HLN #8: Pre-testing Your Health Content for Usefulness and Usability

8 Things to Keep in Mind to Avoid Getting “Dragged” on Social Media!

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As with every content and communications strategist working within an organization, you are expected to have plans, content calendars, and process flows for content review at all levels. Well, it still doesn’t solve all the problems. Nothing prepares you well enough! Being a health content “expert” is like growing wings, grace, and grit as you fly. You do not have everything figured out. There are days, you’ll hear?“Pull down that tweet!”?Other days, it could be?“I know that X?is true, but what source are you citing as the health authority in this piece of information?”

Let me just say, if you are not ready to for critique, if multiple reviews drive you crazy, if seeing several track changes on a health guide you just drafted makes you want to bin the laptop, please avoid this work?in the mighty, everlasting, powerful, indefatigable name of whomever you hold dear,?because there is never a time, when there is nothing to correct.

Early in 2020, my employer at that time had set me up on a mentoring session with a global industry leader in development communications. I recall that all through the WhatsApp call, she spent time answering the only one question that worried me:?“How do I get to know that the narratives I am creating and sharing about the meaningful work we do are?making the desired impact?”?I asked for a practical approach. One thing led to another and there we were:?pre-testing using focus groups.

It sounded quite unrealistic.?Poor me! I didn’t know better.?How do I go to sample people in the community who already struggle with the demands of living with chronic health conditions and to start requesting that they?“approve”?a draft of a social media post, graphic, etc? When the daily tasks are back-breaking already?

Oh well, you know what the elders say?“What an old man sees lying down, a young man, even when he climbs the tallest tree, will not see it”?That quote held water in this scenario. World Obesity Day 2020, I made a social media graphic for an awareness campaign that got pulled down again, less than 5 minutes after I hit the publish button.

Apparently, a friend of the company, who also struggled with the disease, did not like one of the illustrations we used. The argument was valid!?“You can share or illustrate how to prevent obesity, without including the image of a plus-size woman”

Be willing to agree with me, that Nigerian Twitter would have roasted our baby brand like a yam from five farming seasons ago and dragged (insulted) us like an old, faulty generator with an asthmatic engine. Going forward, I test-ran some of the materials I created with co-workers and family members, before submitting them for management-level review.

Pre-testing involves using a subset of the prioritized audience to know if the health material is fit for publishing for them and will drive the desired goal for which it was created. Pretesting is like having another eye review your essay, only that this time the “eyes” are representatives of the target audience you want to engage. For instance, when creating a?guide for exercising for people living with obesity, you want to invite a few people living with obesity, to know if the content is relevant to them.

Whether you choose to test in-house (with friends, family, or colleagues) or in the field (with representatives of the prioritized audience) you need to know what to look out for as the reactions to the social and behavioural change communication (SBCC) materials created, and to make those changes. Below are 8 criteria for testing your content, 2 of which I have tried, the last 6, I have recently learned from the experts at the Risk/Public Health Communications Division of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.?

• Usefulness?is the measure of the value or solution that your health content or material brings.?Does it answer their questions? Does it calm their fears? Or strengthen their beliefs in what you promote? Did they learn something new?

• Usability?refers to how well or easily the reader/audience can use the content of the material created.?Is the content or material shareable either by word of mouth, social media, or hand-to-hand? Can the user teach back what they have learned? What is the actual call(s) to action

• Comprehension:?People can only take action to change if they understand why. Does the material speak a language that makes it easy for them to grasp the symbols, images, words, and concepts?

• Attractiveness:?The SBCC materials should be visually-appealing. If you want to make the understanding process easy and quick, optimize for optics.?“A picture,”?they say,?“Is worth more than a thousand words.”

• Acceptance:??The messages must be acceptable to the target population. You want to check for tone and choice of words, especially when addressing people with whom you share different cultures and social lives.

• Involvement:?The target audience should be able to identify with the information, education, and communication materials. They should recognize that the message is directed toward them. They should see or hear elements that make them know that the information contained within the material concerns them. Involvement could also mean inclusion, as materials should also be made identifiable for people living with disabilities,?i.e.?someone who is deaf will most likely make sense of content shared on radio, or via ClubHouse than television or Instagram.

• Illustrations, symbols, and language?should reflect the characteristics of the target audience. The world we live in now has a tilt towards visual communication. Be sure that the choice of words, symbols, and images, addresses them respectfully and is culturally appropriate. Aim to promote the cause, in such a way that empowers the people, instead of denigrating them.

• Inducement to action:?The materials should indicate clearly what the health promotion intervention wants the target audience to do and its benefits.?

Without pre-testing, it is safe to say that our materials will fail the communication goals because it becomes inefficient, detached, neutralized, unappealing, without persuasive power or motivation, and does not lead to change. Instead, we become selfish creators, who spend time and resources designing health promotion interventions that suit us alone, which becomes useless pieces of information for the target audience.

Reply with the Okay hand emoticon sign ??, if you will start pre-testing your health materials today.

I’d love to specially thank you for reading and sharing HLN. In these eight days, I have received reactions and messages from some readers. I appreciate your feedback and be sure that they are all useful.

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