Tips on Integrating Influencers into Your Social Media Strategy
Out there, there are some people holding a medical degree being interested in science, life, and innovation. Some of them utilize social media to share with the world new research, ideas and thoughts in the area in which they specialize in. With their efforts they help bridge the gap between certain scientific fields and the masses, who are now more then ever before looking for credible sources of information. In the context of medical meetings, we call these active social media users influencers.
Influencers give us a background look into the life of medical doctors and scientists, raw and unaugmented, just as we want it. They capture our attention with authentic content delivered in an entertaining and easy to digest way. This might be a limiting and out-of-context definition, so let’s take a look at the basics.
Medical Doctors and Medical Meetings
Medical Doctors (MDs) have always been society’s innovators. Throughout history the society has devoted a lot of resources towards enabling MDs to deliver on the extremely hard tasks they are given, as curing diseases and saving human lives, while having as a constant requirement to deliver as gently as possible. While this fact seems to be known to us all, it rarely comes up when we speak about medical meetings. It seems that the words “innovation” and “medical” only rarely appear in the same sentence, at least in the meetings industry, where medical meetings are still considered some of the dullest ones.
Compliance seems to be one of the often quoted reasons for keeping medical meetings in certain constrains. However, while compliance will continue pushing PCOs dealing with medical meetings to be more creative and very knowledgeable about each regulation, one thing that compliance has not affected yet is the use of social media in the events’ communication mix, which brings forward significant opportunities.
Social Media and Medical Meetings
Social media has changed the face of medical meetings making new medical solutions reach a wider audience quicker, inform and engage patient groups and specialists across borders of new methods and tools to treat patients with. Social media is generally helping the many specialties and sub-specialties in medicine to grow in terms of knowledge exchange and idea development.
In order to use social media well for those busy doctors and other medical stakeholders, we need to make it easy to use and visually appealing. No one can argue on the usefulness of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. The channels are well established and they are widely used. So – the platform is there, all we need to do is adapt its use to the needs of our audience.
Influencers? How Do We Identify Them?
As we already established, influencers are social media users that we identify by their influence on their networks and way of use of social media. They literary have the possibility to influence with their social media posts having thoughts and opinions on subject matters on which they are well versed or experts in. The process of identifying influencers may seem at first a daunting one, when you imagine trying to scan all people on social media posting with a certain hashtag.
Luckily, there are ways to make this process much easier:
- First of on your list should be using some well known tools and software such as Salesforce, TweetReach, and Mention, to name a few. These tools will help you go through vast amounts of data faster, giving you the best summary of results in terms of who might be the influencers you are looking for, based on their followers;
- Next comes the hard work. What you need to do is dig deeper in the information that you have just acquired and see the actual engagement that these influencers get from their audience. Sometimes they might have only a hundred followers in a channel, but having much higher engagement rates with their specific audience.
3 EASY STEPS TO EMPOWER YOUR INFLUENCERS
Influencers add to our marketing efforts with the use of media – pictures, videos, and live streams. They can raise engagement by adding their authentic view of the event. They record the ups and downs of their participation at your conference, showing the excitement of attending, the real networking, the super busy poster session, or just how good it feels to hug an old friend that you regularly meet at this event. All that has an outstanding value – for both the event planner and the current or potential delegates. That is why you want to empower influencers further, giving them more tools to report the real experience from your event. How to do it in 3 easy steps:
1. Make them the stars.
Make their lives easy. The platform is there, and they are already eager to take part. Don’t forget to clearly communicate from the very beginning the hashtag of the event in all online and offline marketing materials, so that they can take part in helping you build your brand awareness.
2. Promote influencers during your event.
Challenge them to stand out. Involve them in fun games that will be of benefit to your wider audience too. Don’t forget that they are medical doctors wishing to advance in their field. Incentivize them to showcase their work too – give them the chance to present their latest research.
3. Don’t forget that people follow influencers.
Make them known and support their effort so that others will follow, with the simple use of Twitter Walls for example.
And one last note on influencers – remember that sponsors are influencers too. They are important also for your bottom line, so encourage them to be active, to engage, show them the return on their investment, as these audiences are looking up to them too.
FINAL THOUGHTS
When it comes to the benefits of social media for events, it is easy to say that it helps greatly to carry on live, authentic dialogues with those in attendance as well as those following along virtually, sharing important messages with an informed, engaged audience, and continuing conversations that were first started face to face in the meeting halls.
And as to the importance of influencers – do not forget that they aid us with our discussions and dissemination of information. They hear the important messages that the conference wants to pass on, they summarize, and immortalize these important learnings for everyone to see.
ABOUT MAGDALINA
Q: What are you most excited about at the moment?
It has been about half a year since I joined Kenes Group and I am very excited about every single day. We are working on many new projects that truly push me to stay on top of my game, and that is what makes me happy.
Q: Your advice/suggestion for turning a boring event into a memorable one?
I believe in engagement, in provoking the audience, starting even before the event, setting the tone for something different. Then they come with open minds and ready for new experiences. For me, this is how all meetings should be set – from the small office meeting with colleagues, to a huge congress.
Q: What gets you out of bed in the morning?
Usually my smart alarm. Even if I cannot get up as early on my own, I actually love spending my mornings with my dog in the park. It is the perfect start to the day. The rest I welcome with open arms.
Q: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
I don’t like setting such long-term visions for myself as I like to stay flexible. I do see myself continuing to do what I love and what makes me happy.
