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Three Public Health Issues to Watch in 2024 and What They Mean for Health Communicators

With a new year comes a new reality in health communications. Public health is grappling with ongoing and new challenges that will inevitably impact our field. As a public relations professional with a master’s degree in public health, I track health care industry trends to help clients navigate the complexities of their work. Here are some of the major health care trends to watch in 2024.

The Controversial Role of A.I. in the Future of Health Care

Artificial Intelligence has permeated seemingly every industry and health care is no exception. Some experts actually predict health is the field where AI may play one of its most controversial roles.

Some are optimistic about technology’s ability to alleviate a few of health care’s pressing issues, such as clinician burnout, patient outreach barriers and diversity in clinical trials. This was a topic of discussion among panelists at the Milken Institute’s 2023 Future of Health Summit. One panelist noted that AI could help in the battle against the spread of public health misinformation – one of the biggest challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, there are researchers and companies dedicating resources to developing AI technology that can automatically detect fake news online. And growing attention to the dangers of AI has spurred the call for teaching basic media literacy in schools, so the public can detect fake news on its own.

Of course, the bigger concern among public health professionals is the direct negative impact of AI on the field. While policies have been enacted to try to restrict AI, such as President Biden’s recent executive order for our country’s health organizations to create a regulatory plan, many experts are concerned that there is no effective way to control it.

These issues will directly impact the work that health care communications professionals do for our clients. The spread of misinformation via AI poses reputational risks for clients. And as AI grows, trust among the public dwindles. It’s likely that in the future, we will not only be communicating key messages, we will also have to counteract falsehoods and find new ways to ensure our clients are seen as credible and reliable sources of information. This will make our jobs even more important to ensure that we are cutting through the noise and getting our clients’ messages right.

Climate Change and Structural Racism

The issue of climate change has been looming over the planet for decades. But researchers are telling us it’s no longer just a threat – it’s our reality. The effects of climate change are being felt in health care. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, climate change is linked to the increase in respiratory illnesses and pest-related diseases, such as Lyme disease. It’s also connected to poor mental health and increases in violent crime.

There is also a growing divide in who is impacted by the effects of climate change. Maranda Ward, EdD, MPH, assistant professor of clinical research and leadership at George Washington University says the impact of climate change on minority populations in particular will be one of the biggest issues facing public health. “Climate change is impacting us all, especially given the role of environmental racism,” she said. “The reason there remains a disproportionate impact on historically disinvested neighborhoods is because of structural inequity.”

In the past few years, we have seen a growing number of organizations looking to address structural racism by funding diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) programs as well as environmental justice initiatives. But the recent Supreme Court ruling to end affirmative action has set off an anti-DEI movement in politics, business, and academics, as reported by Erica Pandey of Axios. We are now seeing funding cuts for DEI programs being pushed on both sides of the aisle.

It is likely that this trend will have an impact on the kind of work that comes through the doors for health communicators. DEI programs that continue to be a priority will likely need to take a different approach as far as communications. We may need to add messaging about how these programs help society as a whole through their mission and purpose, to ensure they remain in place and that they are able to continue the important work they are doing.

The Polarization of Health Care

Over the years, health care has become increasingly polarized, and this trend is likely to be amplified in 2024 with the upcoming presidential election. Health care issues will become a focal point during campaign season, as they always do, and this will only make current hot-button issues even more polarizing.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, health communicators had to work tirelessly against the politicization of public health messaging to ensure our clients’ campaigns could break through and reach target audiences. One of the best examples of polarization in health care is the changing public perception of vaccines. Since the late 1940s, vaccines have been an accepted form of preventative medicine among most Americans. This changed around 2008, when according to a recent report by the CUNY Graduate Center, Republicans began to show more skepticism toward vaccines. This divide was heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic and there are no signs that this will change. Recently, the CDC reported increased vaccine exemption rates among kindergarteners in 41 states.

While there will be many serious challenges on the horizon for health communicators in 2024, there will also be promising opportunities to help clients reduce clinician burnout, improve access to care and increase confidence in scientific breakthroughs. As long as we stay on top of the trending issues within public health, we can help our clients stay ahead.

