For pharmaceutical or healthcare marketers hoping to engage influential HCPs in the digital age, it is important to think mobile. One recent example of this came from Pfizer’s Twitter account as it shared a portrait-orientated video showing ulcerative colitis (UC) patients discussing how they felt opening up about their experience of living with UC, with captions.

Captions have proved to be a useful feature for mobile users as this allows the words being communicated to still be viewed even if, as is often the case when content is being viewed, the audio is turned off.

It is easy to scroll through a feed of pharma content on a platform like LinkedIn and see the adaptation to visual-focused posts. Vibrant images and videos pass by but just a few have been created in the aspect ratio for a mobile viewer.

On a web browser 16:9 videos stretch across the screen with a widescreen, big picture experience while on a mobile they are constricted, requiring the device to be rotated as the user scrolls on by.

From general to health conversation

These changes became highly meaningful for the way HCPs practice medicine and for pharmaceutical companies when the conversations and behaviours became health focused.

Healthcare professionals use social media to connect with friends and family as many others do, but there has been a steady increase in the volume of HCP conversations on social media relating to healthcare and medicine and this shows no signs of stopping.

On Twitter, HCP conversations increased dramatically in 2012 with a record number of HCP tweets being posted. But these were not tweets about healthcare. At that time, the level of healthcare-related conversations was relatively low compared to the overall conversation. Over time, however, the health conversation has grown to become, at times, half of all HCP Twitter conversations.

HCPs are becoming increasingly comfortable with discussing health topics including the latest treatment options, clinical trial results and patient care, not only on private social media, but also public.

As HCPs have embraced mobile social networks, new opportunities have arisen to improve healthcare. We have seen HCPs using public social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit to consult with one another around specific patient cases.

Other apps designed exclusively for HCP use have emerged, providing a platform for them to do this in a private or anonymous way. For example, SERMO facilitates peer discussion, where physicians ask one another medical questions based on real patient cases anonymously in a forum style. On another doctors’ network, HCPs ask for peers’ views as they share images of patient ailments.

Tracking digital behaviours

Understanding what is resonating with HCPs is essential in order for health companies and organisations to effectively engage with them. To do this, many companies now choose to follow and track what HCPs say and do online.

While large shifts in HCP use of digital media have been observed, when tracking HCP conversations and digital behaviours, smaller changes that occur on a daily basis have been discovered. Together, all this can provide a rich resource of intelligence but asking the right questions about that data is important to gain actionable insights.

The interests of HCPs can be found in both the content they share and from the public online conversations they have. When putting together a marketing strategy, content plan or engagement programme it is highly important to know which congress meetings boost HCP online activity, which hashtags are producing the most interesting conversations and on which channels HCPs are most active.

Building outreach strategies

Discovering HCP digital behaviours and keeping track of the changes over time makes the difference when aiming to understand HCP opinions and unmet needs. There is much data showing that the professional lives of HCPs are being transformed by digital. From this data, powerful and effective value-adding outreach strategies can be built.

The question remains: which companies will be willing to not only use digital to engage to HCPs but will carry out digital market research to transform their business structures, work methodologies and thought paradigms to embrace the new world?

By Jamie Doggett, Head of Insight at CREATION.co