Establishing a Successful Listening Campaign

The goals of AHRQ’s Health Care Innovations Exchange program are:

• to share health care service delivery and policy innovations and tools  designed to reduce cost, improve efficiency, and increase satisfaction; and
•  to build communities between innovators and potential adopters to facilitate  scaling and spreading those innovations and tools.

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: Thewebsite, www.innovations.ahrq.gov, features both a collection of resources for health care professionals involved in quality improvement as well as a biweekly issue focused on select aspects of improving health care delivery. The exponential growth in social media over the last five years indicates the need to   leverage social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. to engage our target audiences where they congregate. Similarly, identifying other online spaces where our audiences interact such as blogs, news sites and discussion groups is also valuable for distributing content to different users.

Methods and Results (informing the conceptual analysis):Rather than simply establishing branded presences on these platforms, we developed a systematic listening/monitoring campaign to identify influencers, prioritize resources, and inform our decisionsabout how best to engage our target audiences. By conducting the social media listening campaign, we were able to determine:

• Where relevant conversations were taking place;
• What topics were popular on different platforms; and
• Who were the most influential participants on those platforms.

Key components of this campaign include:

• Hiring an external social media consultant to identify relevant communities of interest;
• Developing a comprehensive social media monitoring/listening strategy;
• Google Alerts notifications
• Google Analytics assessment
• Foresee Survey modifications
• LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter group identification
• Radian6 reporting tool
• Addressing staffing issues;
• Determining staffing roles
• Recruiting social media expertise
• Evaluating target audiences
• Deciding upon different tactics for engagement
• Simple distribution
• Information sharing
• Strategic partnerships
• Guest blogging
• Retweeting
• Resource planning and budgeting
• Evaluating success

Conclusions:  

By performing ongoing empirical analysis of data gathered through our listening campaign, we are able to identify engagement opportunities that have the best potential to build relationships with our target audiences. Through these monitoring efforts, we are also able to tailor our engagement approach to provide useful content to different communities and influencers and to streamline our processes in order to maximize results for the resources allocated to the Learning and Networking project.

Implications for research and/or practice:        The practical implications include an increase in quantifiable historical data about community and individual behaviors which can be used to gauge potential outcomes for future engagement efforts. Analytics reviews can also provide means of measuring audience reach through specific channels. Combined, this information can be used to predict how best to allocate limited resources for maximum effect. Data gathering and other measurement techniques will need to be refined over time and additional research on this topic will be necessary.