Nourishing your Social Media Campaigns

Your organization has worked hard and just finished preparing new resources, and you are excited for your audience to begin using them. You’ve posted all the new material on your website, but when you check your traffic, you don’t see the spike in page visits that you were expecting. It turns out that most of your audience is unaware of the new content because you didn’t effectively promote it on social media.

At TRG, we work hard with all our clients to perfect their messaging, and one of our goals as a health care public relations firm is to increase awareness of those messages — whether publicizing a scientific study, new client resources, or registration for an upcoming event.

Social media campaigns are a great way for our clients to reach their audiences since so much of the public is on social media — patients, doctors, educators, students and consumers — and it is a valuable source of owned media for any organization.

However, telling your organization’s story on social channels is not as easy as it may seem. Here are some key elements that we consider when implementing our social media campaigns.

Develop content around your organization’s goals. Remember, social media is not just a place where young people share pictures with their friends. Your organization’s social media posts should be strategically planned around your goals so your audience understands your mission and trusts you as a source of information.

For example, we recently worked with a client about the types of content they want to be posting. Their focus is on professional education, and they were debating posting about various national observances that were not necessarily relevant to their mission. We collaborated to work out a system to spotlight only select observances that felt authentically related to their current work and future goals.

Use paid social campaigns carefully. After putting in countless hours of work on a project, it’s tempting to just click the “boost” button on your Facebook newsfeed to increase impressions for a few dollars. If impressions were your only goal, that would be a fine plan. But putting real money behind a post only for the algorithm to show it to unrelated audiences will not increase the account engagement and bring more users to your site. Instead, when we create social media ad campaigns, we prefer using targeted audiences and conducting A/B testing to gauge reactions and make changes based on the results.

Track the sources of your website traffic. There are countless ways for your audience to find your website, a factor you should always be aware of and use to your advantage. A great way to do this is by UTM tagging, a method of tagging the links you share to quantify the traffic based on source, content type and content topic. UTM tags are not directly related to social media, but UTM-tagged links can be shared on social media to get a better idea of your organization’s analytics and make informed decisions for the future.

For example, we might learn that the blogs we post on your organization’s LinkedIn page with messages from leaders are the most-clicked links. With this insight, we could increase the focus on creating and sharing this content.

Carefully crafted social media campaigns allow organizations to introduce themselves to both new and familiar audiences in ways that would not be possible otherwise. Having a specific strategy is key to putting your best foot forward.

 

Message Testing: The Foundation of a Successful Communications Strategy

This article also appeared in PR News.

When our clients ask our team to help them grow their membership or reach a new audience, we usually begin with message testing. It’s a critical part of the process for a solid communications strategy. Unfortunately, it is often skipped due to tight deadlines or limited budgets. But message testing can be as simple as reviewing a core message platform with a small sample of people, or as involved as hosting multiple focus groups with your target audience. However it’s done, it should help you understand how to effectively communicate with your core audience, identify any crucial flashpoints or key issues that your campaign may stumble upon, and help you get buy-in from leadership on the current or new messages that you plan to use.

Our team at The Reis Group ensures that every campaign begins with sound messaging. Here are three reasons why you should consider doing message testing before launching your next campaign.

Communicate Effectively

Whether we like it or not, we all fall prey to our own biases. Our experiences will inevitably color the kinds of messages we write and the means by which we communicate them. But messages shouldn’t be developed by an isolated group of people who don’t have direct insight into the experiences of the target audience. Those real-life experiences are critical in determining the true perspective and needs of your campaign targets. For instance, as a healthcare communications agency in Washington, D.C., we work on many campaigns to reach physicians. We are a team of communications professionals, but none of us have been to medical school. In creating campaign materials that will resonate with physicians, it’s important that we get input on the messaging that will speak most authentically to them and address the key issues that they really care about. And when writing for the general public, there are specific best practices around testing materials that can help ensure your resources are accessible and understandable for a more general audience.

Identify Issues Ahead of Time

Message testing will also help you determine which points will resonate most strongly and which will fall flat. It opens the door for conversations to identify issues you may not have even considered. Maybe the message platform you thought was solid, is missing a critical issue that your target audience is focused on at the moment?

