Influencer engagement best practices: Learnings from two different vaccination messaging studies

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: Leveraging trusted messengers to disseminate information is a tactic that public health communicators have been utilizing for decades. One novel form of messenger that offers unique opportunities to connect with harder-to-reach audiences, such as communities of color, is the social media influencer. NORC at the University of Chicago and Thomas Jefferson University (TJU) partnered on two studies that sought to investigate working with multicultural influencers to disseminate pro-vaccine messaging to minority parent communities: one focused on the COVID-19 vaccine, and another that focused on the HPV vaccine. This presentation will cover the nuances of engaging and working with influencers across two similar yet distinct topics, including how to tailor outreach messaging, considerations for influencer selection, and what kind of challenges and reactions to expect from influencers when requesting the dissemination of pro-vaccine messages.

Methods: NORC and TJU worked with Brilla Media, a multicultural influencer and digital agency to recruit influencers for each study. Influencers were selected based on specific screening criteria to ensure relevance to the studies as well as vetting criteria including their engagement rate, follower count, and audiences reached. Influencers who were interested in participating either accepted the project based on the initial email and compensation, while others requested to negotiate their rate based on the number of deliverables. Participating influencers were asked to develop a social media post containing pro-vaccine messages that would reach and resonate with minority parent communities. While influencers were allowed to develop content in their own tone and style, the team reviewed content for accuracy. Influencers also participated in a 45-minute interview to discuss their content development process.

Results: A total of 45 influencers were contacted for the Merck HPV study and 50 for the Pfizer COVID-19 study to secure a total of 20 influencers (10 per study). In some cases, influencers declined to participate in the project based on a variety of reasons. We experienced higher levels of hesitancy amongst influencers when asked to participate in the HPV vaccine study versus the COVID-19 study due to a fear of negative backlash from followers, even if their children were vaccinated. Influencers were able to discern which audience comments were supportive of their message versus passive, although the majority of audience comments were positive.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that partnerships with trusted messengers such as influencers can be incredibly beneficial, especially given the increase in public consumption of health information on social media. As well, these studies demonstrate how unique approaches must be taken to engage influencers as different health topics may elicit varying reactions, experiences, and emotions.

Implications for research and/or practice: Influencers offer the ability to adapt health messaging in ways that their audiences understand. However, this work requires a solid understanding of influencers’ perceptions and motivations to successfully support any health-related topic.