Introduction

It’s not just the private sector jumping on the social media bandwagon. Government

agencies are using the robust Facebook platform to reach the public too.

This is the first installment of three in a series about the US Department of Health and

Human Services’ (HHS) use of Facebook.1 There will be four other series that focus on

Government Facebook use including the Military, Hispanic oriented, Other Government

pages, and a final Comparison Report which compares the use of Facebook among all

these segments of the government. Together these five reports comprise the entire

2012 US Government Facebook Use Report.

Goal

The goal of this series of reports is to provide government agencies with a bench-

marking tool so they may know how their own social media channels compare within

their own branch of government as well as among all government social media

properties. This tool may be used by government agencies with existing social media

channels as well as those looking to launch for the first time.

1 All analysis was performed between January and March of 2012.

Introduction To HHS Facebook Pages: By The Numbers

We learned that the 66 HHS Facebook pages average just fewer than 10,000 fans

(9,687) per page. According to Facebook’s new ‘talking about’ data, 1.9% of fans are

‘talking about’ these respective pages. Content creation varies as 16 of the 66 pages

(24%) did not have a single post during a 7 day period within our evaluation time

frame. Of the other 50 pages that did post during that 7 day period, the quantity

ranged between 1 and 15 posts per week, with 0.7 posts per day being the average.

The percentage of posts-per-day drops significantly on the weekends, as only 6% of

HHS pages published content on either Saturday or Sunday. Despite all of the

engagement and activity, 26 of the 66 (39%) HHS agencies don’t allow fans to post on

their Facebook walls. With this intro let’s dig a bit deeper and see how HHS pages

compare with other government Facebook pages, and among their own.

The NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) Facebook page

Who’s ‘Talking About’ HHS Agencies?

As of several updates ago, Facebook began publishing the number of fans ‘talking

about’ the respective page. The number of people ‘talking about’ any given Facebook

page is based on the number of fans creating stories, which include: sharing, liking, or

commenting on a post; answering a question; or responding to an event. Based on the

66 HHS organizations’ analyzed, approximately 1.9% of fans ‘talk about’ the HHS pages

they are a fan of. This number compares to 3.2% of fans on average that talk about all

126 government pages researched. 1.9% of fans means that the average HHS page

had 184 people who have recently engaged with a post or shared a story about

that Facebook page.

Engagement on individual posts, however, reflects a much lower number than the 184

average. Approximately 0.25% of fans are engaged on posts as determined by the

study’s criteria: fans who liked, shared or commented on a post within the period of

data analyzed.2 That is to say, the average HHS page post receives 24 engagements

(likes, comments, or shares). The difference between engagements per post, which is

manually counted, and ‘talking about’ which is Facebook data, can be partly explained

by the amount of fans creating stories about the page but not necessarily engaging

with the most recent page posts. We also note that Facebook users who have recently

liked a page are included in the ‘talking about’ data. Interestingly, HHS pages rank

favorably compared to other government pages when measured by engagement per

post, with twice the engagement of its peers (Military, Spanish, and Other

Government). However when viewed by ‘talking about’, HHS is about 50% lower than

Military pages which averaged nearly 4% ‘talking about’.

2 For this study the most recent three posts were analyzed that had been on the page for over 24 hours.

The Administration on Aging ranks highest of all HHS agencies in percentage of fans ‘talking about’

their page

Open Door Policy

All Facebook pages have the option to only allow people to post in response to page

posts, and not to post their own questions, photos, videos and more directly on the

wall. HHS agencies are surprisingly lenient with regards to who and what they allow to

be posted on their walls. Because Facebook does not screen posts or provide any sort

of content barrier save for protection against spam, limiting a fan’s permission may be

the only way to successfully screen content. As it stands, of the 66 HHS agencies, 63%

(42 pages), allow fans to post directly on their walls. This ranks slightly higher above

the overall average of 59% of total government pages that allow fans to post on

their walls.

The Know Stroke page allows fans to post directly to their wall

Facebook Tabs — Which Are The Most Popular Among HHS Agencies?

