Edition 1.0

Activating Digital Opinion Leaders How the Internet, Social Media and Mobile Channels

are Changing the Key Opinion Leader and

Advocate Environment

A guide for pharmaceutical communicators and marketers

Daniel Ghinn

Activating Digital Opinion Leaders

© 2012 Creation Healthcare 2

Contents Activating Digital Opinion Leaders .......................................................... 1

Introduction ........................................................................................ 3

The New Healthcare Engagement Environment ................................. 4

The influential patient blogger ........................................................ 6

Patient social networks ................................................................... 7

New digital healthcare providers .................................................... 7

Doctors’ social networks ................................................................. 8

User-generated medical information .............................................. 8

Mainstream digital channels as health information portals ............ 9

Healthcare Professionals in the Digital Era ........................................ 10

Healthcare professionals’ social networks .................................... 11

Dedicated digital tools & resources for healthcare professionals . 12

Mainstream digital channels ......................................................... 13

Defining Digital Opinion Leaders ....................................................... 16

Patient Blogger, Kelly Young .......................................................... 17

Patient Advocacy Group, National Multiple Sclerosis Society ....... 18

Patient Activist, Christine O’Connell .............................................. 19

Social Media Doctor, Anne Marie Cunningham ............................. 20

Activating Digital Opinion Leaders .................................................... 22

1. Identify Digital Opinion Leaders ................................................ 23

2. Engage Digital Opinion Leaders ................................................. 24

3. Activate Digital Opinion Leaders................................................ 26

What next? .................................................................................... 28

Activating Digital Opinion Leaders

© 2012 Creation Healthcare 3

Introduction Earlier this month I presented a session at KOL & MSL Best Practice

conference in Basel, Switzerland. The conference focused on

pharmaceutical companies’ work with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and

the role of Medical Science Liaisons, and I had been invited to speak on

how new channels like the Internet, social media and mobile are

changing the KOL environment.

In my session I introduced the concept of ‘Digital Opinion Leaders’ for

pharmaceutical companies, arguing that in today’s digital environment

there are two key concepts that affect the potential role of opinion

leaders:

1. In the digital world, a pharmaceutical company’s stakeholders

are influenced by a surprising range of individuals who might

not previously have been considered ‘Opinion Leaders’

2. In identifying those healthcare professionals who influence their

peers, the role of digital engagement is an increasingly

important aspect of their influence

These concepts should not yet detract from ‘traditional’ KOL activity but

provide an added dimension to pharmaceutical companies’ engagement

planning.

I presented Creation Healthcare’s method of activating Digital Opinion

Leaders in three steps: Identify Engage Activate. At first glance,

this looks much like the model used in traditional KOL activity. The

difference in the digital world, I illustrated, is that each of these steps

requires a paradigm shift in order to be effective.

This e-book has been written based upon what I presented in Basel, and

includes more in-depth discussion and recommendations for those in

pharmaceutical companies who wish to activate advocates in the

digital era.

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© 2012 Creation Healthcare 4

The New Healthcare Engagement Environment

The new healthcare engagement environment is

characterised by a web of two-way engagement

between different stakeholders

In many ways, communication between health stakeholders has been

transformed by today’s digital era. I use the term ‘healthcare

engagement’ to refer to two-way communication between

stakeholders, and it is this area in particular that has been affected by

new digital channels.

Fifteen years ago, the concept of healthcare engagement might have

referred to a fairly linear set of two-way relationships such as the

dialogue that took place between a patient and their doctor; between

individual doctors; or between a pharmaceutical representative and a

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healthcare professional. Today, the rise of digital channels has led to a

disruption in traditional lines of communication between healthcare

stakeholders. Examples of changes in healthcare engagement brought

about by digital channels include:

