Nutrition organization drives key messages during National Nutrition Month

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics created National Nutrition Month, an education and information campaign that focuses on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and physical activity habits. The campaign includes Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day, which raises awareness of these professionals as important providers of food and nutrition services. The social media campaign in support of these events in 2019 have earned first place in the “Social Media Campaign” category of PR Daily’s Nonprofit PR Awards.

The campaign featured a social media toolkit available on the Academy’s website that contained a list of event ideas, downloadable web banners and blogger widgets, a proclamation request targeting local government, printable handouts and a social media toolkit, all including the official hashtag, #NationalNutritionMonth.

The social media toolkit was developed by an outside vendor and featured shareable graphics, animated GIFs and social media cover photos, all with prewritten messaging that users could click to post on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Several of these were also available in Spanish. The toolkit also included key dates for Twitter chats and other events.

The Academy hosted four live Twitter chats. A contest anchored Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day, honoring the impact of RDNs and featuring the winner on an electronic billboard in New York’s Times Square. (Members were asked to answer the question, “How does your work help to solve the greatest food and nutrition challenges now and in the future?” in 100 words or less.) The Academy also shared content from its websites throughout the month, including recipes, snack ideas and more.

The hashtags appeared in more than 42,000 posts, and the social media press kit saw more than 12,000 page views from more than 8,500 unique visitors.

Congratulations to Lauren Fox and Sarah Amundsen.