program sign-up was successful. Finally, the explored data gave insights into users’ availability, demographics andengagement, which will be used to inform refinement of the PICNIC website and social media strategies.
Conclusions: Our findings confirm the benefits of using a peer education approach and existing social network channels to disseminate evidence-based child feeding information to parents. This study also demonstrates the usefulness of web and social media analytics to be used as part of a continuous evaluation for gaining insight to inform further development and improvement of program strategies.