Employee advocacy drives healthcare social media outreach

Humana embarked on a social/digital media campaign in a risky environment: The organization was in regulatory crosshairs over a planned mega-merger; communicating healthcare is already subject to a bevy of compliance restrictions; and pitching insurance business is never easy. Despite these challenges, the Humana campaign succeeded in its goal—and took first place in the “Healthcare” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Digital PR and Social Media Awards as well.

Humana opted to produce content focused on health and wellbeing that had no bottom line-driven calls to action. Even more interesting, America’s fourth-largest insurer decided to engage employees in an advocacy program to expand the content’s reach. 

By choosing initial participants from their Enterprise Social Network (called Buzz, built on the Socialcast platform), the small group of employees that initially made up the advocacy group were able to choose the content they wanted to share with their communities. The employee advocates all attended a one-hour training session to ensure their compliance with rules and regulations. 

The 532 employees wound up accounting for 32,000 shares of Humana social content, 45,000 clicks, 19,000 Facebook reactions and 15 million impressions. The program had 2,800 members in Q1 of 2016 and continues to grow.

For matching highly engaged employees with visually compelling and mobile-friendly content they could share through their networks of choice, kudos go to Humana’s Jeff Ross and Jason Spencer.