3 research tips for inhouse communicators

Anneliese Levy Health Communications Specialist

Today’s episode offers two case studies that illustrate how easy it is to reframe impactful content as well as three useful research tips to help them develop their audience insight – with no budget. 

We are joined by Anneliese Levy a health communications specialist that excels in health content research and development. Founder of Thoughtful Content Anneliese is in high demand for her research plus copy skills – a winning formula for anyone tackling health messaging. 

Her clients include national charities such as Blood Cancer UK and global pharmaceutical companies. 

Anneliese shares two examples of how insightful based content can increase impact and three top tips for inhouse communicators on how to do research internally. 

Case study 1: Blood Cancer UK focused on reframing messaging around healthy eating that was turning people off to reshaping it to encourage a new love of food. Avoiding the loss aversion of giving her something else you love when going through cancer treatment. A small but powerful change that can positively help instead of hinder people at the most vulnerable when going through cancer treatment.

Case 2 : Physiotherapy for Older people: Anneliese’s research showed how important our feeling of  ‘being young is’ an interesting insight for anyone planning older person campaign’s. 

Her three tips include:

Tip 1: Speak directly to your audience, explore experiences, perceptions and barriers. Speaks to non-experts as well as your patient experts. Go outside a normal pool of people. Snowball sampling is when you build contacts on contacts often through social media. 

              e.g. Anneliese work on pancreatic cancer researched with older people in East London who knew nothing about pancreatic cancer which is most likely the same knowledge you would have when newly diagnosed. This also opens up opportunities to talk about 

Tip 2: Hang out with your audience indirectly, in social forums etc.

Tip 3: Review existing research –for example Cochrane Review and Google Scholar  don’t be put off by academic papers there are often plain language summaries. It’s time intensive but it’s ££ free. 

Book recommendation Content Design by Sarah Richardson

You can contact Anneliese via www.thoughtfulcontent.co.uk @annieislaurie  - Twitter and @thoughtfulcontent for Instagram

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