Assessment of Sick Kids use of Social Media
Executive Summary
Sick Kids’ (SK) social media presence is currently split between its Hospital accounts and Foundation accounts. Sick Kids Hospital (SKH) performs much worse across all platforms than the Sick Kids Foundation (SKF), with the exception of Instagram where this is reversed. There is no strong distinction between what these accounts post, despite their different intended audiences. We recommend clearly defining the role of each account, and providing better cross-account linking to improve navigation between them.
Introduction
SKH, located in Toronto, is Canada’s most research-intensive hospital. It provides care to sick children and is dedicated to improving children’s health care. Their social media presence is currently aimed at a mix of parents and employees. The SKF is the fundraising branch of the hospital, and uses social media to help garner donations (Chiovitti, 2017). We have conducted this research to determine ways to improve the organization’s overall social media impact through each of these channels.
Literature Review
The Globe and Mail article “How Traditional Companies are Using Social Media in Unexpected Ways” outlines various options to garner a social media presence and start a conversation (Pearson, 2018). The best social media campaigns are ones that get customers talking about a product, not necessarily selling the product directly (Pearson, 2018). Caitlin Hughes’ blog post on Instagram engagement helps identify several steps to improving one’s Instagram presence (2018). The most relevant steps for this report are her recommendation to craft effective captions that set the context for your photos and the need to reply to comments quickly (Hughes, 2018).
Methodology
This report approached the assessment of SK’s social media performance by analyzing its current presence (posts, videos, and images shared) and determining theireffectiveness on each platform. These platforms — Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram — were identified by navigating their website and determining the extent of their social media presence. YouTube was not included in this report due to space constraints. In addition, our process follows social media audit best practices (Hanson, n.d.).
Results
Website
SK has two websites: SKF and SKH.
The SKF’s website (sickkidsfoundation.com) links to their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, as well as the website of the hospital. At the top of every article is a button to Tweet the link, encouraging visitors to share their posts.
Figure 1. An example of the website’s sharing feature.
The SKH webpage (sickkids.ca) links to all social media accounts at the top of the landing page. The site is not responsive to different screen sizes and is inaccessible to users who navigate by keyboard. The website also does not include image descriptions, and many of the images contain writing. This text is unreadable for both visually impaired users as well as search engines, negatively affecting the site’s SEO.
Figure 2. Examples of alt-text, SKH on top and SKF below.
SK has two Twitter accounts.
The SKH Twitter account (@SickKidsNews) has 12.4k tweets, 38.8k followers and a varied audience of medical professionals, regularly visiting families, and potential donors. The bio links only to their website.
The SKF Twitter account (@sickkids) has 22.7k tweets, 49.7k followers, and focuses on donation efforts currently underway. The bio links to both the SKH Twitter page and the Foundation’s Instagram account.
Figure 3. An examination of the ratio of tweets to followers on both accounts.
SK has two Instagram accounts: a general account with 34k followers (@sickkidstoronto) and a Foundation account with 2.3k followers (@sickkidsVS). Posts occasionally contain excessive text. Both accounts post daily.
Figure 4. An example of an Instagram post from SK with excessive text.
SK has one Facebook account with 193k likes where they post once every few days. The content is mostly pictures and videos. Some of their posts are quite successful, while a significant number lack engagement, particularly those which are recent. Although their content is of high quality, there are some instances where it is cropped poorly or is ill-fitting to their brand.
Discussion
Websites
The SKH website should be updated to function across a larger range of screen sizes. It should improve its accessibility features to increase SEO, as well as provide a better experience for disabled users. We suggest following keyboard accessibility standards (CPD, 2018), adding descriptions to photos, and reducing the amount of text in images.
We would recommend having pinned tweets to acknowledge the difference between the SKH Twitter account and the SKF Twitter account (Agrawal, 2019). This will encourage individuals to check both accounts and make it easier for the general public to find information about potential donations.
SKH’s Twitter bio should include links to their Instagram and should further refine its target audience to better articulate its message. We recommend focusing exclusively on parents of long-term patients (inspiring stories, advice on handling child illness, etc.) and medical professionals (updates on groundbreaking research). Tweets regarding fundraising would be better suited to the SKF’s account.
The @sickkidstoronto account is successfully engaging with the target audience previously outlined. We recommend combining Hospital and Foundation accounts given the latter’s minimal following. Additionally, it would be beneficial to rework the captions of some posts, better explaining their context and reducing the number of images with excessive text (Hughes, 2018).
We would recommend creating posts which play to Facebook’s engagement algorithm by encouraging more comments on a shorter timeline (Patel, 2017). Additionally, SK should refrain from sharing content that is cropped poorly or otherwise undermines their brand.
Conclusion
SKH and Foundation currently have a good online presence. Although there is a slight separation between the branding of the two branches’ accounts (the use of “VS”), they maintain a consistent brand across all platforms. By following our recommendations, SK’s social media can be further leveraged to increase the impact of their social media campaigns. Our recommendations would ensure that they can engage more successfully with their already significant social media following, and increase followers on all sites.
Further Reading – List of Direct Links to Sick Kids Social Media Platforms
Sick Kids Foundation website: https://www.sickkidsfoundation.com/
Sick Kids Foundation Twitter: https://twitter.com/sickkids
Sick Kids Foundation Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sickkidsvs/
Sick Kids Hospital website: http://www.sickkids.ca/
Sick Kids Hospital Twitter: https://twitter.com/SickKidsNews
Sick Kids Hospital Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sickkidstoronto/?hl=en
Sick Kids Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sickkidsfoundation/
Sick Kids Interactive Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SickKidsInteractive/
Sick Kids Foundation Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SickKidsFoundation/
AboutKidsHealth Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Aboutkidshealth/
References
Agrawal, S. (2019, February 04). 19 Ways to use Your Pinned Tweet to get More Traffic, sales & clicks! DigitalGYD. Retrieved from https://www.digitalgyd.com/pin-a-tweet-guide/.
Center for Persons with Disabilities (CPD). (2018, November 20). Keyboard Accessibility. WebAIM, Utah State University. Retrieved fromhttps://webaim.org/techniques/keyboard/.
Chiovitti, S. (2017, October 27). SickKids Launches $1.3 Billion Fundraising Campaign to Build a New Hospital. Sick Kids Foundation. Retrievedfromhttps://www.sickkidsfoundation.com/aboutus/newsandmedia/news2017octsickkidscampaignbuildnewhospital.
Hanson, A. (n.d.). How to Conduct a Social Media Audit. ACH Communications and Marketing. Retrievedfromhttps://onq.queensu.ca/d2l/le/content/254144/viewContent/1513524/View.
Hughes, C. (2018, August 29). Increase Your Instagram Engagement in 8 Easy Steps. Iconosquare. Retrieved from https://blog.iconosquare.com/increase-your-instagram-engagement/.
Patel, N. (2017). How to Increase Facebook Engagement (Even Though Their Algorithm Hates You). Neil Patel – Blog. Retrieved from https://neilpatel.com/blog/increase-facebook-engagement-algorithm/.
Pearson, M. (2018, May 12). How Traditional Companies are Using Social Media in Unexpected Ways.The Globe and Mail. Retrieved fromhttps://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-marketing/traditional-companies-use-social-media-in-unexpected-ways/article17564456/.