Healthcare professionals discuss diagnosis of cases and clinical

practice in open and closed forums to seek the advice of peers

Patients based all around the world share their experiences of

living with disease

Wikipedia, a website edited by anybody, is used by both

healthcare professionals and patients as a trusted resource on

medicines

Pharmaceutical reps from different companies compare notes

in social forum cafepharma.com

New digital channels of communication have introduced numerous new

concepts in healthcare engagement. The empowered ‘e-patient’ has

already been widely discussed, so here I will explore some of the other

new concepts in digital healthcare:

The influential patient blogger

Patient social networks

New digital healthcare providers

Doctors’ social networks

User-generated medical information

Mainstream digital channels as health information portals

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New concepts in healthcare engagement are

created by both mainstream and healthcare-

specific implementations of digital channels

The influential patient blogger

Some individual patients living with a chronic disease have become

highly active influencers online - and even offline, too. Kelly Young,

whose blog, RAWarrior, about life with Rheumatoid Arthritis has

become a hub of resources on the disease, is just one example of a large

and growing community influencing hundreds of thousands of other

people. Kelly’s online influence through RAWarrior includes her Arthritis

Warrior Facebook page followed by almost 16,000; over 40,000 views

on her YouTube channel; and her Twitter profile with almost 5,000

followers through which she leads a weekly Twitter chat.

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In my book, Pathways to Engagement for Healthcare Organizations, I

write about Roche Diagnostics’ initiative with a community of patient

bloggers focused on diabetes. The company recognized the influential

role of the online patient community and deliberately set out to engage

them. Some of the lessons that Roche have learned through this

initiative are highlighted in my interview with Roche’s Rob Müller on

patient engagement.

Patient social networks

PatientsLikeMe is a social network of patients connected by their

experiences with disease. The community includes over 1,000 diseases

and operates as a tool where patients compare notes on conditions,

symptoms and treatments.

When I interviewed Ben Heywood, PatientLikeMe’s co-founder in our

2010 Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards, he told me then that

21% of patients responding to a survey had indicated that they had

changed their physician as a result of being part of the network. Two

years ago, 10% of all US patients diagnosed with MS went on to join

PatientsLikeMe. Since then, the network has grown from 50,000 to over

150,000 members.

Other kinds of patient social networks include those dedicated to a

single disease area, such as TuDiabetes, which connects over 40,000

people affected by diabetes over two websites in English and Spanish

languages. Manny Hernandez, founder of TuDiabetes and the Diabetes

Hands Foundation, told me that the two different language networks

were created to accommodate not only the language needs but to

ensure cultural relevance across the international community of people

affected by diabetes.

New digital healthcare providers

One of the most interesting new concepts in the digital age is the role of

new and sometimes surprising digital healthcare providers. LiveNurse is

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a smartphone app that gives customers of US mobile services provider

GreatCall direct access to a registered nurse for advice 24/7, together

with a medical library and symptom checker tool. The mobile provider

has in a sense become the primary gateway to healthcare for customers

of its service.

Other disruptions to the traditional healthcare provider model include

MediAngels, which describes itself as a ‘Global eHospital’ and the

world’s first online hospital, where patients anywhere in the world can

gain a second opinion from one of 300 medical specialists and pay for

this online.

Doctors’ social networks

Digital platforms where healthcare professionals share ideas ranging

from clinical practice and drug information to out-of-hours pastimes

include strictly closed, single-country networks as well as more inclusive

and international environments. What they share is the concept of

connecting like-minded professionals together.

The list of major doctors’ networks is extensive and diverse. In the US,

Sermo describes itself as the largest online community, exclusive to

physicians and has over 125,000 members. In Europe, numerous

doctors’ social networks include the UK’s doctors.net.uk, with over

190,000 UK doctors registered. The world’s largest network for

healthcare professionals is china’s DXY, with over two million members.

I will explore further the activity of doctors in these social networks

later, under ‘Healthcare Professionals in the Digital Era’.

User-generated medical information

At a conference in Dubai, where I was speaking about mobile apps for

healthcare, a doctor commented that he saw little point in spending

time with pharma reps since he can learn much more about a drug by

searching for it on Wikpedia. User-generated medical information found

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online in blogs and wikis - digital encyclopedias covering every

conceivable topic, which can be edited by anybody - is influencing not

only consumers but professionals too.

