SAĞLIK İLETİŞİMİ KAMPANYALARINDA SOSYAL MEDYA REKLAMLARI KULLANIMI: İNME FARKINDALIĞI KONULU BİR ÖRNEK OLAY

AWARENESS Abstract Social media is frequently used in social campaigns similar to marketing communication efforts of brands. Although there are many studies on the use of social media in health communication, studies focusing on advertising practices in this context are quite limited. This study investigated the stroke awareness campaign carried out by the Turkish Cerebrovascular Diseases Society as of October 2020 as a case study. First of all, the communication strategy, message content, and executions of the campaign were reviewed in general. This review showed that the campaign communicated the essential information expected from stroke awareness campaigns in the integration of traditional and digital media. Then, the performance of the social media ads was analyzed in terms of metrics such as impressions, reach, views, and clicks. This analysis revealed the benefits of social media ads to the awareness campaign and provided the opportunity to compare the online engagement outcomes of different posts. The results revealed that the ads increased the number and geographic diversity of the campaign audience substantially. During the advertising campaign, more than 75% of all website traffic was based on social media ads. The performances of the ads were in accordance with their advertising objectives. The difference between online engagement results of two ads directed to the same target audience with the same objective pointed out the importance of expert testimony in terms of source credibility in health communication. The video in which a health specialist communicates the messages achieved higher views and click performance compared to the video that conveys similar messages with animation format. The study presented implications and suggestions about the use of social media advertisements in health communication through a campaign case of a non-profit organization.