• Jan 12, 2021
• 3121
• Brooklyn Flores, Technical Services Division

January 6, 2021. Engaging stakeholders and maintaining their level of engagement has always been a challenge to many organizations.  This is particularly tougher this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Armed with the commitment to serve, the Bureau, through the Technical Services Division, conducted seven awareness seminars via an online platform (a.k.a. webinars) since July 2020.  These webinars are one of the many activities conducted to disseminate and promote common understanding and appreciation of developed and/or adopted standards.

The webinars conducted were: a) Good Animal Husbandry Practices (GAHP) for Swine on July 17, b) Good Aquaculture Practices (GAqP) on August 6, c) Chikahan sa Bakuran: Ligtas na Gulayan sa Tahanan on August 11, d) Food Safety Related Standards for Philippine Cacao Beans on September 4, e) Pesticide Residues in Crops on September 14, f) Food Safety Related Standards for Dairy on September 25, and g) Online Meat Selling and its Safety on December 3.

The webinars were live-streamed via the Bureau’s Facebook Page using an online streaming platform, StreamYard - a live streaming studio where one can have control in broadcasting their content to social media platforms linked to the account such as Facebook. The registration, evaluation, and issuance of e-certificates were managed using Google Forms and add-ons such as Autocrat. Each certificate issued bore a unique certificate number.

With this shift to webinars, an increase in the number of participants was observed, primarily due to easy access of stakeholders to the online platform used by the Bureau.  Overall, the seven webinars surpassed the hundred registered participants mark. 

Figure 1. Food Safety Webinars Registered¹ Participants

The participants were mainly from the national government agencies (NGAs), local government units (LGUs), non-governmental organizations (NGO), academe, students, farmers, private sectors, offices under the Department of Agriculture, and others if their sector was not specified. In total, there were 2,101 registered participants in all TSD conducted food safety webinars.

However, the Bureau also observed that not all registered participants could attend the webinar as seen from the total number of e-certificates issued after the conduct of the seven (7) webinars. In total, only 1,049² certificates were electronically generated and issued with the breakdown details shown below:

Figure 2. Food Safety Webinars Issued E-certificates

As the webinars were conducted online through BAFS Facebook Page, the Bureau’s webinars performances were assessed using the established metrics of Facebook.

1. Reach. The Facebook metric reach perceives the number of individual accounts who viewed the Bureau’s webinar content at least once. In this metric the Bureau will be able to discern each webinar's degree of reach as shown in Figure 3.   On the average, about 13,392 unique individual Facebook users had seen the seven (7) food safety webinars recording the highest number on Pesticide Residues as shown in Figure 3.  If we compare this from previously conducted seminar awareness (physical) data, a significant difference in participation rate can be inferred. Originally, the Bureau had a yearly target of three physical seminars inviting thirty (30) participants. However, in 2019 only two seminars were conducted due to procurement related concerns and a total of sixty-four (64) attendees were noted in Cebu and Cagayan de Oro. With this information, the participation rate for year 2020 was calculated where 4.19x10⁴% increase in participation was observed. 
   The shift to the online platform enabled the Bureau to improve its stakeholders coverage, including those who are difficult to invite due to geographical and logistical reasons. Top viewers location noted attending the webinars were from different regions of the country such as Central Luzon, CALABARZON, SOCCSKSARGEN, Northern Mindanao, Western Visayas and many more.
   
                                                                                          
                                                                                                                             Figure 3. Food Safety Webinars Reach³
2. Post Engagement. In order to measure the engagement of a social media post or activity, stakeholders’ reactions, comments and sharing activity are used. The reactions are seen as emoji icons categorized into ‘Like’, ‘Haha’, ‘Love’, ‘Wow’, ‘Sad’, and ‘Angry’ reactions. The reactions like ‘Like’, ‘Haha’, ‘Love’, and ‘Wow’, denotes positive reactions, while ‘Sad’, and ‘Angry’ denotes negative reactions. In general, the seven food safety webinars conducted garnered 4,367 positive reactions and 48 negative reactions. The webinar on Pesticide Residues got the highest number of post engagements with a total of 1,051 reactions (656 likes, 382 love, 6 haha & wow, 4 angry and 3 sad reactions).
   