Perhaps there are certain words or phrases that have a variety of meanings for various groups you want to reach. As shown in this recent poll conducted by the nonpartisan de Beaumont Foundation around the COVID-19 pandemic – words matter. Whatever language you use, it needs to quickly engage the broadest audience possible. And you won’t know what those words, phrases, and meanings are to various people until you speak to them. We are often surprised at the nuanced language or unintentional omissions that are very important to people and can make or break an effective message platform. More importantly, this part of the process can help you identify flaws with your current messages that may require you to take a step back, analyze the areas where you are hearing consistent feedback, and decide where to make changes before continuing with your testing. Taking this iterative approach ensures you are improving on your key points and that you are getting to a place of consensus before your testing phase ends.

Get Buy-in from Leadership

Testing gives you the support you need to defend changes to an organization’s long-standing messages. It can also help in convincing leadership to adopt the new messages in any public-facing speaking opportunities. But leaders must be brought along in the process – from start to finish. As many public relations practitioners know, it can be challenging to get leaders to avoid reverting back to the old points when you’ve given them new ones. But when they are brought along in the process, understand the methodology of how the messages are tested, see the feedback from their target audience, and understand the importance of the changes to the messaging, they will be more likely to accept it and even enthusiastically put it into practice.

Message testing is a valuable and essential part of any communications strategy. Ensuring this step is a part of the planning process can make the difference between an effective communications campaign and one that doesn’t deliver.

Shifting Health Care Communications Strategies

This article originally appeared in O’Dwyer’s October 2020 Healthcare Issue.

Failure to stay relevant is a catastrophe for PR professionals. For 2020, relevancy is the primary determinant of success in the era of COVID-19.

For all of us, not just those in health care communications, this has been a year of chaos. We were forced to repeatedly adapt to a rapidly changing environment and continually learn unexpected lessons for moving forward in this bewildering new reality.

We were pushed to constantly reevaluate messaging and positioning to demonstrate engagement and sensitivity to the COVID-19 situation. For every news story, social post, speech, and product, PR professionals needed to take daily and weekly checks on the environment to figure out when and how it was appropriate to step in and step up.

As a health care PR agency, our first priority in this tumultuous time is taking care of our team. The only way we can serve our clients well is if we first take care of ourselves. For our team, self-care is no longer a luxury. It is a survival mechanism. When the federal Emergency Declaration hit, we abandoned our Washington, D.C. office and went fully remote. It was a seamless transition because we already offered our team members “Work-from-Home Fridays.” It was our best answer for telework. When we opened our small, woman-owned business four years ago, we started working remotely once a week on the day of your choice. But that became too confusing; some people would take it, others would not. It got to the point where we didn’t know whether someone was in or out of the office. Our solution was giving everyone the benefit of Fridays at home, with the requirement to use video calls as the primary form of communication. Everyone needed to have a home-office set up. Wow! Did that ever pay off when the coronavirus hit!

I remember reading a post on Instagram that said, “We are in a crisis…and working remotely.” To help our own staff practice self-care, take time to nurture their mental health, and figure out their new life, we immediately activated our annual summer hours program several months early: Everyone takes a day off from work every other Friday. It gives all of us a time to reflect, recharge, and reconnect with what matters to each of us personally. And the positive effects are felt professionally too.

We are clearly not the only ones who think this kind of respite is important: according to a recent Samueli Integrative Health survey, a majority (64%) of Americans say they are focused on their mental health now more than ever.

COVID-19 hit particularly hard for some of our primary clients, whose work missions put them on the frontlines of the pandemic. Key client concerns shifted instantly and strongly to anything and everything COVID: safety and personal protective equipment, clinician burnout, the surge in telehealth and teletherapy, the incredible impact of the social determinants of health, the no-visitor rules at care facilities, constantly changing care guidelines, patients forgoing care, postponed surgeries–and people dying.

