Digital Volunteers as Trusted Public Health Communicators

Background:

Health campaigns have increasingly relied on social media influencers as trusted messengers to communicate important health information to their communities. There is also an opportunity for campaigns to work with unpaid, digital volunteers who want to use their platforms to support positive health behaviors.

Program background:

Since 2021, the Public Good Projects (PGP), Hispanic Communications Network and World Voices Media have worked together on a nationwide, multifaceted campaign to increase the Hispanic community’s confidence in and uptake of the COVID-19 vaccines. As part of this project, PGP created an influencer network called El Beacon, which consisted of paid Hispanic influencers, as well as digital volunteers (DVs), who would spread pro-COVID-19 vaccination messages on social media.

To recruit DVs to the El Beacon network, PGP enlisted the help of paid influencers who promoted signing up for El Beacon in their posts. PGP also created paid recruitment ads on Facebook and Instagram demographic, posted recruitment information on the branded El Beacon social media handles and featured the volunteer sign-up prominently on the El Beacon website. PGP used community feedback and ad metrics to determine which messaging was most effective at converting viewers to volunteers.

Once volunteers signed up, they received an initial series of emails welcoming them to El Beacon, which also collected demographics and motivations for joining and provided them with calls to action (CTAs), such as pre-made social media assets or pre-written captions for user-generated posts. After this initial series of emails, volunteers received date-based emails that aligned with events such as holidays and COVID-19-related news alerts. These emails also contained example posts from paid influencers and activations such as giveaways.

Evaluation Methods and Results:

We have recruited over 3000 DVs. Process metrics related to DVs are tracked using a variety of software systems including Facebook ads manager, Sprout Social and Hubspot. Metrics received include number of volunteer sign-ups, cost per lead generated, ad performance, organic and paid impressions of ads and El Beacon social content, newsletter open rates, newsletter clickthrough rates and newsletter engagement.

Conclusions:

We have successfully recruited over 3000 DVs who are interested in using their social media platforms spread pro-COVID-19 vaccination messaging online during the COVID-19 pandemic. By appealing to DV’s desire to use their platforms to help their community, we have been able to expand the project’s reach beyond just using paid influencers and stay within budget.

Implications for research and/or practice:

Understanding best practices for recruiting and retaining DVs in a public health campaign can help other practitioners optimize their experience working with DVs. Some of these best practices include being flexible in your messaging and responsive to what resonates with your volunteers; aligning your CTAs with actions your volunteers are most receptive to taking; centering cultural competence in your work with DVs; and honing in on a specific target audience that will be most receptive to your message and best reached by your recruitment efforts.