Assessment Of A Social Media Campaign To Promote Physical Activity In Mexico

The COVID-19 confinement has induced an increase in sedentary behaviour. In this context, social marketing-based campaigns to promote physical activity by digital means have become an important tool. Unfortunately, the impact of such campaigns is poorly studied in Mexico, which makes it challenging to determine the most effective diffusion means and hampers decision-making. PURPOSE: To describe the impact of a social media campaign to promote physical activity through Facebook in a post-COVID-19 pandemic setting in Mexico. METHODS: We delivered a 7-week social media campaign (March 2021-May 2021) to promote physical activity on Facebook. The campaign consisted of publishing different multimedia means such as 1) Pictures (own-generated or shared from other Facebook profiles); 2) own-generated or shared live streaming (including webinars, forum meetings, and physical fitness sessions); 3) sharing links of live retransmissions of radio and TV resources; 4) promotional posters (own-generated or shared from other Facebook profiles), and 5) videos on a university-linked Facebook page. Each publication consisted of only one of the means mentioned above. We measured the engagement by counting the reactions (“likes” and “loves”), comments, shares, visualizations, and the total interaction by adding all those up per type of publication. RESULTS: From the 38 publications during the campaign, own live streaming exhibited the highest average interaction, followed by own posters and own videos. Overall, the campaign was mainly composed of own resources (Table). CONCLUSIONS: The strategies that emphasize live participant interaction, like live streaming, seem more effective for promoting physical activity. However, passive strategies like posters are also useful for physical activity promotion on social media. More studies are recommended to compare the engagement on social media when the number of posts is similar across the type of publications. Table. - Number of interactions by type of publication Type of publication Publications (n) Likes Loves Comments Shares Visualizations Totala Averageb Picture (own) 2 33 26 1 8 2242 2379 1190 Picture (shared) 1 13 6 0 6 321 372 372 Links (shared) 2 13 1 0 1 105 136 68 Poster (own) 10 791 504 301 244 29681 33371 3337 Poster (shared) 3 28 7 0 10 1195 1288 429 Live streaming (own) 10 1756 2435 2671 267 37522 51758 5176 Live streaming (shared) 2 10 0 26 0 731 869 435 Video (own) 8 410 273 103 123 13533 15356 1920 Own resources 30 2990 3238 3073 642 82978 102864 3429 Shared resources 8 64 14 26 17 2352 2665 333 a Result of adding Likes + Loves + Comments + Shares + Visualizations. b Result from dividing the “Total” column by the “Publications (n)” column.