The media world changed too. For a firm that prides itself on excelling in earned media relations and thought leadership, we needed to reconfigure how we shared our clients’ perspectives. Consider the state of media during the first half of this year:

  • Hundreds of journalists were laid off at Vice, Quartz, The Economist, BuzzFeed, CondeNast and elsewhere.
  • According to The New York Times, nearly 40,000 employees of news media companies were furloughed, laid off, or had their pay cut.
  • COVID-19 has literally killed nearly 100 weekly and daily publications, bringing the total to roughly 1,800 news outlets that have just disappeared in the past decade.

Nonetheless, there was some good news about the news media:

  • A Pew study found 69% of Americans approved the media coverage of the pandemic.
  • Other polls found that trust in broadcast and cable network news was growing; and
  • Americans wanted science to guide our way out of this pandemic.

For our clients, in-person scientific meetings came to an abrupt halt. Now the virtual or hybrid annual meeting is here to stay. A recent issue of Science explored COVID-19’s huge impact on annual scientific meetings. A human-centered artificial intelligence conference that typically draws 3,000 attendees switched to a virtual format. The result? The conference attracted more than 30,000 participants. The reported benefits included moderators more effectively screening questions and avoiding non-questions. The virtual meeting was more accessible and affordable. What do the meeting participants miss the most? In-person networking. Many organizations are trying to replicate that connection on social media but being in the presence of another human being is impossible to replace, although online platforms are still trying to figure it out.

For one of our in-person community-based campaigns, we shifted everything online and eliminated all printed materials. One of our clients was in the middle of testing a campaign focused on health and well-being, focused on reaching the underserved population in five pilot markets. The “TakeCare” project is all about the power that every one of us has to improve our own health and well-being. What makes this campaign different and exciting is the use of newly produced documentary film shorts with real people taking small steps to make real changes in their lives. These films make emotional connections and inspire behavior change. Since we could no longer be in-market, we pivoted quickly to online. Within 30 days, we launched a digital micro-campaign within TakeCare, to specifically help people during COVID-19. We released five engaging film shorts that shared powerful stories of people who have transformed their health and well-being through small steps, and highlighting topics that were particularly relevant in the new environment: stress relief, building community, finding meaning and purpose.

Surveys and polls are more popular than ever for the news media. I’ve never seen so many polls covered in the news, posted on social media, and written about by the trades, aside from election season. In just a single week, I counted at least 10 polls covered by Google News before I stopped counting! There was the Harris Poll, Politico/Harvard poll, CNN poll, Quinnipiac University poll, Fox News poll, Kaiser Family Foundation Tracking, USA Today/IPSOS poll, and more. The abundance of survey findings tells us two things. First, they work. Second, they provide your client an opportunity to stay relevant, if you can find something newsworthy to add.

What are we looking at in 2021 for health care PR? We will continue to operate in a chaotic and uncertain environment. Trying to make meaningful personal connections virtually will be essential. Microtargeting on a single platform is a must, and our clients will need science and new data to remain a vital part of the national conversation. Welcome to the new normal!

As the saying goes, “there is wisdom and freedom in accepting that we don’t have all the answers.” While we are figuring those answers out, we as health care PR professionals must strive to find ways to keep our organizations and clients relevant.

After Covid-19, Will Americans Still Struggle to Make Health and Well-Being a Priority?

This blog also appeared on PRSA-NCC.

COVID-19 has exploded the healthcare system. But sometime in the future, Americans will return to “normal” and once again will concentrate on the basics of staying healthy in their everyday lives. The coronavirus has revealed how vulnerable so many of us are because of underlying conditions. Two years ago, our team conducted qualitative research to try to determine why this has always been such a struggle for many people.

Most Americans know what it takes to be healthy. And nearly everyone says it’s one of the things they value most in life. What, then, is getting in the way of our country truly making health a top priority?

Our team conducted in-depth interviews with 60 individuals to understand how various age groups specifically define health and well-being. How do they interact with the healthcare system? What do they try to do to improve their health? What medical conditions do they worry about the most? And what would it take for them to make health and well-being a more serious priority?

