Activating Digital KOL's e-book

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

Edition 1.0


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

© 2012 Creation Healthcare 2


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.



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



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



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.



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



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



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.



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



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



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.



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



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



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.



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.



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.



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



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.



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.



“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.




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



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



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,



‘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.



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.



“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.



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


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