How to use social media for scientific advocacy and personal branding

INTRODUCTION

Whether we like it or not, social media has become an integral part of our society. Based on Statista estimates, there were 4.5 billion people using social media in 2022, ¹ with this figure projected to rise to nearly 6 billion by 2027. Within healthcare, social media is increasingly used in both organizational, institutional and a personal capacity, enabling individuals to interact, network, learn, teach, reach out to patients, and disseminate messages on behalf of an organization.

Several social media platforms are now being used for medical education, with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram amongst the preferred platforms. These enable community interaction, sharing of content, and intellectual discussion. Many mainline journals and organizations hold social media accounts led by social media editors and ambassadors to highlight and disseminate published content. This also holds true for personal accounts where individual users can use for personal branding, which can be used as a tool for advocacy and medical education. Branding refers to what an individual wants their peers to know them for, that is, what they are passionate about, areas of interest in medicine, or causes and missions that they value.

This article aims to outline the use of social media in gastroenterology, with a focus on advocacy and personal branding.

SOCIAL MEDIA AS A TOOL FOR ADVOCACY

Advocacy is perceived as an act of pleading on, speaking in favor of, recommending, defending, and arguing for a specific matter, regardless of belonging to the group being advocated. As medical professionals, we advocate for our patients to ensure that their healthcare needs have been provided whilst keeping a holistic perspective on broader issues. It is similarly important to advocate for patients and colleagues, especially those from users who are actively seeking help, appear in difficulty and be an ally to groups that are underrepresented, for example, underrepresented minorities, gender inequalities, LGBTQ+, and those with physical and learning disabilities.

Social media (SoMe) provides a forum where people from all walks of life can congregate and interact, including patients, the general public, physicians, organizations, and societies. Through these, it is possible to follow conversations and advocate for other users, offer a specific proposal, engage in SoMe campaigns, or advocate through sharing educational content. ² Examples of advocacy in SoMe include knowledge dissemination on symptoms and signs (e.g. pancreatic cancer, #PancreaticCancer), raising awareness of the benefits of regular check‐ups and their forms (e.g. colorectal cancer screening—#colorectalcancerawarenessmonth), or encouraging disease prevention and treatment (e.g. hepatitis—#WorldHepatitisDay). Other examples of advocacy include campaigning for healthcare reforms, calling out inequalities and safety concerns, practice management, and campaigning for improved access to medical care. Advocacy campaigns are strongly supported by GI societies, such as the American College of Gastroenterology offering a Congressional Advocacy Program, where members are encouraged to use SoMe platforms for advocacy by creating educational posts. The importance of advocacy work has been recognized by some training programs, for example, by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Pediatrics Residency Review Committee, which mandates advocacy training and experience for all pediatric residents. ³

Advocating through social media can bring tangible benefits to research beyond disseminating education. These include for example, obtaining funding for digestive disease research, recruiting patients into clinical studies, developing collaborative research networks, and expanding research opportunities among more diverse populations to ultimately impact patients' treatment and improve their quality of life.

HOW TO ADVOCATE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

• 1)Follow the rules, that is, the dos and donts of social media. ⁴ For advocacy work, these include

  • Avoid being subjective and biased, for example, with personal, political, and religious opinions and allegiance to the same accounts.

  • Avoid offering direct medical advice or opinions that may be ambiguous.

  • Avoid posts that harbor conflicts of interest.

  • Support new accounts if they share common goals and advocate for the same areas of interest.

  • Decide on your type of SoMe account—if you want to become a representative and advocate, keep it professional.

  • Share authentic content from reliable sources.

• 2)Choose the right SoMe platform:

  • Twitter—allows for fast and wide‐range dissemination of the content and direct connection with individuals/groups of the same interest; through relevant hashtags, connects to a larger dialog happening on the platform. ⁵

  • Facebook—despite being more personal, some societies and foundations use FB; rather, for branding and as a source of information regarding advocacy groups or current fields requiring improvement

  • Instagram—photo/video sharing platform helping in boosting advocacy actions; here also, hashtags are powerful; by using them in the description of a post, the image will be indexed and searchable.

• 3)Interacting with others:

  • Use hashtags (e.g. #colorectalcancerawarenessmonth, #WorldHepatitisDay) to drive traffic and boost your reach (Figure 1).

  • Tagging relevant representatives and institutions involved in patients' advocacy; showing your interest may give a chance for future collaboration.

  • By creating unique content (video, infographic, Twitter threads, images, storytelling), the more conspicuous the content, the more attention, you will gain.

FIGURE 1.

Example of advocacy groups on Twitter.

WHAT IS PERSONAL BRANDING?

Branding may be defined as the act of making a product, organization, person, or place easy to recognize as different from others by connecting it with a particular name, design, a set of qualities, etc. Personal branding (also known as professional branding) is the projected image of an individual's personality, passions, skills, experience, and causes/missions they believe in that defines their unique identity and distinguishes their profile from others, with the aim of appealing to and capturing the attention of a target audience.

