Social Monitoring for Medical Congresses | Acceleration Point | Resources

Medical congresses and conferences give Medical Affairs (MA) teams access to a wealth of knowledge on emerging trends. They remain a tried-and-tested way to gain insights, network, and collaborate. But participating can be costly, exhausting, and time-consuming. So how do you make sure the resources you commit to a congress are well spent, and that what you take away has a tangible impact on your work?

This article shares a few strategies for how you can use social listening data to decide when to participate, engage the right stakeholders, and leave each event with insights that align with your organization's goals.

Social monitoring for medical congresses is the practice of tracking and analyzing the online conversation, mentions, and sentiment around a scientific meeting, so a Medical Affairs team can decide when and how to engage before, during, and after the event.

The volume of that online conversation has grown sharply. One analysis of critical care congresses found that the number of people posting to the meeting hashtag rose almost four-fold between 2014 and 2017, published in the Journal of the Intensive Care Society (study). For Medical Affairs teams, that scale is exactly what makes structured monitoring worthwhile. PubMed Central

Key Takeaways

Social monitoring lets Medical Affairs teams measure the reach and engagement of past congresses using metrics such as mentions, impressions, and sentiment.
Tracking congress hashtags and accounts helps teams follow competitor activity and see which topics and organizations are shaping the scientific conversation.
Social listening supports year-round identification of Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and Digital Opinion Leaders (DOLs), not only during in-person events.
Teams that cannot attend a congress can still follow key discussions and emerging research through medical hashtags and real-time alerts.
Studies of scientific congresses show a large share of congress-related activity comes from people who are not physically present, extending a meeting's reach well beyond the room.

Evaluate Medical Congress ROI

If your team has historically found it challenging to assess the impact and value generated by past events, social listening can help in three major ways:

Track key engagement metrics: Social listening tools let you track engagement metrics for congress-related posts from past events. In a single view, you can see likes, mentions, comments, and shares. Analyzed together, these show how effective your efforts were and the level of audience engagement. Looking at trends over time also lets you compare one event to another.
Track sentiment indicators: Audience sentiment is how your audience feels about the congress and the topics covered. Social listening tools can determine whether previous engagement was largely positive, negative, or neutral, and assess the quality of those interactions. The same signals for an upcoming event can give you a better idea of whether it is worth attending.
Determine influence: How much reach and traction do you actually get by participating? Social listening tools help you track impressions on your congress-related content so you can gauge your overall impact. This link between online activity and real reach is measurable: in one analysis of a major radiology congress, a 43 percent drop in attendance was mirrored by a 46 percent drop in total posts and a 39 percent drop in unique participants, which the authors in Insights into Imaging noted suggests social activity can serve as a surrogate for attendance (study). PubMed Central

Track Competitor Activity

The way to stay ahead in the medical and pharmaceutical industries is to let data drive your decisions, and social listening for medical congresses helps you capture data that is timely, relevant, and specific.

This is particularly helpful for tracking competitor activity at medical congresses. Here's why:

Identify key competitors: By monitoring relevant hashtags, mentions, and accounts associated with the congress, medical teams can identify key competitors and track their activity, including which organizations are present, the individuals representing them, and the topics they are prioritizing.
Analyze competitor strategies: Social listening lets you review competitors' content for insight into their approach. By examining the topics they emphasize, the platforms they use, their engagement levels, and the tone of their communication, you gain a deeper understanding of their messaging and target audience.
Keep an eye on important discussions: Social listening helps ensure you do not miss a discussion your competition is involved in. You gain information on the topics covered, the arguments made, and the audience's reaction, which can point to areas for non-competitive scientific collaboration.
Identify opportunities for differentiation: Understanding competitors' activities can help you identify where your organization's scientific and educational focus is distinct.

These insights can inform how you adapt your Medical Affairs engagement strategies throughout the year.

Identify KOLs, Network, and Engage

In a field as data-driven as medicine, staying at the forefront takes more than attendance at events that, while valuable, happen only periodically.