Wikipedia is arguably the most trusted user-generated wiki source.

Search Google for any drug name or disease, and it is likely that the

relevant Wikipedia page on the topic will be returned at or near the top

of Google’s natural search results. Editors of a typical medical

information page range from medical professionals to students, patients

and other stakeholders.

Mainstream digital channels as health information portals

Despite the growing number of dedicated health websites, and social

networks for patients and doctors, the most popular online channels for

healthcare engagement are of course mainstream channels used for

search and social media. In most of the world, Google is the primary

tool used to search for information about healthcare, disease or drugs

not only by patients but by healthcare professionals too. Mainstream

social media channels including Facebook and Twitter are digital

channels of choice for many consumers to share their health

experiences, and even for healthcare professionals to discuss clinical

practice.

For a pharmaceutical marketer, activating Digital Opinion Leaders

requires a familiarity with each of these new concepts of healthcare

engagement. But for anybody with an interest in engaging Key Opinion

Leaders in today’s digital era, further consideration of the online

behaviour of healthcare professionals is essential. I will explore this in

the next section.

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Healthcare Professionals in the Digital Era

Healthcare professionals are using a range of

dedicated digital tools as well as mainstream

online channels

To plan how to engage and activate healthcare professionals online, it is

worthwhile considering the kinds of digital channels being used by

healthcare professionals and the role that each channel plays. We might

broadly categorise these channels into three groups:

Healthcare professionals’ social networks

Dedicated digital tools and resources for healthcare

professionals

Mainstream digital channels

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Healthcare professionals’ social networks

I have already mentioned the breadth of social networks for healthcare

professionals, which range from country-specific, validated closed

networks to international and more open networks. While some are

restricted to registered doctors, others are open to a wider range of

healthcare stakeholders.

Among the more open and international doctors’ networks is doc2doc,

hosted by the UK’s BMJ Group, which includes doctors’ forums, blogs

and social networking features including the opportunity for doctors to

create a personal profile page, ‘friend’ and recommend others, and

comment on each other’s posts. The network includes a public area

which may be accessed by anybody, and a closed area intended for

clinical discussions and restricted only to medical professionals.

Even in doc2doc’s open forums, healthcare professionals discuss the

treatment of patients and medicines. A recent extensive discussion

between users of the social network starts with a specialist from

Ninewells Hospital in Dundee asking fellow members for help solving a

particular patient case. “This weekend I found a very interesting patient,

with an interesting constellation of symptoms, signs, and results”, he

posts. “…I think I have at least one diagnosis, but I can’t explain

everything. I thought I might tap into the collaborative knowledge of

D2D [doc2doc] to try to get more answers… And it’s a fun game”, he

observes, before describing symptoms and starting a discussion which

includes questions and answers from doc2doc’s international network

of doctors.

Another recent example of content discussed between healthcare

professionals on doc2doc is a post by one user about the FDA approval

of Astellas’ drug Mirabegron, outlining the drug’s use in the treatment

of overactive bladder, its clinical trials and side effects. This post is

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followed by extensive discussion between healthcare professionals

about the use and safety of the drug.

The visibility of content inside healthcare professionals’ networks varies

greatly, from networks such as doc2doc, or DocCheck, which include

some public areas of content, to completely closed networks such as

doctors.net.uk where all discussion takes place behind securely

authenticated areas. Many of these networks also offer tools for

researching the behaviour of their users and for engaging healthcare

professionals directly.

Dedicated digital tools & resources for healthcare professionals

A vast and ever-growing range of digital tools for healthcare

professionals has developed in recent years, from tools accessed via a

web browser to mobile apps installed on smartphones.

Examples of these include diagnosis tools, such Nycomed-sponsored

Doctot Chest, a suite of clinician-administered assessment scales and

lookup tables related to COPD patients. Doctot Chest is one of a range

of pharma-sponsored apps for iPhone developed by Doctot which

include tools to evaluate stroke patients, sponsored by Boehringer

Ingelheim, and to diagnose dementia, supported by Lundbeck.

