Social media continues to grow as a powerful tool for health researchers to recruit the right populations for their trials and to engage with study participants. However, even as it delivers valuable benefits, such as low cost and the ability to reach a broad, diverse audience, social media also brings pitfalls that can work against engagement.
To make social media an effective part of your study’s recruitment and engagement efforts, it’s important to avoid making five common mistakes.
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Mistake 1: Not doing your research on potential study participants
Understanding the social habits of your target audience is the first step in capturing and maintaining their attention. For any audience that you are trying to reach, whether niche or diverse, it is always important to do your research before you start posting content.
To effectively meet your audiences where they are, find out where they are already engaging. Learn which Facebook groups they are members of, which specific hashtags they follow on Twitter, and which influencers they are engaging with on Instagram.
Once you find out where your audiences engage online, you can start to learn what their main concerns are and what kind of content they engage with most frequently. Then you can tailor content accordingly. Your recruitment and engagement campaigns will be much stronger when you know which social media platform is best suited for your content.
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Catherine Freeland Catherine E.W. Freeland, MPH is Director of Health Research Communications at Vibrent Health, a digital health technology company powering the future of precision medicine. Before joining Vibrent, she spearheaded the communications for the All of Us Research Program in New York City engaging historically underrepresented populations.
Mistake 2: Using too much medical jargon and using only English
It’s always a good rule of thumb on social media to keep language easy to understand and engaging. Terminology that is commonplace in your field as a health researcher may not be commonplace for your audience.
As you research where your audience engages online, also pay attention to the language they use in their own posts and comments. Keep track of specific keywords and phrases you see in online patient advocacy groups so that you can use them if appropriate.
In addition, make sure to appeal to a diverse set of users. Sticking to just one language (e.g., English) will act as a roadblock in your recruitment strategies, as you will lose the chance to attract diverse communities and populations to your study. In fact, 70% of internet users are not native English speakers.
A key part of strong recruitment and engagement campaigns is the ability to connect with users on an individual level. Expand the languages you use in your social communications, and you will expand the diversity of your cohort.
Mistake 3: Using only one social media platform to connect with potential research participants
While Facebook is a great platform for reaching a very large number of people (it has 1.79 billion daily active users), it is not the only platform that will help you achieve your recruitment and engagement goals.
Keep in mind that adolescents and young adults make up a very large portion of Twitter’s and Instagram’s active user base. There are other platforms, too, especially for messaging to stay in touch with your cohort. For example, the Latinx population are heavy users of WhatsApp.
Each platform will bring you success in a different way. One thing to consider before finalizing which platforms you will use for your campaigns is the topic of the study and the format of your posts. Instagram is focused on visual aspects and engaging stories, while Twitter and LinkedIn tend to see more text-based posts. Get acquainted with which content formats best suit each platform that you’re considering.
Mistake 4: Setting up campaigns, posting content and then ghosting your followers
Pushing out content on the appropriate platforms is clearly important for health research recruitment and engagement, but the quality and quantity of engagement requires more dedication and care than just a one-time press of a key. You should always continue social media listening throughout your campaigns. In addition to staying on top of and tracking relevant hashtags and keywords, frequently visiting social channels and engaging with followers is a great way to find your people and keep them coming back.
Social media monitoring is different than listening, but equally important. The point of monitoring your campaigns is to keep track of which content is performing the best and bringing you the best ROI. Which social media posts are participants engaging with the most prior to signing up for your study? Which types of content are your current participants responding to and which are they ignoring?
One aspect of social media monitoring is tracking and responding to comments and direct messages. This will help you keep your engagement numbers up and will also be one way to report any adverse events related to the trial that may come up.
If you notice that certain messages, visuals or platforms aren’t giving you the desired results, you can always iterate and adjust accordingly. Monitoring will help you decide the best way to do that.
Mistake 5: Forgetting to engage with healthcare professionals and other industry influencers
Social media is an excellent way to supplement other recruitment and engagement efforts. It is a great tool for reaching populations that are often harder to reach via traditional methods. However, that does not mean you should forget about one of the most common methods of recruitment—physician and healthcare referrals.
Healthcare professionals can also be reached on social media. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter make it relatively easy for you to use specific demographics and interests to help target which audience sees your content.
Despite seeing engaging and interesting content on social, individuals are likely to still consult their physicians about any study they are participating in. If healthcare professionals have the right information at their disposal, they can best guide their patients in their decision to participate in studies and trials.
Social media has become a cost-effective, engaging and critical component to health research study recruitment, engagement and retention.
Doing it right can add work, but the ROI from social media can make it worthwhile. As studies move to digital and remote means to reach more people where they are, social media can be an effective recruitment tool and a complement to participant monitoring and tracking systems for engagement.
While participant management tools provide participants with the primary touch points of their engagement, such as invitations and follow-up to events, email and SMS outreach, and appointments for bio specimen donation, social engagement reinforces that contact. Make sure you research how to streamline your workflow to ensure that you’re working efficiently, so that you can use the power of social media to supplement your participant tracking tools and level-up your study.
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Catherine E.W. Freeland, MPH is Director of Health Research Communications at Vibrent Health, a digital health technology company powering the future of precision medicine. Before joining Vibrent, she spearheaded the communications for the All of Us Research Program in New York City engaging historically underrepresented populations.
