5 tips for creating social media “magic”

In 2019, Yale School of Public Health had a little under 37,000 followers across five social networks — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. Social media was something of an after-thought. Now it has more than 250,000 and maintains eight feeds—those initial five plus Bluesky, Threads, and TikTok.

Those channels might feature a student takeover, package research advances into a “hope scrolling” post or feature a public health layer cake. A recent 5-part series on Instagram and TikTok that encouraged people to “Ask your besties” about their public health personas drew 16.5 million views, was shared over 500,000 times, and gained the school’s Instagram account more than 10,000 new followers. Analytics showed a similar campaign had done well a couple of years before, though not nearly so well as the updated campaign, which was developed by YSPH student worker Yasmin Hung, MPH ‘26.

“Sometimes people say, ‘just do your social media magic,’” said Kayla Steinberg, YSPH’s digital and social media strategist. “That kind of upsets me because it’s not magic. It’s a lot of experience over time.”

Here’s how she’s built up one of the best social feeds in public health:

Study the channel or channels you want to be on. Note what does well and figure out how to translate that to your own work.

If you want to talk to the general public, don’t use fancy science words.

Figure out the most direct way to make your point while keeping the necessary nuance.

Choose the right format, whether that’s a meme or a BlueSky post with a graph or whatever style best fits the platform. Then use analytics to see what seems to work, then try to duplicate successes.

Mean posts could go viral but won’t bring people into the public health community.