By Sven Larsen(@svenplarsen)

Who’s doing it right?

That’s a question we’re often asked since we’ve routinely challenged Pharma to embrace social media and an expanded dialogue with their customers. So it’s gratifying to find a prime example in our own backyard.

P & P’s parent company, digital agency Zemoga has worked with Weisscomm, EMD Serono and Pfizer on their MS Voices project for over a year now. We’ve written before about the MS Voices Facebook page and the industry leading approach that this partnership has developed to handle comments and questions from consumers. But Facebook is only part of the outreach efforts being made to the MS community.

At the heart of the project is the MS Voices call center, a remarkable customer service operation that has answered over a million inbound calls from the MS community. How’s that for starting a conversation? The call center includes patient enrollment specialists, patient support specialists, nurse support specialists and reimbursement specialists. Whenever someone in the MS community needs to speak to a live person, support is available toll free at 1-877-447-3243. The Ms Community can also visit MS Lifelines online at www.mslifelines.com or on the MS Voices Facebook page.

The call center it truly devoted to providing the highest level of service to it’s callers and this week they announced that they received certification from the JD Power and Associates Call Center Program (the firs time JD Power has recognized a Pharma call center for service excellence). Certification requires passing a rigorous audit of service practices and receiving positive feedback from customer surveys and it’s a major recognition of the great work being done by the call center.

The MS Voices program is a terrific example of how two Pharma companies embraced a community and created a win-win situation for all involved. It’s also a great example of what the future of our industry may look like.

What do you think? Who else is doing it right and putting the customer first?

by Briana Campbell (@MsMatchGirl)

People like to make out that the issues surrounding pharma’s involvement with social media are extraordinarily complex. I’m not so sure.

It’s over-simplistic – but still true – to say that the main worry with digital media for the pharmaceutical industry is the interactivity of social networks. You see, I don’t think it’s the rapidity of the connection that worries regulators and marketers, or the availability of information – not by themselves. It’s the ability to use that speed and access to share the information.

People are scared of the ability to share.

On one level, it makes sense. Disgruntled employees can raise embittered grievances. Dissatisfied customers can complain. Discontented partners can spread untruths. None of this is fact-checked or vetted or permitted – it simply happens. And, human nature being what it is, the old adage that the unhappy ones are twice as motivated to tell people can be true. That’s frightening.

Marketers and regulators fear unhappy people sharing.

This is natural, but it is, I think, the mistake. We shouldn’t fear bad news. We should welcome it, because hearing about it first, and fast, allows us to address it.

To this end, some regulators are considering recruiting social media as a channel for collecting adverse-event reports. The UK’s Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) joined the European Medicines Agency, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and the U.S. FDA in starting a Twitter feed in December, and pondered its utility as a reporting channel in September.

Pharma is used to assuming that social media is a flood of bad news that we’re holding back. To continue the metaphor, what if we started to see social media as a spout that would alert us to the leak?

Regulators and companies would know about adverse events sooner, and their relationship with each other would be more transparent. Patients and healthcare providers could report more easily. Marketers could address potential problems faster.

All of this information is already being collected. And it’s already being made public. And it has been for almost 50 years. Is this really such a groundbreaking step, as we’re so conditioned to think? Or in adding social media reporting, would we simply be updating the type of form that a patient fills out, just as we added them to websites a decade or two ago?

Perhaps social media is not really the problem we think it is, opening us up to people saying goodness-knows-what. Perhaps it’s a solution, in a wider and busier world, to gather patient data more efficiently than we could otherwise.

by Sven Larsen

#Adaptordie is an apt hashtag to sum up the teachings of digital-media pundit Brian Solis. It’s also an apt hashtag to describe the current state of affairs in the pharmaceutical industry.

Solis’s new book, The End of Business as Usual, a follow-up to the popular Engage, focuses on this need of business to change the old ways and become adept at dealing with consumers in new ways – as part of individual conversations that provide value, rather than as stoic entities that wait for customers to come to them.

Solis’s “Conversation Prism” is a hugely popular graphic that illustrates that point – that conversations are happening all at once, in a lot of different places, and digital engagement must be in the same vein.

This is hard for any old business to hear – especially one that has been made large and powerful by doing things the old ways. For pharma, with roots in old-fashioned strongholds like medicine and manufacturing, these are painful changes.

As anyone in the industry can tell you, though, these changes have begun. Just as just-in-time manufacturing took over in the 1980s and 1990s, engagement is slowly, slowly becoming the way that marketers and communicators are learning to work with their audiences.

It’s not, as the hashtag goes, optional. #Adaptordie might sound pithy and edgy, but it’s true. Imagine a pharmaceutical company that refused to have any website presence – no corporate site, no brand sites, nothing. Do you think it would be taken seriously? Do you think it would be around for long? Probably not. Yet if you tried to make that argument 15 years ago, you’d have been met with utter skepticism.