Other dedicated tools for healthcare professionals supported by

pharmaceutical companies include specialist resources focused on a

particular area such as Astellas’ Transplant360, which includes clinical

tools designed to help healthcare professionals to support patients after

transplantation, as well as resources supporting congresses and events.

Traditional journals read by healthcare professionals are also behind

new digital tools. The Oncologist, the journal of the Society for

Translational Oncology, which also operates an online community,

provides its journal as a rich app for iPad, iPhone, Android, and Kindle

Fire devices.

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Dedicated digital tools for healthcare

professionals include video lectures on The

Oncologist app

Whilst the mobile app version of The Oncologist includes all the content

of the print edition, making it available wherever and whenever a

healthcare professional wishes to read it, its real power lies in the

inclusion of rich media content such as video. Full length lectures from

specialists are among the resources available to view and hear via The

Oncologist app.

Mainstream digital channels

We have already considered the role of mainstream digital channels

such as Google or Facebook as health information portals, and of course

it is no surprise to discover that healthcare professionals’ use of digital

channels is not restricted to dedicated platforms for doctors. We know

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that doctors use Wikipedia, Google, and social media channels in both

professional and personal contexts.

Take the example of Dr Mehmet Oz, US-based cardiac surgeon with an

award-winning television show about health. Dr Oz has a large following

on social media, with almost two million Twitter followers. Yet this

particular channel appears to be little more than a broadcast medium,

with little two-way engagement and virtually no following of other

users.

US TV doctor Dr Oz has almost 2 million Twitter

followers, but little digital engagement with them

More interesting from a healthcare engagement perspective is Kevin

Pho, MD, whose public Twitter profile includes almost 55,000 followers

and is far more engaging. Kevin Pho’s digital activity includes an active

blog where he discusses health, drugs and the role of digital channels in

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healthcare. The blog is actively shared by other Internet users and has

almost 87,000 subscribers to its RSS feed (a tool for reading blog

updates) and 40,000 subscribers to a weekly email update, while Kevin

Pho’s Facebook page is ‘liked’ by around 14,000 people.

And it is not only in the US that healthcare professionals are using

mainstream digital channels to engage others. As we will see in our next

section on Defining Digital Opinion Leaders, doctors in Europe are also

engaging with each other using public social media platforms.

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Defining Digital Opinion Leaders

Patient bloggers like Kelly Young, who writes

about life with Rheumatoid Arthritis, are among

a growing number of categories of Digital

Opinion Leaders

In the context of the new healthcare engagement environment and

having considered the role of healthcare professionals in the digital era,

it is clear that the influence of stakeholders including healthcare

professionals, patients, and policymakers upon each other has been

disrupted by digital channels. We must therefore consider the concept

of ‘Digital Opinion Leaders’ with an open mind. This is true not only

now, but at all times in the future as we continue to learn through

engagement with, and observation of, digital stakeholders.

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We might define a Digital Opinion Leader as anybody, or an

organization, who influences the view or behaviour of other

stakeholders through digital activity. The opportunity for a

pharmaceutical company is therefore to identify Digital Opinion Leaders

who are having an influence upon those stakeholders whose behaviour

the company wishes to shape. We will consider a practical approach to

this in the next section, Activating Digital Opinion Leaders. First, we will

explore the concept of a Digital Opinion Leader further by considering

some possible examples.

Patient Blogger, Kelly Young

I met Kelly Young in person at e-Patient Connections conference in

Philadelphia last year. Kelly is a patient who has lived with Rheumatoid

Arthritis for the past six years, and for the last three of those she has

been writing her blog, Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior and engaging with

other patients and professionals through social media channels

including Twitter and YouTube.

We already considered Kelly Young’s digital influence when we looked

at the New Healthcare Engagement Environment in the earlier section.

