Last week Twitter published its Birdseye Report, an in-depth examination of insights across eight different industries to better prepare brands for 2022.

Over the past calendar year, the globe – and the nature of how business is done – changed. Consumer expectations, reactions, and conversations were on full display, daily, on Twitter. This Birdseye Report analyzes those conversations and uncovers meaningful insights and emerging trends within the alcohol, CPG, finance, food, health, media & entertainment, sports and technology industries. 

Consumers are telling brands what they want almost every single day on Twitter, and if brands listen, they can adapt and craft innovative strategies for the year ahead.

Brandwatch, being an early member within the Twitter Official Partner Program, was tasked to tackle and study the emerging trends and driving themes within conversation around the health industry. This was a challenge Consumer Research was more than up for.

Methodology

The first thing to determine was the precise “angle” of the health sector we’d examine. Health can mean many things. It can encompass the chemistry-forward world of pharmaceuticals, it can shift into a lifestyle of specific nutritional and dietary habits, heck, it can even cover your home gym and favorite workout recovery practices. Health is wealth and people have long explored numerous ways to amass the most wealth they can in the manner that works best for them.

There were certain angles we didn’t want to pursue when it came to the health market. Spending all of last year in the grips of a pandemic, we didn’t want to focus on it specifically. If that were the case, there would be plenty of discourse on vaccines and treatments. No, we wanted to focus on the reluctant and necessary shifts that the pandemic might have influenced, while acknowledging there is really no escaping COVID in almost any discussion.

With the above being said, we found considerable insights when analyzing the telemedicine and mental health conversations on Twitter.

For the Birdseye Report, Brandwatch used Consumer Research to go all the way back to January 1 2019 to look at global Twitter mentions, when COVID-19 wasn’t even in our vocabulary.

Note: Full methodology, complete with time frames and Boolean search terms, in Twitter’s Birdseye Report

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Health, presented by Brandwatch

Telemedicine

Telemedicine and virtual healthcare is an interesting theme within the health industry because it isn’t new but it is rapidly evolving. This aspect of healthcare, and the Twitter conversation around it, was given new life and vigor due to the pandemic.

To put it another way, 2020 was the year telemedicine burst into the mainstream and 2021 was the year it was normalized.

The challenges with this became painfully obvious quickly, and can be summed up in a single word: infrastructure. Doctors offices and hospitals found a new need to beef up their IT teams quickly. Internal training is and was needed to prepare these medical professionals to better operate the hardware and software that comes with virtual healthcare, and that’s only one side of the equation. Would-be patients needed to familiarize themselves with the same apps and devices, and now access to broadband and high-speed internet is being recognized as a dire need for healthcare (something tells us that the education industry would have known this for a while now, too).

Telemedicine and virtual healthcare had a renaissance this past year, and the data clearly shows that a “new normal” has been established.

Mental health

Unlike telemedicine and virtual healthcare, an emphasis on mental health has been a part of our collective consciousness for some time now. However, the discussion of mental health, and more specifically the positive and perilous narratives that steer it, is seeing rapid change.

Vernacular and terminology were virtually created overnight due to the pandemic and its effects on people’s mental health. New terms like “Doom Scrolling” and “Trauma Dumping” went from being virtually non-existent or on the fringe of mental health discourse to the very heart of it.

These newest challenges to our mental health will be tall hurdles in 2022, but there is hope. The data showcases how brands that don’t even directly operate within the mental health field can make an impactful difference. 

Insights for 2022

Looking back in the rearview now, 2021 can’t help but feel like a runway for 2022. The lessons that were on full display on Twitter are your guide to this new year. A thorough read of Twitter’s Birdseye Report will set you up nicely for the next 12 months, and if you’re looking for the answers of tomorrow, you need not look any further than what consumers are saying today.