ADVANTAGES OF PERSONAL BRANDING

Personal branding brings multiple benefits, including building your reputation, maintaining engagement, increasing your national and international reach and impact, and further establishing your authority within a field. The incentives might be to promote your practice or division or it may be to showcase your passion in an area of medicine or a cause/mission you believe in. Personal branding increases your visibility to potential employers and can enhance job satisfaction, and open doors for sponsorship/mentorship, collaboration, and new opportunities.

HOW TO BUILD YOUR BRAND

Successful brands have a clear purpose, principles and values which bring customer demand, respect and engagement. One should therefore have clear principles and goals of social media use; this should be obvious to you and your audience, for example, education, clinical, advocacy, social posts, marketing, advocacy, etc. and aligned with your personal brand. Your brand is more than your niche expertise and interests; your interactions on social media, that is, your “likes,” shares, posts and comments, can be seen by the wider community and will shape public perception and therefore your brand identity. This can extend beyond your professional realm to include things that matter to you within your personal life, such as your opinions and interests. This provides a glimpse into your thoughts and values as well as authenticity. The attributes required of an account holder can be summarized under the 5As (Figure 2): Authenticity, Authority, Accessibility, Affinity (creating content that relates to the audience) and Aspiration (having goals for your account).

FIGURE 2.

Tips for successful personal branding.

TIPS FOR PERSONAL BRANDING

The 5Cs of personal branding comprise the following

• 1)Content

Your content determines your personal brand by reflecting what you are known for, your online persona, and the value it brings to others. Each user is a content creator, whether it be original content (blog, photo, video, own publication), shared content (i.e. content sourced elsewhere, shares or retweets) or a mix (e.g. quote tweet). An account that only retweets can still be a content creator by curating a unique feed that can benefit others. Hone in on a niche subject relevant to your expertise, and ensure that your content is informative and aesthetically pleasing to draw interest. Know your audience (followers/subscribers) and tailor your content accordingly. Focus on high‐quality videos or photos as these tend to garner more views and engagement than text alone. Measure the impact of your content using SoMe analytical tools, for example, impressions, likes, retweets, comments, hyperlink clicks, and revenue, to inform future strategy.

• 2)Clarity

When building your brand, have clarity on (a) what you do, (b) who you serve (your target audience) and (c) the value you bring to your audience. First, optimize your SoMe profile (photo and brand statement) to best reinforce your digital identity and authenticate you for your content. A pinned Tweet can be helpful as a “sampler” of your brand. The message within your posts should be clear, even to international readers. Your posts should share an overarching common theme and purpose that is obvious and appealing to the audience.

• 3)Consistency

Your personal brand message should be consistent across all social media platforms. Consider standardizing the style, language, design, format, logo, etc., which can be regarded as your personal brand. Post consistency to maintain momentum. The optimal frequency for SoMe posts has been suggested as follows: Twitter 5×/day, LinkedIn 1×/day, Facebook 2×/day, Instagram 1.5×/day, and Pinterest 5×/day. ⁶

• 4)Connection

In a survey of physician social media users, the majority attempted to grow their following by commenting on other physicians' posts (56.6%), following other physicians (41.7%), posting on other media sources (guest blogs/interviews, 37.7%), and posting with specific hashtags (17%). ⁷ Connect with others and contribute to conversations under other accounts within your area of expertise/interest. The use of user tags and hashtags helps to increase SoMe interactivity and can increase engagement with your account. Consider creating your own hashtag or adding an external link to a website to further authenticate your brand and/or direct user traffic strategically. Consider search engine optimization (SEO) to increase account visibility. Collaborate and form reciprocal relationships with other strong personal and institutional brands to increase engagement and promote growth. ⁸

• 5)Community

Social media is an online community with interactivity at its heart. For gastroenterology and hepatology, consider the generic hashtags #LiverTwitter, ⁹ #GITwitter, ⁸ #MedEd, #MedTwitter. Commercial brands often have a designated SoMe team dedicated to maintain public relations. Be responsive to your followers, who may also be in the form of the general public, patients and organizations. Think twice before posting—as much as social media engagement can bring success, one can just as readily be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Follow community, regional/national and institutional guidelines and stay genuine, professional, and courteous to avoid harming your brand. Disseminating your work and those of your institution can help your brand and may also provide opportunities for collaboration from like‐minded researchers who are interested in similar topics. Research ideas that were born from Twitter might someday become a full paper! These success stories provide a positive feedback loop, which also improves visibility and enhances personal branding. ¹⁰

CONCLUSION

Social media provides individuals with a far‐reaching voice with the opportunity to interact with users across the globe. ¹¹ , ¹² , ¹³ Each user can have a personal brand with their sphere of influence that can be nurtured for patient benefit and advocacy.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Pawlak KM, Lui RN, Bilal M, Siau K. How to use social media for scientific advocacy and personal branding. United European Gastroenterol J. 2023;11(5):488–91. 10.1002/ueg2.12404