Using Social Media to Reach Women with The Heart Truth® — 2009 Update

Abstract

The power of social media to effect change is becoming recognized by social marketers and health educators as an important strategy, and campaigns are increasingly using social media strategies to expand the reach to their target audiences. In 2002, when the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute launched The Heart Truth® – the first federally-sponsored national campaign aimed at increasing awareness among women about their risk of heart disease – many of today's social media hardly existed. At the outset, the campaign team developed and tested a women's heart disease brand – the Red Dress® – and sought to promote it through a wide variety of means, including the Internet marketing approaches that were current at that time. The online approaches supported the three main campaign implementation strategies, that is, partnership development, media relations, and community action. As the campaign matured and new media approaches evolved, the campaign increasingly promoted its products, messages, and events through social media channels and Internet marketing techniques, including e-mail promotions, blogs targeted to women, Facebook, Twitter, public service banner advertisements, and outreach to online mainstream news sites. The social media effort began as a small pilot project in 2007, and was expanded in subsequent years based on lessons learned. This article describes the approaches used and the results achieved, and discusses the advantages and limitations of social media in the context of the larger campaign. With a combined impact of many millions of additional audience impressions through social media, the campaign team concluded that these channels provide an effective, low-cost means of further extending the reach of The Heart Truth® to its core audience and beyond.