How to Run Congress Social Listening with Tools You Already Have

Acceleration Point CEO Scott Thompson and Social Analytics Manager Shruthi Menon discuss how Medical Affairs teams can use social listening to maximize Congress insights. They discuss filtering through the noise, overcoming compliance challenges, and generating valuable insights to inform your medical strategy without needing expensive platforms. Whether you're new to Social Listening or looking to enhance your capabilities, this session provides practical steps to start your journey.

Medical Affairs teams know that congresses generate valuable scientific intelligence. But between the volume of sessions, the noise on social platforms, and concerns about compliance, most teams struggle to turn that activity into actionable insights. Congress conversation on social media grew sharply in the 2010s. At the ASCO Annual Meeting, the number of tweets rose from 7,746 in 2011 to 72,696 in 2016, and the number of tweet authors rose from 1,429 to 15,796 (Pemmaraju et al., Journal of Oncology Practice, 2017). In this webinar, Acceleration Point CEO Scott Thompson and Social Analytics Manager Shruthi Menon walk through a practical, step-by-step methodology for conducting congress social listening using tools your team already has access to, with no expensive platforms required. Congress social listening is the practice of monitoring public social media conversation before, during, and after a medical congress to understand how much discussion the meeting generates, which scientific topics resonate, and who is driving the conversation.

What You'll Learn:

• How to identify which social platforms to monitor for a given congress, and why the congress website itself is the best place to start
• Search strategies for X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and YouTube, including how to filter by engagement thresholds, date ranges, and disease-specific keywords to cut through the noise
• How to evaluate the relevance and credibility of the accounts sharing congress content, including how to identify HCPs outside your existing network
• How to organize your findings into a structured congress listening report covering volume, top topics, top authors, and therapy area insights

About Our Speakers

Scott Thompson is CEO at Acceleration Point. Scott Thompson hosts the Acceleration Point monthly webinar series, where he shares what the Acceleration Point team has learned with the Medical Affairs community. Acceleration Point supports Medical Affairs teams with digital technologies, including social listening for congresses and patient journey identification.

Connect with Scott on LinkedIn.

Shruthi Menon is Social Analytics Manager at Acceleration Point. Shruthi Menon has more than 10 years of experience in social listening and leads the Acceleration Point team that builds social listening strategies, including what to listen for and how. Her projects with Medical Affairs teams have covered HCP discussions about new treatment options, patient journeys, unmet needs, and sentiment analysis, helping those teams understand social media conversation so they can inform their medical strategies.

Connect with Shruthi on LinkedIn.

FAQ

What is congress social listening?

Congress social listening is the practice of monitoring public social media conversation before, during, and after a medical congress to understand how much discussion the meeting generates, which scientific topics resonate, and who is driving the conversation. Medical Affairs teams use it to see activity from sessions they could not attend and to capture HCP perspectives shared in real time.

Why is social listening useful for Medical Affairs teams at medical congresses?

Congress sessions, panels, and poster presentations run at the same time, so no one can attend them all. Attendees often post about sessions in real time, including their reactions to newly presented data. These posts are shared voluntarily, not in response to survey questions. Social listening also helps teams find HCPs outside their existing network who are active in a disease area. Online activity tends to track in-person participation: a study of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting found 46% fewer tweets and 39% fewer individual users when the meeting went virtual in 2020, compared with the in-person 2019 meeting (Beste et al., Insights into Imaging, 2022).

Which social platforms should you monitor during a medical congress?

Start with the official congress website. It usually lists the official hashtag and links to the organizing society's social media accounts, which shows where its members are active. In the webinar, Scott Thompson and Shruthi Menon recommend starting with X (Twitter), where many HCPs have built professional networks and share scientific content. LinkedIn carries company updates and attendee recap posts, but its search function is limited and results often need manual validation. YouTube hosts longer session recaps and interviews, which typically appear after the congress ends.

How do you filter X (Twitter) search results to find relevant congress content?

Use the X advanced search. Combine the congress hashtag with disease or treatment keywords, exclude unrelated terms, and set minimum thresholds for replies, likes, or reposts to surface the most engaging posts. Scan the data before choosing a threshold. Broad searches can use higher thresholds, while narrower disease- or treatment-specific searches need lower ones. Extend the date range to cover the weeks before and after the congress, when data releases and recap posts often appear.

What should a congress social listening report include?

The report template Shruthi Menon shares in the webinar answers three questions for every platform: how much (conversation volume), what (the topics that drew engagement), and who (the accounts sharing and resharing content). A typical report includes a congress overview with dates, the official website, and official hashtags; a platform-by-platform volume breakdown; insights from each platform; top topics; top authors, split into organizations and individuals; and a closing summary.

Questions about this topic? We're happy to help.

About Acceleration Point Webinars

Acceleration Point webinars bring Medical Affairs and Field Medical leaders together to share practical insights, emerging strategies, and real-world perspectives on the challenges shaping the industry. Each session is designed to support the professionals driving scientific exchange, field medical excellence, and Medical Affairs transformation.

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