In 2015, a desktop audit was undertaken of the Indigenous HealthInfoNet health promotion resource database for tobacco campaigns published from 2005 to 2015. Campaigns were selected for inclusion in the study if they addressed smoking cessation and prevention, were nonpaper-based with an associated social media presence, and were audiovisual. Social media presence was confirmed by a search using Google Chrome (Google, Mountain View, CA, USA), Facebook (Facebook, Inc, Menlo Park, CA, USA), YouTube (YouTube, LLC, San Bruno, CA, USA), and Twitter (Twitter, Inc, San Francisco, CA, USA). Campaigns were excluded if they could not be retrieved, were duplicates, or also targeted a mainstream audience. A subset using Facebook were subjected to further analysis.

Data about the campaign, the year and state in which it was developed, the producer, type of media strategy, number of likes, links to other websites, and average posts per month were entered into a Microsoft Excel database.

Campaigns were ranked from the highest number of likes to the least number of likes. A “like” indicates an appreciation, enjoyment, or support of the content posted on the Facebook page. The total number and mean number of posts per month were calculated for each Facebook page and pages were categorized into 2 groups: pages with more than 5000 likes and pages with less than 1800 likes (range is 35 to 11,000 likes). The number and type linkages between Facebook and Web-based applications such as websites and other social media applications (eg, Twitter and YouTube) were also analyzed.

The KT Planning Template and stickiness frameworks, SUCCESS and STEPPS, were then used to identify factors that may have contributed to the differences in overall likes, and to analyze key characteristics of interventions to assess the extent to which strategies are “fit for purpose” and to explain their uptake or impact.

Ethics approval was not sought as the desktop audit collected data that were publicly available and freely accessible from public profiles on Facebook.

Using social media like Facebook has certain appeal: the potential to reach large numbers of people with ease of set up and at a minimum cost. There appears to be a perception that few resources, if any, are required to make health messages “sticky.”

However, this type of thinking is deceiving. The findings from this study show that the use of social media applications like Facebook do not guarantee that a campaign will have the desired impact and reach, such as through high numbers of likes, shares, and comments. Making health messages sticky through social media such as Facebook requires, at a minimum, content to be sourced and translated into a format that incorporates stickiness characteristics, routine posts that maintain page currency, routine monitoring and evaluating to assess impact and effectiveness, and a skilled and experienced workforce. Workforce expenses are the “hidden costs” of social media applications.

In addition to social media, there are several other strategies to translate knowledge. For example, strategies like knowledge brokers, champions, media campaigns, and pop-up stalls may be more suitable for campaigns that wish to provoke interest and raise awareness in groups that do not use social media or have limited access to the Internet. These strategies may have been more suitable for health promotion campaigns that received less than 500 Facebook likes. However, strategies like financial incentives, new policies, patient education sessions, and communities of practice could be used in combination with social media applications to impart knowledge and inspire change. For example, the Deadly Choices page promotes Indigenous designed t-shirts that are given to individuals who complete the annual health assessment. Once strategies are identified, the next step makes them sticky.

KT planning can be used as a tool to support individuals and teams to craft the delivery of health messages so that they are best suited and well-aligned to the campaigns’ goals, messages, and target audiences. KT planning has clear potential to help mitigate unforeseen and expected risks, reduce unwarranted costs and expenses, achieve goals, and limit the peer pressure of using strategies that may not be fit for purpose.

Due to privacy requirements, the desktop review did not have access to Facebook metrics, such as Page Insights, to measure the reach and uptake of posts. Page insights provide information about the number of people to whom a post has reached; who have clicked on a post; liked, commented, or shared a post; or viewed a video. This level of analysis would be important in any evaluation of specific campaigns.

The uptake and use of frameworks and practices like KT planning will take time and will undoubtedly face challenges and barriers. The main challenges are conceptualizing KT and then applying it effectively to the local context [5]. Until this and other challenges (eg, limited organisational KT capacity, limited to access to KT workforce) are addressed, we will continue to use systems and processes that are familiar or easy to use but may be ineffective or have variable uptake and impact.