Embracing technology for better outcomes Ged Carroll – director digital strategies, Ruder Finn | RFI UK

In this presentation

•  Understanding your audience •  Some thoughts about engagement •  Social media •  Mobile •  How to handle day-to-day practical challenges •  Practical exercise •  Technology surgery

Understanding your audience

Good desk research resources

•  Government websites •  Intra government bodies: for example European

Commission Information Society – Digital Agenda for Europe microsite

•  GSMA •  Academic institutions: I particularly like LSE’s department

of media and communications –  Google Scholar

•  Google Adplanner •  socialbakers •  Your web analytics •  Bank institutional research •  Sysomos MAP*

More research

•  Surveys •  Blog and forum social listening campaign

Example of content from Sysomos MAP

What does all this do?

•  Helps gauge the volume of discussion online •  Helps you develop audience personas •  Helps with messaging by mirroring the audience’s own

language •  Helps you understand where they have their

conversations •  Helps you to attune your programme closer to the

audiences interests

Some thoughts about engagement

What is engagement

•  Beyond passive consumption –  Delivery of message

•  Response –  Dialogue –  Doing a call to action

•  It’s about us listening as much as delivering content •  Engagement just isn’t about publishing

Let’s do a viral video?

•  It’s hard work •  It’s expensive:

–  Making good content •  RA Lebanon have done it successfully with a shopping mall

flashmob take over –  Seeding the content –  Getting visibility

•  You are competing against a tsunami of content: 24 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube

•  The odds are stacked against you

Factors for viral video success

•  Brevity •  Don’t try too hard – the audience needs to get it •  Do provide people with an opportunity to remix your content – carrying on

the discussion •  Do you invest in great content •  Seeding – social network potential | super nodes – (people or websites that

are highly connected / influential) •  Support with advertising •  Don’t allow a creative idea to be watered down by too much internal

discussion •  Tactics that work

•  Shock •  Fake headlines •  Entertain •  Incite a debate

Campaign versus continuing engagement

•  Budgets work in fixed time periods, communities don’t •  It’s generally considered rude to walk away from

someone in mid-conversation… •  It’s less efficient to re-engage a new audience each time

rather than holding a community together

Factors that need to be considered

We could have a list here but it boils down to two principles: •  Putting yourself in the audience’s shoes rather than

thinking about what message to deliver •  Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself

So, what does this mean from a content point of view?

Social media

Social media benefits & misconceptions

•  Social media takes advantage of word-of-mouth; builds loyalty and advocacy

•  Social media messages are considered to be more trustworthy

•  Social media helps other aspects of digital marketing such as search engine optimisation

•  Respond instantly to events •  Social media is cheap

–  Social media costs in terms of resources: planning, content creation, active listening

–  Not doing it properly can damage the brand of your patient group

•  Social media is easy –  It is easy to post

•  Social media is measurable –  True, but it’s often hard to quantify the return on investment

Social context

•  It isn’t only about where your audience is, but where they feel it’s appropriate to interact with you

–  I may have a condition, but: •  I may not want to feel that the condition has a role in defining

who I am •  I may be a private person •  I may be concerned about what prospective employers may

think •  If I am younger, I may worry about the opinion of my peers

–  Any more reasons? •  What you are talking about doesn’t relate to me

Context

Word of mouth campaigns

Social advertising

•  Engage with consumers on social platforms (like Facebook) when social media interaction is out of context

•  Allow campaigns to break out across networks •  Generate brand awareness as support for a campaign •  Drive traffic to an off-platform resource

Mobile

Mobile is a baseline

•  Careful marketing investment –  It’s the direction where consumers are

going –  It’s the most accessible form of access for

many people –  It’s personal

•  It’s being increasingly used in treatment •  It’s not that expensive:

–  10,000 SMS for $150 •  Building ‘mobile first’

–  Responsive design •  Apps last

Source: GSMA

askapatient.com

Mobile applications

•  Superior user experience •  Doesn’t require always on connectivity

•  Expensive versus web •  Needs maintenance •  Platform diversity •  You can submit a mobile website as

an ‘applet’ to mobile

How to handle day-to-day practical challenges

Campaign plan

•  Start at the finish and work back –  What do you want to achieve –  What will you do with the community that you’ve built? –  What do you have to offer? –  Why should the audience listen to you? –  What do the audience want?

Community management principles

•  Be human •  Welcome & thank •  Have a clear moderation policy •  Active listening •  Co-create, co-solve & amplify •  Integration across channels •  Pull in the big hitters •  Use photos, videos – rich content •  Objective & a deadline

Daily tasks

•  Welcome new community members •  Engage – Answer and ask questions. Cheerlead •  Promote new content to the community •  Invigorate or close dying discussion threads •  Moderation – Enforce community guidelines •  Engage top community members – boost egos •  Handle technical queries •  Outreach marketing •  Hunt for content and engagement ideas

Weekly tasks

•  Weekly report– qualitative and quantitative update

•  Analyse weekly stats – esp. community health •  Brainstorming session – problems, content

themes •  Prepare a content calendar •  Prepare new content – blogs, tweets, updates,

polls, newsletter

Control

Control is an illusion and every situation context-dependent •  You can influence, you can ban – on certain platforms

–  Give a clear sandpit –  Be aware of the platform’s terms of service

•  Have a standardised proportionate response •  Have a team ready:

–  Experts –  Responders who are credible to the online community

•  Keep a record in case things require a legal solution

Monitoring

•  Start with the basics: –  RSS reader for regular sites forums (I use Newsblur) –  Google Alerts –  SocialMention –  Hootsuite | Tweetdeck

•  Getting over 50 mentions a day? –  RSS reader –  Google alerts –  Sysomos Heartbeat | Sprout Social – lots of others out

there, get a free trial and see what works for you •  Keep a record of any

Evaluation

•  Evaluate the objectives •  Two types of measures:

–  Reach •  Opportunities to see (how many fans does a page have, how

many visitors a site or blog, how many views a video) •  How widely has the content been syndicated

–  Engagement •  What did people do?

–  Comment or do an answer back on a YouTube video

–  Retweet or share a link on Twitter? –  Call to action

Your turn: practical exercise

Exercise

•  Decide which of your organisations you are going to think about.

–  Your organisation will be launching an initiative to highlight the economic and personal cost of X through a petition that will be presented to policy makers

•  How do you keep petition signatories engaged? •  Where will you seek to engage them? Why? •  What kind of future tactics would you use? •  Sketch out a content plan

–  A scientific report that hasn’t been peer-reviewed has come out alleging a tenuous link between treatments and the occurence early onset Alzheimers and / or Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease

•  The current best scientific expertise is for people to keep up their treatment

•  But a small faction of patients are advocating at every opportunity dropping their treatment and are likely to hijack this initiative

•  What’s your plan?

Surgery

Thank you for your participation: gcarroll@ruderfinn.co.uk | @r_c | ruderfinn.co.uk

Links

Links

•  Research resources –  LSE department of media and communications –  European Commission Information Society –  Morgan Stanley – The European Internet Report –  GSMA mYouth data sets –  FI3P

•  Building ‘mobile first’ –  Responsive design

•  Measurement –  Sysomos