If you’re like most people, social media is a part of your daily life. On average, internet users spend two and a half hours on social networks each day.
This is also where a relatively new breed of thought leaders comes into play - the digital opinion leaders (DOLs), or healthcare influencers. What sets these digital opinion leaders apart from traditional key opinion leaders (KOLs) is their ability to reach audiences far and wide.
These digitally-native healthcare professionals (HCPs) and life scientists publish content on health topics with a high degree of regularity on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or even TikTok and YouTube.
Where KOLs might have a sphere of influence that extends to advisory boards or conference floors, DOLs have a truly global reach. They are masters of scientific communication in the digital universe. It’s that powerful reach that makes teaming up with DOLs so attractive.
But only 11% of organizations have a specific strategy for engaging with DOLs. The current hurdle? Finding out how to best discover them. DOLs don’t always show up in places more established experts might.
To eliminate the guesswork and minimize the time your medical affairs team spends hunting for information, we’re introducing a new feature to our Monocl ExpertInsight platform: social media analytics.
The integration of expert-related social media activity provides commercial and medical affairs teams with a more complete picture of an expert’s market influence, helping to uncover the hidden influencers within a research sphere or therapy area.
Here’s a closer look at how analyzing social media activity with Monocl ExpertInsight can support your expert engagement strategy and help you find your next DOL.
How we’re elevating expert insights for maximum impact
If you haven’t already met Monocl ExpertInsight, it’s a healthcare commercial intelligence solution from Definitive Healthcare. Monocl ExpertInsight contains information on more than 14 million medical professionals and life science researchers globally. The dataset includes millions of data points from publications, clinical trials, meeting presentations, grants, advisory boards, news outlets, and social media, so you can get an accurate understanding of the scientific activity happening for virtually any therapy area or disease state.
Monocl ExpertInsight’s new social media functionality maps professional accounts on social media networks and digital news mentions to experts profiled in the platform, bringing out unique insights into experts’ digital market influence.
With this new data, medical affairs and commercial teams can identify the most impactful DOLs in their respective therapeutic area or disease state and quickly answer:
- Which experts have a disproportionate level of online influence?
- How often are experts posting on social media?
- How far does an expert’s reach extend? Who follows them?
- Who is sharing an expert’s scientific articles and research?
- Who are experts mentioned together with?
Overlaying a digital signal on data captured through Monocl ExpertInsight, you can immediately find the experts, including HCPs, with the greatest influence in social media and digital news and discover emerging influencers.
Power your medical affairs team with these game-changing enhancements
During the development of any new drug or product innovation, life sciences companies need the guidance of experts to take the product from discovery to commercialization. Healthcare provider KOLs have been central to this process for years and are generally easy enough to recognize. They’re the experts who have authored hundreds of publications. They’re the speakers whose names appear on the conference circuit year after year. They’re the leaders serving on advisory boards. But this is often where their influence ends.
As the life science industry moves to digital spaces, tech-savvy KOLs are setting up shop online, too. These DOLs aren’t quite as simple to identify as their traditional predecessors. They may not be sharing clinical data from the podium or have all the usual measures of expertise we’re used to seeing in a KOL.
But they are valuable messengers who are creating engaging conversations that patients and peers are tuning into. As HCPs increasingly embrace social media channels, it’s more important than ever for life science companies to understand the conversations and activities taking place in these digital spaces.
With the updated Monocl ExpertInsight, your medical affairs teams can stay on top of what HCPs are discussing today to facilitate timely engagement and even shape influential online conversations.
Need to find an influencer with clinical trial experience in your disease area? Simply filter experts by relevance to your therapy area or disease focus. Then, you can dig into the social media profiles and digital news mentions of each expert to identify the most impactful voices with expertise in the activities that matter most to you.
By identifying top influencers and trending topics, your medical affairs and commercial teams can modify core messaging to reach and engage these DOLs. At the end of the day, engaging with the right DOLs can become crucial to getting the right therapies and devices into the hands of patients who need them.
Learn more
With their unique blend of knowledge, expertise, and virtual presence, DOLs are quickly becoming an essential part of many life science organizations' engagement strategies. If medical affairs and commercial teams aren’t engaging them, now is the time. Want to see how Definitive Healthcare can give you an edge over your competitors when it comes to finding these game-changing DOLs? Sign up for a product demo today to get hands-on experience with Monocl ExpertInsight and our other healthcare commercial intelligence solutions.
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