Kelly says that through her writing, speaking and use of social media she

is “…building a more refined and accurate awareness of Rheumatoid

Autoimmune Disease (RAD) aka Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) geared

toward the public and medical community; creating ways to empower

RA patients to advocate for improved diagnosis and treatment; and

bringing recognition and visibility to the RA patient journey.”

Kelly’s role in the area of Rheumatoid Arthritis is mirrored by countless

other patient bloggers living with chronic disease. Other examples

include Kerri Sparling, one of numerous active bloggers and social media

advocates living with diabetes, who blogs at Six Until Me, or Lisa Emrich

who blogs at Brass and Ivory about her life with Multiple Sclerosis.

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Patient Advocacy Group, National Multiple Sclerosis Society

With over 136,000 ‘likes’, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s

Facebook page is a highly engaging environment connecting

stakeholders who are affected by MS. It is more than a channel where

the Society broadcasts information - every post on the page is followed

by lively responses and most are shared by others, extending the reach

of the page significantly.

National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Facebook

page has over 136,000 ‘likes’ and is an engaging

environment

Facebook is just one of the social media channels employed by the

National Multiple Sclerosis Society to engage stakeholders. The Society

operates its own dedicated patient community, MS Connection,

designed to connect patients together through blogs, discussions and

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local groups. It is also active on Twitter, and videos on the Society’s

YouTube Channel have been viewed almost 1.5 million times.

The role of patient advocacy groups as online influencers has been

recognised by pharmaceutical companies through the establishing of

partnerships to achieve mutual goals through digital engagement. We

will explore some examples of this approach in the next section,

‘Activating Digital Opinion Leaders’.

Patient Activist, Christine O’Connell

I spoke with Christine O’Connell in March 2011, shortly after

pharmaceutical company KV Pharmaceutical’s share price had dropped

by over 20% in just one day, and three weeks after Ms O’Connell had

launched a Facebook page in protest at the company’s pricing of its

newly FDA-approved synthetic progesterone product.

“I started this page quite simply because I was outraged”, she told me.

“I knew if other people knew… they’d be outraged too. Facebook gave

me the platform to reach a lot of people in a short time”, she said,

speaking of the page she created in protest at KV Pharmaceutical’s

pricing policy, which she entitled “Shame on you, KV Pharmaceutical

and CEO Greg Divis”.

The Facebook page acted as a hub to connect mothers of premature

babies who shared Ms O’Connell’s anger, and also attracted healthcare

professionals, news media and medical organisations. “We shared

information and ideas on everything from boycotts to contacting our

Congressional representatives”, she said.

Whilst the Facebook page was not the only activity that contributed to

the FDA writing a letter of clarification three weeks after its launch, it

clearly played a role in mobilising extensive activity both online and

offline that ultimately had a major impact on one pharmaceutical

company.

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Christine O’Connell’s Facebook page protesting

about KV Pharmaceutical’s pricing contributed to

a wave of public action leading to an FDA

announcement that caused the company’s share

price to plummet

Social Media Doctor, Anne Marie Cunningham

Anne Marie Cunningham is arguably one of the UK’s most influential

doctors on Twitter. With over 7,000 followers, the GP and Clinical

Lecturer is a prolific Twitter user, having posted almost 70,000 tweets

since she started tweeting in 2008. In the same year she launched her

blog, entitled Wishful thinking in medical education, in which she

promotes the idea of collaborative learning through social media.

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“Medical education on Twitter is fantastic. There are no professional or

geographic boundaries to discussions”, writes Dr Cunningham in her

blog. “And no boundaries to patients participating either!”

The majority of Dr Cunningham’s tweets are used to engage directly

with other doctors, who are located all around the world. Her social

media engagement with others illustrates the global nature of the

Internet, where ideas are shared openly between all stakeholders

regardless of geographic location. In a recent conversation about clinical

practice, she directed a tweet at a Paediatrician in London, UK, then a

Postgrad Medical Student in the UK’s West Midlands, and then a

Gastroenterologist in the US.