                                                                                                
                                                                                                            Figure 4. Food Safety Webinars Post Engagement⁴
    
3. Top Location. The top location is recorded based on the percentage of viewing by region.  Metro Manila and CALABARZON were the top locations where the highest number of viewers were from Quezon City and Laguna, respectively Particularly, viewers of Chikahan sa Bakuran (GAP) and Online Meat Selling were from Metro Manila. Meanwhile for webinars on GAHP, GAqP, Cacao (PNS) Pesticide Residue, Dairy, viewers were mainly from the CALABARZON area.
   
                                                                                              
                                                                                                                           Figure 5. Food Safety Webinars Top Location
    
4. Audience Retention during Live Feed. The audience retention during Live Feed provides significant information on the number of (live) viewers watching the webinar video during the live broadcast. Table 1, expresses the peak live viewers and audience retention rate of each webinar. The peak live viewers are the highest number during live broadcast, while the average audience retention rate was incurred to all topics/segments of each webinar. The rate acquired on each webinar provides the viewers percentage during the live broadcast.

Table 1.  Audience retention during live feed of BAFS food safety webinars

The webinar on Pesticide Residues in Crops garnered the highest live viewers of 274 while Online Meat Selling and its Safety webinar had the least number of live viewers of 73. On the other hand, the Good Aquaculture practices (GAqP) webinar had the highest audience retention rate of 90%, about 164 (out of 182) viewers watched the entire webinar. Meanwhile the Food Safety Related Standards for Philippine Cacao Beans webinar had the lowest audience retention rate of 74%, about 64 (out of 87) live viewers tuned in during the live broadcast (Table 1).

In summary, the metrics in Facebook Insights gave valuable information on the performances of each webinar and gave an overview of audience interaction. The webinar on Pesticide Residues in Crops had the highest number of Facebook users reached with 25,395. It had also recorded the most number of engagement with 1,647 reactions, comments and shares. On the other hand, the webinar with the highest audience on rate is the Good Aquaculture practices (GAqP) webinar with 90% while the least audience retention rate is  Food Safety Related Standards for Philippine Cacao Beans webinar with 74%. Furthermore, the audience demographic viewing the Bureau’s webinars are mostly from Region IV-A-CALABARZON with five webinars as their top location. With the data gathered from Facebook metrics it can be described that there is a significant increase of participants considering people may easily access the platform used in contrast to physical seminar awareness. 

With these Findings, the Bureau will use these metrics as a baseline to improve its online services in the coming years. We target to improve both the quantity and quality of our webinars.  Because we acknowledge that we do not only need to increase the number of reached stakeholders but we also need to find ways on how to retain their attention and retained engagement with us.###

¹ Registered participants were based from the submitted registration form of interested stakeholders.
² Certificates electronically issued were used as the basis of final tally of participants. Duplicate entries were removed in tallying the number of issued e-certificates to avoid double counting.
³ Data collected as of
GAHP: July 17 - September 15, 2020
Pesticide Residues: September 14 - October 9, 2020
GAqP August 6 -  September 21, 2020
Dairy: September 25 - October 19, 2020
Chikahan (GAP) August 11 - September 30, 2020
Online Meat Selling: December 3 - December 10, 2020
Cacao (PNS): September 4 - November 16, 2020
⁴ Data collected as of
GAHP: July 17 - September 15, 2020
Pesticide Residues: September 14 - October 9, 2020
GAqP August 6 -  September 21, 2020
Dairy: September 25 - October 19, 2020
Chikahan (GAP) August 11 - September 30, 2020
Online Meat Selling: December 3 - December 10, 2020
Cacao (PNS): September 4 - November 16, 2020
Difference in figures may be observed in Facebook Page due to on-going engagements of the posts.