A client recently approached our team looking for creative ways to launch a campaign to promote awareness about healthy behaviors for a chronic condition and the need for access to comprehensive, medically accurate information. We recommended a targeted approach: partnering with trusted messengers as a channel for education and information dissemination.
Social Media Influencers
Micro-influencers—social media personalities with 10,000 to 100,000 followers—create highly engaged communities centered around very specific interests. These individuals are often accessible, easy to work with and their content is more authentic and relatable. They cover virtually every niche, from clean skincare and minimalist home design to a wide range of medical conditions.
Through careful research, we identified micro-influencers who were already sharing messages about their personal health journeys with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Our team engaged eight, diverse micro-influencers with high follower engagement rates. We provided them with the tools and trainings to ensure they accurately portrayed the science behind many of the currently available treatments for IBD. This effort reached a broad audience and had a strong impact.
Earned Media Messengers
A similar tactic for earned media is tapping local trusted messengers. We helped design a national public health campaign using trusted local messengers to disseminate timely information and public health resources.
Local medical professionals appeared on regional news outlets to provide accurate, localized information on vaccinations. They were deemed more trustworthy because they lived in the same community as the audiences we were trying to reach.
With more consumers turning to earned and social media for health information, smart organizations will figure out the best ways to identify, recruit and deploy the right messengers as powerful voices in health campaigns.
