The one about segmenting virtual audiences

Digital communications – it’s a bandwagon with serious cred that agencies and in-house comms teams are jumping on. While the potential is uncharted and limited only by the capabilities of practitioners, the commitment of managers and the applicable campaign objectives, how much of an understanding do we really have of this popular medium and its associated virtual communities?

PR agencies are implementing digital strategy and building specialised teams at a rate of knots, but there is almost a feeling that digital strategy has to be built into a campaign because that’s the way things are going. Key to disseminating the capacity of the digital shift is the role of virtual audiences in campaign implementation.

Strategy is the result of research and audience segmentation. While touch points for virtual communities may appear obvious, identifying the demographics of these communities is a challenge for practitioners. Ordered 'tick boxes' are not always apparent. A virtual community can be an influential individual or a mobilised mass united through a common cause. They do not always possess an obvious unifier i.e. community group, club or workplace. They are savvy, organised and influential while others have sporadic interactions in the digital sphere.

Two-way communication and relationship building are best practice for engaging with virtual communities, but what happens when this is not always possible? Regulatory bodies across specific practices make two-way communications very difficult, particularly in the healthcare space. For instance, pharmaceutical code limits pharma companies in the social media space. According to law, if a member of the public reports a concern with a medication on a website hosted by the drug maker, they are legally bound to respond to the enquiry within 48 hours. This means that any Facebook or Twitter presence would need to be monitored 24/7 – an impossible task.

An example is the 50 years of the Pill campaign by Bayer Schering Pharma. To comply with all relevant medical codes, public interaction was limited to a simple voting mechanism on the Facebook page. While an effective compromise, does this defeat the purpose of the Facebook presence?

To answer, in short, it was recognised that a digital arm was needed for this campaign due to the sheer importance of this milestone, but it would have been against regulatory code to harness Facebook for open dialect. The campaign was therefore tailored to become a charity initiative that raised money through a voting mechanism – meaning the charitable donation created a virtual community in itself.

Virtual communities will become an increasingly necessary audience to engage with, as the future of digital expands at a rate few of us can keep up with. While impossible to control or predict, specific plans need to be put in place to establish ongoing dialect with influential virtual communities as a proactive measure that will reap long-term client benefits no end.