Dr Cunningham is representative of a growing number of healthcare

professionals who actively use social media platforms to ask and answer

questions and help shape each other’s medical education through

social media.

The examples discussed here - the patients, advocacy groups and

healthcare professionals actively engaged via social media - provide a

practical glimpse into the role of Digital Opinion Leaders in shaping the

behaviour of other health stakeholders, both online and offline. In the

next section I will outline Creation Healthcare’s three-step methodology

for Activating Digital Opinion Leaders.

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Activating Digital Opinion Leaders

Three steps to activating Digital Opinion Leaders:

Identify; Engage; Activate.

Since we have considered the role of Digital Opinion Leaders in shaping

the behaviour of others, it will be essential for a pharmaceutical

company wishing to partner with Digital Opinion Leaders to take steps

to encourage positive engagement. This does not occur by chance but is

possible by taking a three-step process:

1. Identify Digital Opinion Leaders

2. Engage Digital Opinion Leaders

3. Activate Digital Opinion Leaders

At first glance this approach may appear to be similar to the traditional

method of working with Key Opinion Leaders. The difference is that, as

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© 2012 Creation Healthcare 23

we have already seen, in the digital world the role of influencers is non-

linear and not limited by traditional models of stakeholder engagement.

1. Identify Digital Opinion Leaders

Accurate targeting will ensure the most effective deployment of

resources in activating Digital Opinion Leaders, and will increase the

likelihood of positive outcomes. To identify those influencers who will

be most relevant and effective for a pharmaceutical company, the goals

of Digital Opinion Leader engagement should be clearly defined.

What is the desired outcome of Digital Opinion Leader activity? Is it, for

example, to influence prescriber behaviour, or that of patients? To

influence policy? Or to prepare a market for a product launch?

Identifying these goals will direct the search for digital opinion leaders.

Research into Digital Opinion Leaders may take place using a range of

tools, including the following:

Social Media Research, or ‘Passive Listening’ includes analysis

of themes, language, and attitudes discussed around a

particular topic such as a disease area or drug, to identify

channels and individuals of influence.

Digital Primary Research often involves ‘Active Listening’,

asking research questions in a social media environment, and

may include any form of primary research such as surveys or

polls posted onto websites, forums, communities or by email.

Digital Influence Analysis is an in-depth study of the influence

of individuals online. Attention is given not merely to the

numbers - such as number of followers - but to the focus of

engagement, to identify insights relevant to the goals that have

been set.

Digital User Behaviour Analysis is the study of actual and likely

journeys taken by stakeholders across digital channels and may

include search activity, social media engagement, and website

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content browsing. A range of software tools and manual

analysis techniques are used to develop a picture of user

journeys in order to plan for the role of Digital Opinion Leaders.

A Closed Networks Review includes a diverse range of research

approaches inside closed networks, subject to tools and

techniques made available by providers of platforms such as

doctors’ social networks.

All of the activities above may be carried out either by a pharmaceutical

company’s in-house teams, or by external multichannel research and

planning specialists such as Creation Healthcare, or in many cases, a

combination of both.

In my book, Pathways to Engagement for Healthcare Organizations, I

write about Pfizer’s ‘Can You Feel My Pain’ initiative which was awarded

the Healthcare Engagement Strategy ‘Patient Empowerment’ Award for

its activation of patients and advocacy groups online. Louise Clark,

Director International Public Affairs and Policy at Pfizer describes the

use of research in the campaign planning process: “We carried out

research to look at who was talking about what, in which places; and

those greatest places of engagement opportunity were our initial

target.”

2. Engage Digital Opinion Leaders

Having identified possible Digital Opinion Leaders, establishing mutual

goals will be essential to any successful collaboration, advocacy or

partnership. Engaging Digital Opinion Leaders may take place online or

offline, although digital channels are often used for initial contact.

