Exploring the use of Facebook as a marketing and branding tool by hospital foundations

This study investigated how Ontario (Canada) hospital foundations use Facebook for branding, community outreach, and fundraising. The target sample included all hospital foundations in Ontario that have a presence on Facebook (N = 81). Rich, qualitative Facebook data were collected over a 7‐month period, from the beginning of June 2016 to the end of December 2016, to get a better understanding of the marketing strategies implemented by the foundations. Results were gauged against some of the best practices for Facebook marketing in order to determine practical implications and conclusions for hospital foundations. Overall, hospital foundations are aware of the utmost importance of personalizing their messages, but they are way short of Facebook benchmarks, including Frequency of Posts and Media Type Used.