PREPARED BY: Communications Department
DATE: January 22, 2024
SUBJECT: December 15, 2023 – January 14, 2024, Communications Update
BACKGROUND/PURPOSE:
Provide regular marketing and communication updates to the Board of Health.
| SOURCE | December 15 - January 14 | November 15 - December 14 | DIFFERENCE |
|---|---|---|---|
| News Releases, Media Advisories and Statements, or Notices Issued | 1 | 3 | -2 |
| Media Requests Received | 6 | 22 | -16 |
| Wechu.org pageviews | 81,571 | 111,975 | -30,404 |
| YouTube Channel Subscribers | 1,762 | 1,752 | 10 |
| Email Subscribers | 7,190 | 7,202 | -12 |
| Emails Distributed | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| Facebook Fans | 19,183 | 19,196 | -13 |
| Facebook Posts | 45 | 61 | -16 |
| Twitter Followers | 8,643 | 8,647 | -4 |
| Twitter Posts | 49 | 61 | -12 |
| Instagram Followers | 1,622 | 1,621 | 1 |
| Instagram Posts | 22 | 38 | -16 |
| LinkedIn Followers | 1,644 | 1,625 | 19 |
| LinkedIn Posts | 9 | 3 | 6 |
| Media Exposure | 43 | 77 | -34 |
Data Notes can be provided upon request.
Media Exposure Overview Graph
Notes: From December 15 – January 14, we experienced three main peaks of media exposure:
Dec 20 – A spike in media coverage followed a News Release issued around the emergence of nicotine pouches and their target of a youth population.
Dec 29 & Jan 3 – Media coverage over this timeframe focused on the pause in services at SafePoint which took effect on January 1, 2024.
Website Overview Graph
Notes: From December 15 – January 14, we saw very similar website traffic patterns as the previous month, but with lower traffic overall due to the holidays and fewer messages released to direct to our website.
Social Media Overview Graph
Lighter blue line represents the current month, darker blue line represents the previous month. Notes: We saw some small decreases in followers over the month, likely due to a decrease in posts over the holidays.
Discussion
The Communications Department worked with the Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention on a series of digital images to raise awareness of safer gambling practices as part of a grant. The work was a partnership between the WECHU, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare (HDGH), and the Lower-Risk Gambling Guidelines (LRGG) organization. The series of four posts were boosted on Facebook and were set as Google Display ads which appear on the webpages of members of the target audience.
The campaign offered tips to practice safer gambling, encouraged people to assess their risk level with a tool through the LRGG, and directed readers to local resources such as HDGH’s Centre for Problem Gambling and Digital Dependency.
The posts and Google ads performed better than expected (e.g., they were anticipated to have low engagement due to being launched over the holiday season where viewership is generally lower). The standout result of the posts was that they drove enough traffic to the webpage that it ended up in the top five visited pages for four straight weeks. Specifically, the four posts yielded a total of 577 link clicks on Facebook over the two-week duration.