Facebook Users' Interactions, Organic Reach, and Engagement in a Smoking Cessation Intervention: Content Analysis

Background: Facebook can be a suitable platform for public health interventions. Facebook users can express their reaction to the given social media content in many ways using interaction buttons. The analysis of these interactions can be advantageous in increasing reach and engagement of public health interventions. Objective: This research aimed at understanding how Facebook users' interactions correlate with organic reach and engagement regarding the same smoking cessation support contents. Methods: The study population consisted of Facebook users who were reached by a public smoking cessation support page without advertising. We included 1025 nonpaid Facebook posts (N=1025) which used smoking cessation strategies based on a motivational interviewing counseling style. The following data were collected from the "Post Details": the number of people who saw the given nonpaid content (organic reach) which consisted of fan and nonfan reach according to previous "page like" activity; each rate of "engagement indicators" (such as the symbols of "like," "love," "haha," "wow," "sad," "angry"; or other interactions: "shares," "comments," "clicks"); and the rate of negative Facebook interactions (eg, "post hides" or "unlike of page"). Overall, these data were analyzed with the Spearman correlation method. Results: Surprisingly, we found a significant negative correlation between organic reach and the "like" reaction (r(s)=-0.418; P<.001). The strongest significant positive correlations of organic reach were observed with the "haha" reaction (r(s)=0.396; P<.001), comments (r(s)=0.368; P<.001), and the "love" reaction (r(s)=0.264; P<.001). Furthermore, nonfan reach correlated positively with "shares" (r(s)=0.388; P<.001) and clicks (r(s)=0.135; P<.001), while fan reach correlated positively with the "haha" reaction (r(s)=0.457; P<.001), comments (r(s)=0.393; P<.001), and the "love" reaction (r(s)=0.310; P<.001). Contrary to expectations, the "like" reaction was sharply separated by significant negative correlations from "wow" (r(s)=-0.077; P=.013), "sad" (r(s)=-0.120; P<.001), "angry" reactions (r(s)=-0.136; P<.001), and comments (r(s)=-0.130; P<.001). Additionally, a high rate of negative Facebook interactions was significantly associated with "wow" (r(s)=0.076; P=.016) and "sad" reactions (r(s)=0.091; P=.003). Conclusions: This study has shown that it is possible to hypothesize a disadvantage of the "like" reaction and advantages of other interactions (eg, the "haha" reaction or "comments") in content algorithmic ranking on Facebook. In addition, the correlational analysis revealed a need of a further categorization to fan-specific interactions (eg, "haha" or "love" reactions) and nonfan-specific interactions (eg, "shares" and "clicks"). Regarding the direction of the correlations, these findings suggest that some interactions (eg, negative Facebook interactions, "wow," "sad," and "angry" reactions) may decrease the engagement, while other interactions ("like," "love," "haha" reactions, "shares," and "clicks") may increase the engagement during Facebook-based smoking cessation interventions. This hypothesis-generating research offers an important insight into the relationship between organic reach, engagement, and Facebook users' interactions for public health professionals who design Facebook-based interventions.