Our biggest surprise came in finding a fascinating behavioral paradox in many people’s thinking about health: The reason they most value their good health is that they want to spend time with their family and friends, engaging in social activities. Yet, when asked to name the biggest barrier to taking actions to improve their health, they reported that it was the demands of spending time with their family and friends. So herein lies the challenge: How do we inspire individuals and their families and friends to embrace health and well-being and—together—make it a priority?

Differing perspectives among generations. We conducted in-depth interviews with roughly 10 people from each from six generational categories. They came from across the country and represented various races/ethnicities, levels of education, lifestyles, and income. We were intrigued by many of our findings.

First, when asked to define “healthy,” nearly all participants talked about eating healthy, nutritious foods and engaging in physical activity. Maintaining a healthy weight, limiting alcohol, avoiding tobacco, and not taking illegal drugs were also part of that definition.

Younger generations tended to emphasize mental and spiritual health, alluding to the need to be not only physically but psychologically and emotionally healthy. The youngest group even included environmental health and the quality of their surroundings as important influences on well-being.

Health happens outside of the healthcare setting. Many respondents are hesitant to admit whether they see doctors. Many view the doctor’s office as a place to go only when feeling very sick and only after trying to cure their ailments on their own. For many, the main reason to visit the doctor is to refill medications.

Dr. Google will see you now. Doctors are not even the top source of health information, unless you are referring to Doctor Google or WebMD. Instead, family and friends are the most important health resources whose opinion is frequently sought.

The attitude transition period occurs around 50. Another surprising finding from our interviews was that a major shift in attitude occurs with the Baby Boomer 2 group (52-62). This is a time of evolving thinking. There is a marked shift away from trying to improve health to simply trying to maintain current levels of health and mobility. Younger generations are focused on what they can do better, and are constantly striving to exercise more, eat healthier, and take new steps to promote their well-being.

The generational connection. There are many differences in the way generations define and manage their health. In the end, they are all connected by the fundamental desire to be healthy. They share similar needs and barriers to achieving that goal. It is that sense of community and connection that needs to play a major role in campaigns to influence healthy behaviors and lifestyles.

We can’t do it alone. What we learned is that health and well-being mostly occur outside of the healthcare system and often among our family and friends. Being social and spending time with the people who matter most to us is what pushes us each and every day to want to be healthy. The very nature of simply spending time together fosters a sense well-being. So, when we are finally able, once again, to spend time with friends and families, think of it as your own prescription for health and well-being. It does your mind and body good.

Healthy Perspectives

  • Most Americans think about their health every day.
  • Most define health as eating nutritious foods and exercising regularly.
  • The top reason people want to be healthy is to spend time with their family and friends, being social.
  • Older generations tend to emphasize the need to maintain their current level of health and mobility.
  • Younger generations often focus on constantly trying to do more to improve their health.

Five Basic Tips for Writing Better News Releases

The primary goal in much of our work is to get our clients’ stories out there to the general public in a way that explains and promotes their best efforts. I worked in the media for 40 years, including 33 years at The Washington Post, and over the course of my reporting and editing career I read (or at least glanced at the headlines of) many thousands of news releases to decide whether they were worth publishing in some form and whether there might actually be a substantial story worth assigning a reporter to tell our readers.

As a Post editor, part of my job was training young reporters, and the tips that I shared then still apply for much of the work we do in public relations. Mostly, these are simply common sense, but I always find that when I drift away from them, I can run into trouble.