Medical conferences and congresses are only part of the picture. The other part is digital media such as news platforms, blogs, and publications, along with one-on-one engagements with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). All of these approaches to capturing insights should be complementary, and each should inform how you approach the key events in your field.

Congresses give you the opportunity to establish in-person connections with HCPs and KOLs. The more prepared you are, the more strategic and meaningful those connections can be. Social listening helps you prepare by:

Providing quality social media data year-round to inform your engagement strategies with KOLs.
Helping you identify KOLs by monitoring their influence in their respective areas of expertise.
Surfacing insights into Digital Opinion Leaders (DOLs) you might not reach if your only focus is in-person events, along with healthcare professionals, patient advocates, researchers, and other key voices.

Using your knowledge of emerging trends to expand your network and take part in relevant online conversations also helps establish your team as a credible scientific presence, making it easier to engage KOLs during congresses around collaboration and knowledge-sharing.

Stay Informed and Enhance Engagement Remotely

Analytics from social monitoring let you stay informed about the knowledge shared at congresses you cannot attend in person, and give you a practical way to track what you missed so you can still take part in relevant online discussions. This matters because a large share of the conversation happens outside the venue: in one study of an international emergency medicine meeting, more than 60 percent of the individuals posting were not physically present (study). PubMed Central

Here's how social monitoring helps:

Keep up with the latest research: Advanced social listening platforms use natural language processing to track specialized medical hashtags and surface emerging findings. You can set up real-time alerts for when groups, events, or accounts you follow share clinical trial results or updates to treatment guidelines. Content is automatically categorized by therapeutic area, so you receive relevant updates whether your focus is rare diseases or broad conditions such as cardiovascular disease.
Extend your engagement: With data from social listening, you can take part in the conversation by sharing relevant posts, adding informed comments, and contributing your own content, which helps extend your reach and scientific presence.

FAQs

What is social monitoring in healthcare?

Social monitoring in healthcare involves using tools and practices to analyze and track online conversations, sentiments, mentions, and related medical topics. It involves using social media platforms, online forums, blogs, and other digital channels where industry professionals discuss healthcare experiences, opinions, and research.

What metrics should be tracked during social monitoring?

Key metrics to monitor include:

Volume of mentions: How often the congress hashtag and related keywords are being used.
Reach and impressions: The potential audience that has seen the mentions.
Sentiment: Whether the conversations are positive, negative, or neutral.
Engagement: Likes, shares, comments, and retweets.
Top KOLs and HCPs: Identifying the most influential voices in the conversation.
Share of voice: Comparing mentions of your congress to competitors.
Trending topics: Understanding the key themes emerging from the discussions.

What are the challenges of social media monitoring for medical congresses?

Social media monitoring for medical congresses, while valuable, presents several challenges. These include being overwhelmed by the volume of data, protecting patient privacy, accurately gauging the tone of medical conversations, filtering out irrelevant content, and pinpointing the most influential voices.

What usually happens at medical congresses?

During medical congresses, industry experts, researchers, and HCPs gather to discuss topics like patient care, new technology, research results, and the latest advancements. The event typically includes panel discussions, workshops, and keynote speeches.

Are social listening tools worth it?

Social listening tools are valuable in healthcare for managing brand reputation, gaining patient insights, tracking public health trends, analyzing competitors, and managing crises. They allow healthcare organizations to understand public perception, improve patient care, identify misinformation, and enhance their outreach, making them increasingly worth the investment.

Get Ahead with Social Monitoring for Medical Congresses

From staying informed about trending topics to connecting with Key Opinion Leaders, social media monitoring offers a range of benefits and can surface a wealth of raw data from both inside and outside the congress room.

A social listening platform designed specifically for Medical Affairs can strengthen these benefits and support your Medical Affairs strategy as a whole. At Acceleration Point, we developed Kwello, a platform that uses AI to streamline social monitoring for Medical Affairs teams.

Curious how this applies to your organization? Let's talk.

Social Monitoring for Medical Congresses: A Guide for Medical Affairs Teams