How to make the most of online communities

A manifesto for getting the best from online communities  

The recent General Election once again brought healthcare to the fore of UK politics, this time with an unprecedented 7 health manifestos for Health Care Professionals (HCPs) and the general public to consider. It also saw widespread use of social media channels by politicians to communicate their manifestos, and by the general public in expressing their reaction. At a qualitative research level, a self-funded, online qualitative community approach was employed comprising 25 HCP Payers to explore and gain insight into their views on a broad range of topical healthcare issues including NICE, the Cancer Drugs Fund, biosimilars, the impact of Digital on pharma and the NHS in general. Drawing on this and over 120 similar online healthcare communities run internationally, three core principles have emerged that work equally well with HCPs and patients for getting the best out of online qualitative communities.  

(1)  Treat them as people not participants
In order to truly understand the motivations that lie beneath someone’s professional persona and get to what really matters to them personally, particularly when talking about contentious issues such as future funding of treatments, it is essential to interact with them as people. It is then possible to break the traditional rules of market research and start asking provocative questions, increasingly challenge thinking and consider what makes them tick as people, including what buttons need to be pushed in order to get the most out of them.

It is also important, where possible, to review any previous research that has been conducted with this audience, both online and offline, to identify what drives them.

This is a prerequisite for ensuring that the subsequent tasks designed for the community are fit for purpose in delivering genuine insight. Interventional Cardiologists for example, tend to be competitive and motivated by their own personal success. So, by incorporating competitive ideation tasks that appeal to their ego, they can be motivated by the chance to win the title ‘best brains in the community’. This could take the form of a ‘Dragons Den’ style group task, where each is asked to come up with a new marketing message for a certain product, which is then rated by the community.

In the case of patients with rare diseases however, it’s much more important to build trust between the community manager and the individual, so private reflection ‘Confession Booth’ style tasks work much better, with plenty of personal encouragement and feedback. Our election example revealed that Payers, despite having a serious role to play in their involvement of developing guidelines and funding of treatments, also have a dry sense of humour and a surprising playfulness. A ‘Family Fortunes’ task therefore was particularly effective. Here the Payers were asked to imagine they were all part of the ‘community family’ and asked to predict answers to open ended questions drawn from ‘100 people like you’. By framing it in this way it meant that they ‘conferred’ with their ‘family’, taking the thoughts of other Payers in the community into consideration, thus giving a holistic, fully rounded opinion.

“I liked the opportunity to take serious subjects forward in a fun way”      

(2)  Research team led but powered by the people
When it comes to online communities, what comes out depends very much on what goes in, with this applying equally to community managers and participants alike. While having a clearly defined agenda and set of objectives on behalf of your pharmaceutical clients is essential, it is equally vital to adopt a democratic approach which gives the participants ownership of the community. This is because people need to feel that they are listened to, that their opinions have been taken into account and that they matter. The more ownership there is, the more engagement and motivation to contribute further and open up more.

In our election community, Payers were given a space to post their own topics of interest in addition to those presented to them. It was then possible to observe which gained the most traction amongst their peers and continue this. So, when a Payer added an article from Sky news about the ‘hidden’ army of pharmacists to ease GP pressure, an article which generated considerable interest, a quick poll was created to facilitate further discussion to understand whether the community felt this would be a viable solution to ease pressure on GP surgeries – 88% felt it would.

“I was impressed by the expertise and how willing many were to share their passions and vision”  

(3)  Keep it current
It is however important to always leave spaces for ‘unknowns’ to crop up, for example any new clinical trial data that emerges, exclusive papers presented at conferences, disease awareness campaigns amongst patients etc. As well as keeping the discussion current, it helps facilitate increased engagement as well as providing insight into how opinions may evolve and develop as new information comes to light and is processed/discussed.

In our election community, Payers for example were invited to comment on the televised political debates as they happened and to share their thoughts on what had been said in relation to the NHS. Twitter-style tasks where they were asked to condense their thoughts down to one succinct 140 character tweet and create their own hashtags also worked well with this group because it strongly appealed to their sense of satire and direct and cutting style.

“I found it interesting because the topics are current and it made me re-read the 5 year forward plan… bring on the next one!”  

The findings from this Payer Politics case study are published in a series of 4 summaries which can be found at http://www.cellohealthinsight.com/work/payer-politics/                     

About the author Jenny Fletcher is Director of Digital at Cello Health Insight. She can be contacted at JFletcher@cellohealth.com.  

This feature was first published on Pharmaphorum on 19 June 2015