Written by: Mia Von Sadovszky, SVP / Group Strategic Planning Director and Hanna Samad, VP / Experience Strategy Director at Independent Advertising Agency, RPA
Social media has emerged as a powerful marketing tool for health care institutions, with 41% of people surveyed say social media affects their choice of doctor, hospital, or medical facility. Unfortunately, the prevalence of misinformation and polarization found in social media discussions around health and health care has affected overall trust in these very institutions and their experts. So how can health care marketers best leverage social media to drive positive patient engagement and acquisition while avoiding its pitfalls?
The Importance of Social Listening
One of the foundational strategies for effective social media marketing is ongoing social listening. By continuously monitoring social media conversations, health-care marketers can gain valuable insights into the language and topics that resonate with their audience. This practice is essential in today’s politically charged environment where certain terms can trigger partisan reactions. Through social listening, marketers can craft messages that are both impactful and sensitive to the current social climate.
Sentiment analysis further enhances this approach by specifically identifying the types of language that may lead to misinformation or negative engagement. By understanding these dynamics, marketers can make intentional language choices that convey critical health information without inadvertently using words or phrases that have been co-opted.
Understanding Target Audiences
We have found that defining and understanding your target audience clearly is crucial to breaking through on social media. For example, minority groups often exhibit significantly lower levels of trust in a doctor’s recommendations compared to the general population; therefore, social strategies seeking to reach these groups often need to leverage voices from within minority communities rather than physicians or the institution itself to break through.
Value of focusing on individual stories
We have found that focusing paid social efforts at the individual level rather than the community or systemic level is perhaps one of the best ways to avoid polarization and minimize the risk of negative feedback loops. Leveraging personal stories, told from lived experience, leaves less room for misinterpretation and invites more positive engagements than broad generalizations about outcomes or treatments. We have also found that this kind of content, whether from the patient or caregiver’s point of view, tends to spark social connection and sharing between individuals, leading to stronger content performance. Sharing these stories can create a human connection and encourage others to share their experiences, leading to an authentic and positive feedback loop.
Influencer Partnerships: Building Trust and Credibility with Targeted Audiences
Influencer marketing works in a similar way by not only lending a more personal air to content, but by also facilitating greater participation in health care for certain populations. Research by the American Journal of Public Health found that having a research staff representative of the participants’ racial / ethnic group) was an important facilitator to research participation across minority groups. By partnering with influencers who have a strong presence in the appropriate health and wellness spaces and who represent and share experience with target audiences, health-care brands can tap into established communities and foster trust more quickly. Influencers can lend credibility and reach to health-care campaigns, making them an invaluable asset. Of course, these influencers and their established communities must be heavily vetted not only by marketing partners but by the appropriate health-care experts within an organization to avoid any mismatch with the marketer’s points of view and business goals.
Importance of Integrating Social Media with Multichannel Strategies
Beyond sharing more personal or individual stories, health-care organizations often must address community and systemic issues more directly. In these cases, we have found that integrating these social media efforts with other tactics and channels is essential. Partnerships, in-person events, and other platforms can provide more room to communicate more complex messages and build trust with the audience more broadly.
Social media provides health-care marketers with a unique channel to share personal, individual stories — exactly the kinds of stories that can drive engagement and also build trust and dispute misinformation. By adopting a few best practices, health-care marketers can effectively leverage social media to enhance patient acquisition and build stronger connections with their audience, avoiding the downsides of the online health conversation.