DE07 Enhancing social media engagement for Clinical and Experimental Dermatology: the educational journal of the British Association of Dermatologists: a quality improvement project

Abstract

Abstract Social media is an efficient method for direct communication between a journal, clinicians and patients. Increased social media engagement also increases the impact factor of medical journals (O’Kelly F, Nason GJ, Manecksha RP et al. The effect of social media (#SoMe) on journal impact factor and parental awareness in paediatric urology. J Pediatr Urol 2017; 13:513). The aim of this quality improvement project was to assess the impact of three interventions on social media success (defined as reach, engagement or follower count) of the Clinical and Experimental Dermatology Instagram page (@ced_journal), founded in July 2020. Impact on reach, engagement and follower count was investigated after each intervention cycle. Cycle 1 (April–June 2022) investigated the impact of a checkerboard grid design to increase visual appeal, standardized journal branding and a consistent posting schedule. User analytics revealed a large proportion of Middle Eastern followers, and, therefore, cycle 2 (July–October 2022) used non-English hashtags to target these audiences. Cycle 3 (November–December 2022) investigated the boost in engagement through encouraging authors who had recently published in the journal to post their publication on their personal accounts and tag the journal. Qualitative data were gathered from the Meta Business Suite and directly from the Instagram page. Data were analysed using GraphPad. Cycle 1 resulted in mean increases in content reach by 568% (P < 0.001), unique profile visits by 281% (P = 0.014) and number of new followers by 642% (P = 0.188). Cycle 2 demonstrated a mean increase in the number of new followers by 194% (P = 0.025) but did not significantly increase the reach (P = 0.414) or number of new profile visits (P = 0.410). There was no significant increase in reach (P = 0.229), unique profile visits (P = 0.055) or number of new followers (P = 0.397) in cycle 3. This study demonstrates improvements in social media success following cycles 1 and 2. Cycle 3 results emphasize the importance of novel interventions in further varying content to maintain and further increase engagement, as well as studying additional factors that influence engagement, such as standardized journal branding across all social media platforms. Overall, this study emphasizes the effectiveness of innovative and interactive education resources for disseminating dermatology research among scientific and nonscientific users, which can be adopted by other dermatology journals.