Stop. look. listen: Integrating social media listening into public health practice

What is the value of listening? How do you combine listening and informatics to inform your public health practice? Great communicators understand the art and science of listening, reflect on the information gathered to understand audience needs, and respond accordingly. This process is becoming more relevant as social media integration into public health communication continues to grow. Social media listening is defined as the process of identifying and accessing what is being said about an organization, individual or a particular topic across social media channels. Commonly used by businesses to gauge reaction to brands and products, social media listening and monitoring allows businesses to respond to public feedback, alter products to meet public demand or develop communications to address public needs or concerns. These same social media listening strategies can be applied to public health practice to inform health communication development and delivery, during everyday public health practice as well as during emergency and crisis situations. The session will discuss the importance of listening, how you can listen using social media tools and how what you hear can inform your health communication strategy. This session will also highlight some of the informatics tools that can be used to gain valuable qualitative and quantitative metrics and their role in developing public health messaging and overall response during an emergency situation. Participants will take away simple and advanced best practices used in social media listening and monitoring and learn what metrics to track, what they mean and how they can be used to get your messages to the people you want to reach >