For over three years, Roche Diabetes Care has been engaging an online

community of diabetes bloggers in the US. Rob Müller, Associate

Marketing Manager with Roche, says that the engagement started with

honest conversations in the online communities where the bloggers

were active. “We went in [to online communities] and told everybody,

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‘Hi, I’m Rob, I’m with Roche, I’m here to answer any questions you may

have’”, he says.

It takes patience to engage Digital Opinion Leaders, as trust is

established over time. For Roche Diabetes Care, it has been worthwhile.

After the company had hosted an annual summit of diabetes bloggers

for three years, one of the bloggers, Kerri Sparling, wrote about the

Summit: “Seeing my fellow diabetes bloggers and advocates is always

the highlight of this summit. I can’t lie about that. Walking into a room

and wanting to hug everyone in it is a rare thing. However, since this

was the third Roche Summit I’ve attended, I sort of wanted to hug the

Roche people, too.”

Partnering with Digital Opinion Leaders requires an alignment of

messages that serve mutual goals, and selection of channels for the

most effective impact. Research carried out during the identification

step is likely to inform these requirements.

In some cases, the collaboration between a pharmaceutical company

and Digital Opinion Leaders is relatively uncoordinated, with few

parameters of channels fixed. In others, deliberate selection and use of

specific channels between partners can support the building of

engagement momentum.

“We learned a lot from talking with the patient groups and

understanding how we could shape the campaign,” says Pfizer’s Louise

Clark about the ‘Can You Feel My Pain’ initiative in which the company

partnered with patient advocacy groups across Europe using social

media channels including Flickr to share photos.

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Pfizer’s collaboration with patient advocacy

groups and patients included use of Flickr to

share photos.

3. Activate Digital Opinion Leaders

Having identified and engaged Digital Opinion Leaders, activating them

is a deliberate step to ensure that their advocacy or engagement is

communicated online to those who they influence. As with any

partnership, the Digital Opinion Leader must see the value in this

process to them, not just to the pharmaceutical company.

Value given to Digital Opinion leaders may take various forms, such as

increasing the profile or status of the Digital Opinion Leader; providing a

new platform or tools for engagement; providing unique knowledge;

up-skilling the Digital Opinion Leader for digital engagement; or or

support for a mutual cause.

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“We helped [our partners] to deliver beyond this campaign, online...

Now these organizations are tweeting, undertaking their own social

media activities,” says Louise Clark about Pfizer’s partnership with

European patient advocacy groups, which equipped them to be more

active online.

In some cases, then, activating a Digital Opinion Leader means

strengthening the ‘digital’ aspect of their opinion leadership. Thus any

current opinion leader may become a Digital Opinion Leader by being

digitally equipped or activated.

Finally, the quest for Digital Opinion Leaders does not necessarily

negate the role of traditional Key Opinion Leaders or current channels

used in KOL activation. Remember that even Digital Opinion Leaders are

real people offline, too.

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What next?

If you found this guide to activating Digital Opinion Leaders helpful, I

invite you to sign up to receive our monthly e-journal, Healthcare

Engagement Strategy, free of charge. It will keep you informed about

tips and techniques to improve your digital engagement and includes

analysis of how new communication channels are changing healthcare.

Sign up now at www.engagementstrategy.com.

If you would like to equip your team in any aspect of multichannel

healthcare engagement, I would be pleased to tell you more about

Creation Healthcare’s in-house training for pharmaceutical

communicators and marketers. Courses range from half-day starter

workshops to a comprehensive series of practical, hands-on equipping

and digital mentoring.

Email me now at daniel.ghinn@creationhealthcare.com to find out

about in-house training and mentoring.

If you would like to start activating Digital Opinion Leaders to support

your goals online now, I would love to help you. Whether you would like

a brief consultation to help you get started, or a comprehensive Digital

Opinion Leader Identification, Engagement and Activation service, call

me on +44 207 849 3167 for a conversation about how to make a start.

I look forward to working with you.

Daniel Ghinn

CEO, Creation Healthcare

daniel.ghinn@creationhealthcare.com

+44 207 849 3167