Abstract
Background: Social media advertising has become increasingly influential in recent years. Because Facebook has the most active users worldwide, many hospitals in Taiwan have created official Facebook fan pages. Our study was to present an overview of official Facebook fan pages of hospitals in Taiwan. Methods: All 417 hospitals were surveyed about their use of Facebook fan pages in December 2017. The last update time, posts in the past 30 days, number of “Likes”, and other features were analyzed and stratified according to the accreditation statuses of the hospitals. Results: In Taiwan, only 51.1% (n = 213) of the hospitals had an official Facebook fan page. Among these hospitals, 71.8% (n = 153) had updated their pages in the past 30 days, although 89.2% (n = 190) provided online interactions. Academic medical centers tended to have more “Likes” than regional and local community hospitals (on average 5947.4, 2644.8, and 1548.0, respectively). Conclusions: In spite of the popularity of Facebook among the general population, most hospitals in Taiwan do not seem to make good use of this kind of social media. The reasons for the use and nonuse of Facebook on the part of both hospitals and patients deserve further investigation.
Highlights
All the hospitals are accredited by the Taiwan Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation, which is supervised by the Ministry of Health and Welfare
We found that “Likes” number is almost equivalent to its followers in hospital fan pages in Taiwan, we counted the “Likes” number of every hospital Facebook fan pages to reflect the engagement of the users
Higher proportions of the academic medical centers and regional hospitals had official Facebook fan pages, while there were no differences among hospitals with different levels of urbanization
Summary
The amount of time spent daily on social networking by Internet users worldwide grew from 90 min per day in 2012 to 135 min per day in 2017 [3]. This growth has prompted worldwide brands and their marketers to dedicate themselves to finding ways to promote their products and services, as well as to enhance their reputations and levels of recognition via social media advertising. Because Facebook has the most active users worldwide, many hospitals in Taiwan have created official Facebook fan pages. Results: In Taiwan, only 51.1% (n = 213) of the hospitals had an official Facebook fan page.
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