  1. SLOW DOWN! Deadlines can make you sweat and drive you crazy. You’re watching the clock. You’re worrying about all the other things you have to do. You’re thinking that you better start typing right now. But there is a Zen concept that applies here: slower is faster. Slowing down will center you. Allowing yourself to spend just a few minutes gathering your thoughts and outlining the main points you need to cover will result in saving you a lot of time when trying to go faster.
  2. GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT! This is perhaps the most crucial point of all. You have nothing more valuable than your reputation and your credibility. If you put out information that is clearly incomplete or, worse yet, incorrect, people will remember it. We work hard on our earned media strategy and outreach, but the media will only devote their time and energy to one type of source: the trusted one. Lose that trust and it’s virtually impossible to regain. This is also fundamental in reference to your client: if they lose faith in your accuracy and carefulness, you’re toast. When in doubt, check it out!
  3. KEEP SENTENCES SIMPLE! Reading a piece of writing should be an easy, smooth, non-stop experience for the reader. The more complicated your sentence, the more likely to make the reader stop and have to re-read what you’re trying to say. The best, clearest and most effective writing is in the active voice—the traditional Subject-Verb-Object structure is almost always more clear and impactful than a sentence with a variety of clauses and a bunch of commas.
  4. KEEP WORDS SIMPLE TOO! A news release is not an academic treatise or an epic poem. You want to convey information as clearly and easily as possible. In health care and science communications, we use complex and technical language. But we shouldn’t overburden readers by showing off our vocabulary. The more hifalutin big words that you use, the more likely you are to force the reader to have to stop and look up the word—or, worse, just stop reading. Generally, it’s a helpful rule not to use a written word that you would not also use in your conversational speech.
  5. PROOFREAD! THEN PROOFREAD AGAIN! This is just as crucial as ‘Get the Facts Straight’ because good proofreading can catch virtually all your mistakes. Hitting the “Send” button without thorough proofreading is a very risky move. Having the discipline to proofread twice can make a huge difference. I recommend proofreading aloud to yourself (in a whisper, usually, so you don’t bother your co-workers) so you can actually hear what your sentences sound like. Then, take a short break and come back to proofread again. You’ll be surprised at how much better you can make your final version.

Patient Education Materials: A Little Planning and Research Can Go a Long Way

Developing patient education and awareness programs that are both engaging and effective is not always easy. It requires a lot of planning, and attention to detail. It also requires time to understand exactly who you want to reach, how you can best get their attention, and how you might be able to get them to change their behavior. There are various processes for developing patient education materials, depending on budget and time constraints, but there are some best practices that can help deliver a product that is well received.

When Possible, Do Your Research

In health education, it’s not usually recommended that you develop materials to increase awareness among broad groups of people – such as women in the U.S. or the entire U.S. population. Many segments of the population have diverse experiences, languages, beliefs, and challenges, across a variety of ethnicities, genders, geographic regions, etc. One piece of educational material will usually not effectively speak to all people.

That’s why it’s best to tailor your materials for a specific audience as much as possible, and the best way to determine who you need to reach is through research. However, in communications, there is not always room in the budget for this. Luckily, secondary research or a simple literature review can provide enough information to find out who your message needs to reach.

Know Your Target Audience

This may seem obvious, but it’s clearly the most crucial component in creating patient education materials. The more tailored a message is aiming for a specific audience, the more effective it will be. But the first step in understanding your audience is defining who they are. What language do they speak? What may be some cultural or economic barriers that will prevent them from receiving your message? And how should you address these variables in your materials?

It’s important to always remember that the people you are targeting must feel that they are represented in the materials in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender. This is crucial to assuring that your audience connects and engages with the content.

Test Your Materials

One of the most helpful tools in creating educational materials is pilot testing with your target audience. This can be done through focus groups with your target audience or even something as simple as creating an advisory group of experts to review and provide their input can be helpful. Receiving feedback allows you to make changes and address potential communications issues you had not previously identified. Doing this ensures the materials will connect with your target audience and incorporate the most effective communications strategies.

Keep it Simple

According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, 43% of Americans can only read at a “basic” or “below basic” level. When it comes to communicating health information, this is particularly critical. People can often misunderstand even simple terms that we are accustomed to hearing every day, so, it’s important to pay close attention to your choice of words, to ensure things are communicated as clearly and simply as possible. This is why the current recommendation from health education specialists is to create materials aimed at a 6th grade reading level.

While incorporating these elements into health education material development process can become time-consuming (and sometimes costly), they will help ensure that your materials will achieve the broadest and deepest impact.

Advocacy & Communications on a Budget

Associations large and small grapple with a wide variety of advocacy issues. The Advocacy Leaders Network hosts a series of workshops targeted toward public affairs and government relations professionals to facilitate discussions around various strategies, trends, and case studies important to the field.

A recent workshop, “Advocacy on the Cheap: Changing the World on Any Budget”, aimed to share strategies that could help attendees develop successful campaigns without breaking the bank.