Tabs were counted as any tabs in addition to the default Photos tab. The most

commonly used Facebook tab among HHS agencies is a Video tab that allows agencies

to publish informative video content for their users. One could infer that the prevalence

of a Privacy Policy tab containing moderation rules was due to the large number of

agencies that allowed fans to post directly on their walls. ‘Welcome pages’ were used

by a number of HHS agencies including several of the CDC and National Cancer

Institute Facebook pages. Other popular customized tabs used were a Contact tab or a

Questions tab that allowed users to write in with questions or concerns directly on the

Facebook page.

These customized messaging tabs will likely be discontinued as most pages are now

using Facebook’s new message functionality allowing fans to message page admins

from the wall. Other tabs may also be in jeopardy as Facebook has recently disallowed

the practice of allowing fans to be defaulted to a custom tab rather than the Wall.

Finally we note that integrating additional social networks, such as Flickr and Twitter,

was a popular use of tabs across all organizations as well.

The CDC’s Welcome tab, which was originally a default landing page

Tab Usage By HHS Agencies

The average number of custom tabs used among all 66 pages was 3.4, ranging from

zero to as many as 11 found on the Office of Women’s Health page. Tab usage did not

correlate to high fan count; the pages with the most fans did not necessarily have the

most tabs. In fact out of the 6 pages with over 20,000 fans, only the CDC and Stop

Bullying3 had more than 3 custom tabs. These two organizations built custom tabs to

act as supplemental sources of information. The CDC page had 8 tabs including a

Welcome page, a Comment Policy, and pages for specific programs including Vital Signs

and Sexual Health. The Public Health Emergency page uses 7 tabs to promote

information about fellow partners and other facets of the organization itself. Drug Facts

Week, which also had 6 custom tabs, used the tabs to cross-promote other

social platforms.

The Office on Women’s Health page uses 11 tabs, leading usage among HHS agencies

3 The Stop Bullying page has since removed most of their tabs with the exception of a Comment Policy

What Are HHS Agencies ‘Talking About’?

Content published on the HHS Facebook pages is pretty uniform throughout. Most

commonly published posts include links to articles, blog posts, news information and job

postings. It appears a number of government agencies used their Facebook pages to

provide a curated news source relevant to their agency’s mission. Besides keeping their

fans informed, many HHS agencies such as We Can and Stop Bullying sought public

feedback from fans to respond and post responses on their posts.

The ‘We Can’ page often asks their fan base for their opinions on health topics

How Often Do HHS Agencies Post?

The CDC, Food Safety.Gov, and NCI Media are the three pages that posted the most

per day, all averaging over 2.8 posts per day. Posting frequency varied from zero to as

much as 15 posts per day, though the latter didn’t make for significant change in

engagement. NCCAM (The National Center for Complementary and Alternative

Medicine), which posted four times in the span of a week had 3.31% of fans ‘talking

about’ compared to the NCI Media page that had 3.39% ‘talking about’ yet averaged 14

published posts per week. Overall, HHS agencies posted an average of 3.6 posts per

week, or 0.7 times per day. The average for all government pages was 1.4 posts per

day indicating that HHS agencies post significantly less frequently on average. HHS

agencies also sporadically posed questions to fans but less frequently than publishing

articles and blog posts.

The FoodSafety.gov page posts three times per day, shown are three posts from March 30, 2012

Do HHS Agencies Post On The Weekend?

Interestingly, the majority of HHS agencies did not post on the weekend. In fact, only

6% of the 66 agencies posted on the weekend during our time of analysis. This is far

reduced from all government agencies as a whole which typically posted on the

weekend nearly 25% of the time. The most active government segment to post on the

weekend is the military of which 93% post on Saturday or Sunday.

