{
  "abstract": "Background Social media (SM) has emerged as a locus of global influence, pioneering new promotional strategies focussing on direct consumer engagement. 1 2 Such engagement, whereby individuals create networks of interpersonal influence, has been endorsed as highly efficacious compared to traditional, passive promotional strategies.1 3 SM has shown efficacy as an events promotion tool, as recently quantified by Adamopolous and Todri.4 5 Given its increasing influence on global connection, we sought to apply SM to a target population of doctors and medical students. We aimed to investigate the efficacy of a SM campaign to enhance ticket sales and attendance for the 2025 GOSH Summer School (GSS) and to promote paediatrics to an international audience.Methods A preliminary questionnaire was conducted to identify consumer preferences. This was used to inform an Instagram-based strategy. Interactive, case-based questions via Stories with polls, alongside promotional content featuring testimonials and informative reels for GSS 2025 were integrated in the overall strategy. Campaign effectiveness was measured using Instagram’s analytics feature, tracking engagement, follower growth, and ticket sales.Results The SM campaign directly contributed to 12% of total GSS 2025 ticket sales. Weekly case studies alone drove 59% of these sales; general paediatrics and mental health case-based topics performed best. The ‘What is GSS’ carousel post achieved the highest engagement with 27 likes, 13 external link taps, and 1081 views, resulting in 5 ticket sales.Conclusion This project demonstrates the efficacy of a SM campaign on event promotion in worldwide paediatric medical education. It suggests that a campaign combining passive knowledge dissemination and active audience engagement can effectively foster consumer action. Our project affirms SM as a valuable adjunct to traditional promotional outreach. Future research should utilise larger sample sizes to enable modelling of effective campaign features.References Shawky S, Kubacki K, Dietrich T, et al. A dynamic framework for managing customer engagement on social media. Journal of Business Research 2020;121:567–577. Available from: doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.03.030.Kietzmann JH, Hermkens K, McCarthy IP, et al. Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons 2011;54:241–251. Available from: doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2011.01.005.Harmeling CM, Moffett JW, Arnold MJ, et al. Toward a theory of customer engagement marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 2017;45:312–335. Available from: doi:10.1007/s11747-016-0509-2.Adamopoulos P, Todri V. The effectiveness of marketing strategies in social media: evidence from promotional events. Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Association for Computing Machinery, 2015, p. 1641–1650.Harb AA, Fowler D, Chang HJ, et al. Social media as a marketing tool for events. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology 2019;10:28–44. Available from: doi:10.1108/JHTT-03-2017-0027.",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, UK and University of Sydney, Australia"
      ],
      "name": "Annabella Lewis"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, UK and Newcastle University, UK"
      ],
      "name": "Tanishka Ghodake"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, UK and Kings College London, UK"
      ],
      "name": "Kinza Khan"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, UK and University College London, UK"
      ],
      "name": "Sophia Syed"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, UK"
      ],
      "name": "Kai Yin Ang"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, UK"
      ],
      "name": "Eve Rushforth"
    }
  ],
  "title": "28 Posts to practice – Leveraging social media to promote paediatrics and the GOSH Summer School 2025",
  "uid": "5b93f4a9-f5b3-56b3-9a2e-625ee0f39365"
}