April 2011 | In Healthcare Web | Comments 0

How Pharma companies can get involved in social media

With the emergence of the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority Q+A guidelines on digital communications last week, there will be an added push on UK companies to join the social media game, and if the Irish pharmaceuticals aren’t careful they’ll find themselves losing important competitive advantage.

Here’s some tips we’ve adapted from doseofdigital.com starting a Pharma social media campaign :
 

1. Define business objectives
As with any new strategy, defining the objectives should be the first step. Getting 100 friends on Facebook is not an objective - Gaining customer awareness by reaching 100 friends is. Social media needs to be a part of the marketing plan, and the messages should be cohesive. Setting up a Facebook page, no matter how many of your friends ‘Like’ you is not a marketing campaign in itself. 

2. Monitor with intent
It’s socially unacceptable to walk up to a group of people and demand them to change to a topic of your choosing, and the same rules apply online. Someone very wise once said you have two ears and one mouth for a reason.
There are a number of free ‘listening tools’ online including:
- Technorati, Google Blog Search, Twingly- Blog Searches
- Twitter Search, Tweetscan- Twitter-Monitoring
- Google insights, Google Trends- Search- Tools
- SocialMention, StepRep, Filtrbox- Aggregator Tools

3. Choose the proper platform
This will be guided by step two, where are people talking about you? And where is your target customer? For example, Pfizer has chosen to be very active on Facebook. To see what others are doing the “Digital Pharma links directory lists every online campaign, Twitter account, pharma blog, YouTube channel and mobile app featured in the blog since its debut in August 2009” (Inpharm.com).

4. Secure and Create profiles
The first part of this step is logging onto social networks to see if your brand’s name is available as a user name- you can also use the site knowem.com which will check for you. They also have a premium services to secure your brand name on over 300 websites. However, there are draw-backs with outsourcing social networks- often your culture is not embedded into the site and therefore customers will know it’s not really you. Yes, social networkers are that savvy!

5. Learn the Lingo/ Get a road map
Social media guidelines are very important to take heed of. For example, you can spend hours editing Wikipedia pages to correct information and it will be deleted by the next day because you haven’t declared a conflict of interest and should have use the discussion pages to add a tag to the page.

A good presentation is found here, which talks about social media with Pharma, taking into account the Nielson report on ‘Adverse Events’ which found only 0.2% of complaints are actually counted as adverse events.
We decided to add on the road map part to this step because if you don’t know you’re way around social media you’ll be shunned in the community for making ‘Rookie Mistakes’- You’ll be in the middle of the desert with no one listening and someone telling you ‘you should have asked for directions’.

6. Dive in
Have you ever heard the Phrase ‘Dance like no-one’s watching?’- that does NOT apply to social media. Everyone’s watching! Your posts or tweets need to have a personal element- one of the best examples I can think of is the RTE Live update blogger during the snow period. During the bad weather in Ireland, an RTE employee posted throughout the day on what was happening, pictures people were sending in etc. This would not be typical reporting behavior of the RTE website but it was hugely popular with people checking it throughout the day. And most important of all, people were not just listening but responding even just to say how much they loved the blog!

7. Track your progress
There is a huge range of professional tools which can be utilized in measurement including; Radian6, Social Radar and Buzzlogic.

Nobody spends endless hours in the gym to lose weight without checking the weighing scales, so why would you not want to track your progress in social media?

 

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Combined Media is a leading independent interactive agency that specialises in web design and development. We create websites, e-learning tools, interactive presentations, applications and all things digital. Founded in 1992, Combined Media has developed processes that combine the best aspects of user-centred design and technology. Our aim is to produce products that look great and are easy to use. Our work is created using excellent project management for our clients. Based in Dublin, clients include VHI healthcare, Roche Products, Novartis, ESBIE Independent Energy, Barnardos and World Vision.

 

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