Here are some of the key takeaways that I found most useful for PR pros:

1. Advocacy and communications teams should collaborate on their efforts

This may sound obvious, but several attendees voiced frustration about the communications/marketing team at their organization not always including the advocacy team in conversations or plans surrounding public-facing campaigns. Teaming up on efforts like a national health observance month can be more cost-effective because materials can be re-purposed or cross-promoted to help each team meet their goals.

2. Capitalize on opportunities by repurposing content

It’s important when budgets are tight to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to creating content or leveraging in-person opportunities. For example, if you are interviewing a spokesperson or thought leader around a certain issue for blog content, consider how you could easily turn the interview into a Facebook Live video, or develop bite-sized clips or quotes to cross-promote on social media. Additionally, if you are attending an event, like an annual conference, make sure you are capitalizing on in-person opportunities – through photos, personal stories and listserv contacts for future use.

3. Utilize free or freemium tools for cheap bells and whistles

A great aspect of this workshop was the collective sharing of a variety of tools and tricks that attendees are using to develop materials, graphics and animations for free or almost-free. Tools like thinglink and piktochart help display content in an engaging way, while storify helps curate content to tell a story around a specific hashtag or topic. We also heard great feedback about Lynda.com, an online educational site that offers tutorials for getting started with things like Google Analytics or WordPress, which may be tough or time-consuming to figure out on your own.

4. Find your most engaged audience and help them help you

One of the speakers at the event shared how a moderated listserv he runs serves as an important and simple tool in his advocacy work. The listerv, a basic, text-only email chain, keeps engaged advocates up-to-date on what’s happening on The Hill. Often, the members answer each other’s questions and motivate each other before the team even has a chance to craft a response. In this way, the advocates, or engaged members, are doing the work themselves. This example provides a reminder for PR folks—what tools or community channels can you offer your audience that will encourage them to rally together, facilitate change or take action?

Whether it’s through better collaboration or smarter tools, get to know the right strategies and tactics in order to reach your audience and drive change on a small budget.

Optimizing Facebook Live to Engage Your Target Audience

The Reis Group has recently taken Facebook Live by storm, actively utilizing this relatively new broadcasting tool to bring added value and drive key messages to our clients’ target audiences. Facebook Live has proven to be highly relevant for our health care PR industry and appears to be a lasting trend that will continue to grow.

As we’ve managed several Facebook Live events for our clients, from Q&As to event broadcasts, we have gathered several lessons learned in the planning, implementing and going-live stages. Here are five helpful takeaways for optimizing Facebook Live:

  1. Create an event page: In order to drive awareness in promoting your Facebook Live event, create an event page sharing a description and inviting followers to join. You can promote the event page on your social channels, and add some ad dollars to boost it to your target audience. Just before going live, remind guests who responded “interested” or “attending” to the event that the video will be live on your Facebook page, not the event page.
  2. Minimize scripting: Since Facebook Live is a less formal video format that is meant to be conversational, consider offering the speaker several talking points, rather than a script. You may want to write out the introduction, however, so the moderator or speaker makes sure to include all the important points. Since consumers will be tuning in and out of the video throughout the live event, it is important to periodically reiterate some of the key information about why you’re having the event, who the expert is, how to get more info, etc.
  3. Coordinate bodies in the room: Based on the format you choose for your Facebook Live, you will need additional people off-camera to staff the event. Coordinate who will be monitoring questions from Facebook, and whether they will be sharing questions verbally off-screen, or monitoring while on-screen. Also, designate who will be in charge of filming and who will be moderating for the speaker, if necessary.
  4. Conduct a practice run: Set up a private Facebook group or private stream to practice your Facebook Live set-up in the location of your event. This will help you determine the best seating, branding, lighting, camera set-up, staff assistance needed, etc. Additionally, be sure to test your Wi-Fi connection, speed and reliability.
  5. Plant seed questions: In the beginning of the live event, you may not immediately see an influx of questions, so it’s a good idea to have friends or coworkers on stand-by to ask pre-determined questions via the comments section. Additionally, if you have a moderator on screen, they can have some initial questions to address with the speaker as well.