The Heart Truth posts on weekends regularly, and they are rewarded for it by many Likes and comments

Top Performers Among HHS Agencies

The agencies with the most fans ‘talking about’ are not necessarily the agencies with

the most fans. The CDC had twice as many fans as any other agency with over 192,000

at the time of our analysis. The CDC, even with their high fan count only managed

1.83% of its fans ‘talking about’ the page. By contrast, the National Heart Lung and

Blood Institute, with 5.01% of its fans ‘talking about’ it was the page with the highest

engagement with over a 5,000 fan count.

Regarding engagement per post, The Stop Bullying page averaged 1.07% of its fans

engaging with each post, highest among pages above 5,000 fans. The average

engagement percentage per post is 0.25%. Of note is that the Stop Bullying page does

not allow fans to post on the wall, without being a response to one of the page’s posts.

The Stop Bullying page had the most engagement per post of all HHS agencies that have over 5K fans

Growth Of HHS Pages

Several pages had very impressive growth over a short time span. We measured how

much growth all pages had over an 8 week period. The most growth was seen from

the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which grew by 47% to over 6,200 fans

during the time measured. CDC Espanol was the next highest, growing by over 30% to

13,000 fans over the 8 weeks. On the other end, the majority of pages grew by less

than 10%, lowest of which was Young Adult Coverage which grew by only 2% (50

fans) during the period.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute grew its fan count by 47% in an 8 week period

Dis-Connect?

Despite the favorable averages, a number of Facebook pages still show paltry

performance. Consistent posting notwithstanding, four times per week if not daily, the

Facebook page for Health Hazard Evaluation Program (HHEP) only had 265 fans, nine

of which are engaged, ‘talking about’ the page, according to Facebook data. The Elder

Care Locator fan page had 425 fans and publishes, on average, thrice-weekly posts.

While only 20 fans are ‘talking about’ the page, fans are engaging with their posts as

their engagement per post is more than twice the average.

Tumbleweeds are found on a few HHS agency pages, including those of Young Adult

Coverage, National Center for Research Resources, and Health Services Officer

Category (USPHS-HSO). One wonders if the departments were forced to cut back on

their social outreach activity, or if these were set up with future use in mind.

The Young Adult Coverage page had not posted since April of 2011

Top Fan Counts Among HHS Agencies

The top five most popular Facebook pages ranked at the time of our study include:

CDC, Let’s Move, Stop Bullying, National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI),

and the National Institute of Mental Health. Interesting is that only the CDC and NCBI

allow fans to post directly on the page’s wall. Fan counts for these pages were;

192,718; 88,255; 34,938; 25,592; and 23,306 respectively. Posting was infrequent for

all of these pages except for the CDC, and none of these pages post on the weekend.

Furthermore, despite such high fan counts, people ‘talking about’ for each page is

slightly below average at 1.87%. Also of note is that fan growth was slightly down for

these pages as well, at 9.3% versus 10.1% for all pages.

The Let’s Move page had the second most fans among HHS agencies

Application Usage

Only 13% of the 66 organizations used applications such as Hootsuite or TweetDeck to

publish content. These include: NIDA Drug Facts Week, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary

Disease (COPD), and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Of the 8 agencies that

use apps, five of them use Hootsuite, two of them use Social RSS, and one uses

Selective Tweets. The other 58 HHS pages publish and respond to tweets manually and

in real time. The majority of the pages that used an app had above average fans

‘talking about’ the page, and all but one posted more often than the average. Food

Safety’s three posts per day indicate steady maintenance to the page while the 3.67%

of fans ‘talking about’ the page indicate a venerable level of rapport. Weekend postings

don’t appear to be the reason why HHS pages turn to these apps since only one page

(Drug Facts Week) was found to post on the weekend using an app. The platforms,

however, provide an efficient way to monitor statistics and fan interaction which may be

why these agencies have opted to use them.

The NIDA Drug Facts page uses an application to post some of its content

Final Thought

There are a number of factors at play in a successful social media campaign. We hope

that by reading this Government Facebook Use Study you will be able to better

understand, analyze and rate your agency's position and strategy among your peers. As

we see, the public is hungry for information but keeping them engaged is key.

For additional copies of this report, please send an email to: info@dkwebconsulting.com

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