This is the first installment in the Social Media Recruitment Guide, produced by Dr. Danielle Ramo, PhD , and Manpreet Kaur, MA. Dr. Ramo is available for recruitment consultations through Consultation Services.
View more at:
- Introduction to Social Media Recruitment: Opportunities and Challenges
- Getting Started with Facebook
- Preparing an IRB Submission
- Budgeting for Social Media Recruitment
New! Social Media Recruitment Service - PRP is offering a new service to run social media (Facebook and Instagram) campaigns for studies.
Introduction
Incorporating newer recruitment approaches through social media can help studies achieve their recruitment goals through targeted advertising to the study population. Social media has some distinct advantages over traditional recruitment strategies, such as the ability to track effectiveness of specific ads to inform future recruitment planning. For example, we don’t know how many potential participants saw a flyer posted outside a hospital but we can easily find out how many Facebook users saw an ad, clicked it, and contacted the study team.
Recruiting via social media can be effective, but learning how to use social media can be a barrier to getting started. To get an overview of how to plan for social media recruitment, watch this short case study of how one research team used social media to complete their recruitment goals, from planning their IRB submission to budgeting and monitoring success of their Facebook ad campaign.
Video description: Case study showing a research team’s social media recruitment workflow—from IRB planning and ad budgeting to launching Facebook ads and monitoring results.
Top Social Media Platforms for Recruitment
Social media and online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter (X), and Google Ads offer opportunities for researchers to recruit study participants for clinical research studies. See the Pew Internet and American Life Project survey of social media use for usage patterns.
Facebook is also a popular platform for recruitment. A search on PubMed in April 2017 using the keywords “social media” and “clinical trial” found many studies using social media for recruitment, including case studies, comparisons with traditional strategies, and literature reviews.
Social media platforms can reach and engage diverse populations, though usage may be different depending on the target population. For discussion of differences by race and ethnicity, see Social media preferences vary by race and ethnicity.
Advantages of Social Media
These short videos present some advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook for recruitment:
Video description: Overview of Facebook ad advantages (reach, availability, targeting) with examples from research recruitment.
Video description: Considerations and limitations of social media ads (competition for attention, privacy, moderation needs).
Benefits of social media
- Wide reach: Social media can expose studies to large audiences more efficiently than local flyers.
- 24/7 recruitment: Ads can run outside business hours and reach people on weekends/holidays.
- Targeted ads: Platforms support audience targeting by demographics, location, or interests/keywords.
- Efficiency: Can be less time-intensive than traditional methods once campaigns are configured.
Issues to Consider
- Competition for attention: Ads should be simple, clear, and engaging.
- Results may vary: Some conditions or study types fit social media better than others; some may be better recruited in clinical settings.
- Staying on top of comments: Public comments can raise privacy concerns or deter interest; teams should monitor and moderate as needed.