We are excited to continue managing Facebook Live events for our clients, and tweaking our methods each time, based on lessons learned. Do you have any additional takeaways from your experience with Facebook Live? Share with us in the comments.

Measurement Tactics: Improving Messaging & Engagement

In a crowded online space, social media posts require targeted messaging and visuals to reach and engage your desired audience.  In order to gain traction with consumers, brands must understand what motivates and influences them, and produce content that is helpful and relatable. By utilizing measurement tools, brands can get a better sense of what drives engagement and action in their community, and help reach their organization’s goals.

This article will demonstrate how to incorporate social media measurement tactics to test and improve your content, leading to a more successful social media strategy. 

Set your goals: In order to be successful on social media, it is important to set specific goals to lead your efforts. First, determine who your target audience is—whether that is women 45+ who experience chronic pain, or adults over 30 who have experienced Alzheimer’s in their family. Next, figure out what social media networks this audience is active on—you want to create a channel of communication where your audience is already engaged.

At the start of 2016, Facebook had 1.59 billion monthly active users—which is more than 20 percent of the global population. Facebook has become a major content discovery platform. According to recent data published by traffic analytics firm Parse.ly, more traffic to news and media sites is driven by Facebook than Google. This means that people are often finding content in their Facebook feed and clicking through to articles directly from their feeds.

Google versus Facebook | Improving Social Media Messaging and Engagement through Measurement Tactics
Parse.ly network traffic from Google versus Facebook

After discovering where your audience spends their time on social, figure out what actions you want your audience to take. Is your ultimate goal to drive people to sign up for research studies or to your website to learn more information about your cause? Reversely, what can you provide your audience to better reach their goals? How will following your page benefit them?

Implement your content strategy: Figuring out the best content to share on your social channels starts as an experiment. You won’t be able to determine what works best with your audience until you test out different messages and apply measurement to the results. As you brainstorm content to share, figure out several different categories of content that may be relevant to your audience.

Erin Hildreth, Senior Manager of Marketing and Communications at The Vision Council, shares how social media plays a role in her organization: “Social media has personified all of our campaigns, and the sheer reach of one interaction has the power to grow your message exponentially. It is something that we think about constantly when preparing our campaigns because it is a way to truly touch people as they go about their days and live their lives.”

Test your content and optimize: Facebook and Twitter offer very in-depth insights for organic and paid posts. It is important to review your page analytics often to note trends and see which categories of content are performing best. Here are a couple things to look for:

  • What day of the week and what time of day is your content getting the most engagement (likes, comments, shares, retweets, favorites, replies)?
  • What types of content are eliciting the most comments? Are these all positive comments?
  • When promoting your organization, what messaging works best with your audience?
  • What types of links are receiving the most clicks?
  • What types of images or graphics seem most eye-catching/appealing to your audience (based on the engagement)

Another measurement tool that often comes in handy is Google Analytics. Aside from seeing how much traffic is coming to your site from social each week, you can set specific goals on Google Analytics that will allow you to see when consumers from social complete a certain action on your website. By pulling weekly analytics reports, you can see what aspects of your content strategy are contributing to your bottom line.

Measuring success: In order to show your results and improvement on social media to others within your organization, it is important to do monthly or quarterly dashboards that highlight your growth. I’ve found that showing the percent change in followers, engagement and/or impressions is a strong way show success—for example, “Since January 2016, we’ve increased engagement on the page by 123%.” Another important metric to share will be goals completed through social media on Google Analytics.

Stacy Mowery, Director of Brand Development at Banner Health shares, “Measuring our social media analytics helps us understand our message reach: Who are we reaching? Who is most interested in our content? The metrics can also help us understand which topics or types of posts are most engaging to our audiences. A few years ago we began studying the differences in engagement between heavy visual posts vs. posts with just written content. The data showed visual posts are clearly more engaging, so we now have shifted to a heavy visual social strategy.”

Thinking strategically about your online goals and always staying up to speed on the latest social trends, changing algorithms and measurement tools is key to having a successful approach across your social platforms.

This is an excerpt of an article originally published in the PR News Writer’s Guidebook.