Stop, Look. Listen: Integrating Social Media Listening into Public Health Practice

What is the value of listening? How do you combine listening and informatics to inform your public health practice? Great communicators understand the art and science of listening, reflect on information gathered to understand audience needs, and respond accordingly. As social media use for public health communication continues to grow, this process is becoming more relevant in our field. Social media listening, defined here as the process of identifying and evaluating what is being said on social media channels about your organization, a particular health topic, or an outbreak or emergency, can provide valuable insight to assess and improve public health messaging.

Commonly used by businesses to gauge reaction to brands and products, social media listening allows companies to respond to public feedback, altering products to meet public demand or developing communications to address public needs or concerns. Applying these same strategies to public health practice allows you to craft messages to meet specific audience needs, fill knowledge gaps, and address misconceptions that are being shared.

This session will discuss the importance and benefits of social media listening, how to determine relevant metrics, and how to apply data gathered to develop an effective, integrated health communication strategy. Participants will take away basic and advanced best practices used in social media listening and learn what metrics to track, what each means, and how they can be leveraged to develop and refine messaging. Informatics tools to gather qualitative and quantitative metrics will also be highlighted.