Guidelines for optimal utilization of social media for brain tumor stakeholders

Objective: Effective use of social media (SM) by medical professionals is vital for better connections with patients and dissemination of evidence-based information. A study of SM utilization by different stakeholders in the brain tumor community may help determine guidelines for optimal use.

Methods: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were searched by using the term "Brain Tumor." Platform-specific metrics were determined, including audience size, as a measure of popularity, and mean annual increase in audience size, as a measure of performance on SM. Accounts were categorized on the basis of apparent ownership and content, with as many as two qualitative themes assigned to each account. Correlations of content themes and posting behavior with popularity and performance metrics were assessed by using the Pearson's test.

Results: Facebook (67 pages and 304,581 likes) was predominantly used by organizations (64% of pages). Top themes on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were charity and fundraising (67% of pages), education and research (72% of accounts), and experience sharing and support seeking (48% of videos, 60% of views, and 82% of user engagement), respectively. On Facebook, only the presence of other concurrent platforms influenced a page's performance (rho = 0.59) and popularity (rho = 0.61) (p < 0.05). On Twitter, the number of monthly tweets (rho = 0.66) and media utilization (rho = 0.78) were significantly correlated with increased popularity and performance (both p < 0.05). Personal YouTube videos (30% of videos and 61% of views) with the theme of experience sharing and support seeking had the highest level of engagement (60% of views, 70% of comments, and 87% of likes).

Conclusions: Popularity and prevalence of qualitative themes differ among SM platforms. Thus, optimal audience engagement on each platform can be achieved with thematic considerations. Such considerations, along with optimal SM behavior such as media utilization and multiplatform presence, may help increase content popularity and thus increase community access to neurooncology content provided by medical professionals.