We’re in the midst of that same conversation. Convincing pharma companies of the need to join social media is a battle that is, if not won, at least well underway, thank goodness. But what to do once you get there? That’s the big battleground at present.

Yes indeed, companies would be far more comfortable without open Facebook walls, only posting links to pre-approved press releases. But the best are starting to realize that engagement is not a terrifying, ticking time bomb. (For proof, see BI’s Facebook page.)

The next step is to proactively start engaging conversations.

#Adaptordie brings to mind dramatic spear-rattling movie-montage scenes of action and drama. In practice, the current pharma “adaptation” is not much like that. It’s more like trying to lure a scared pet out from under a bed. No sudden movements, no loud noises, and let them see that there’s nothing scary that’s going to swoop down upon them.

Dramatic or not, Solis is right. If pharma doesn’t get the hang of engaging their customers in a real way – and in good time – they will, indeed, die. Slow or fast, dramatically or quietly.

by DJ Edgerton (@wiltonbound)

How much of a role does social media play in influencing policymakers? And how much of a role can – or should – marketing play in crafting those messages for pharmaceutical companies?

It’s a tough question, but before we get to it, take a moment to listen carefully. Hear that high-pitched, faint screaming in the background? That’s someone in your government relations or public affairs office horrified that you’re even asking the question.

He or she is likely twitchy because, historically, pharma’s messaging to political leaders and regulators has traditionally been a careful blend of extraordinarily carefully crafted facts, figures and key points, combined with periodic episodes of running around – typically during the final days of a legislative session – like everyone’s hair is on fire.

The fact is messaging to policymakers – whether it’s a white paper or a tweet – is fundamentally different, with its own set of rules and concerns. And those responsible for government relations in a large pharmaceutical operation are rightly concerned that such messaging should be tightly controlled. So against that backdrop, does the sometimes wild-west world of social media have a role?

Increasingly, the answer is yes – because it works.

Elected officials are turning to social networks both as a channel to communicate with voters and as a way to stay informed about constituent concerns. Fleishman-Hillard reports that, in Europe, there’s a rapid uptake of social technology by members of the European Parliament.

Findings included:

• 69% of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) use social networks such as Facebook to communicate with voters;
• 34% are now on Twitter, compared to 21% in the first report;
• 44% are using YouTube as a means to reach their constituents
• Slightly over one-quarter of MEPs are using blogs as a means to express their opinions directly

In the U.S., the Congressional Management Foundation released a survey of members of Congress (MOCs) and their senior staff on how MOCs communicate and what matters to them.  When it comes to social media, they were asked the question “In your opinion, how important are the following for understanding constituents’ views and opinions?” Findings included:

• Of the 14 choices, traditional means such as events and town hall meetings took top spots, but Facebook landed in 7th place (with 64% saying that Facebook was either Very or Somewhat Important), above Twitter and YouTube which were 11th and 12th, respectively.
• Conversely when asked to rank the importance of various vehicles for conveying the opinion of the MOC to constituents, 74% of MOCs ranked Facebook as either Very or Somewhat Important.

What do these findings mean? It’s easier to say what they don’t mean: They don’t mean that social media, owned by the marketing department, will abruptly take on most government-relations messaging anytime soon – it’s an entirely different world, requiring different expertise, and the most crucial conversations and relationships are still at the personal, one-to-one level. However, the research is also pretty clear: Politicians are embracing social media, albeit slowly, and they are using it to take the pulse of their constituents’ concerns.

While pharma’s marketing-based social media communicators may never be in the driver’s seat for this messaging, we shouldn’t be surprised if, increasingly, they’re asked for directions along the way.

by Krissy Goelz (@krisgoelz)

Recently, we were asked what we thought about how Google+ could affect healthcare, by someone who had read an Xconomy post on the same question.

So, does this newest, mega-hyped social network have the potential to really transform the industry? As you’ve seen with our many point/counterpoint articles, we like to pick up an issue and look at it from all different sides. And certainly this question has a few possible answers. Let’s look at them.

“Yes! Google+ is already transforming healthcare.”

Like the rest of Google+, it’s getting there, just maybe a little more slowly than we expected. As one piece of evidence, just look at this list (curated by Ed Bennett of the University of Maryland Medical Center) of hospitals on Google+. (You probably know Ed from his encyclopedic and invaluable Hospital Social Network List.) It’s not huge, but it’s a sign. Hospitals realize that they need to find new ways of communicating and advertising in order to survive in an ever more competitive. They haven’t historically been known for being cutting-edge in social media, so you could argue that their presence on Google+ is a sign that it’s gaining mainstream acceptance.

The main way in which Google+ could change healthcare, or any industry, is in its revolutionizing the concept of sharing. Thanks to Google+, sharing is no longer an all-or-nothing proposition. And that, friends, is what will change the game. You don’t want everyone you know to be privy to your health history – you want that information available only to a very select group of people, who can only do very select types of things with your data. A year ago, social networking didn’t offer that ability. Today, thanks to Google+, it’s not only feasible, but extant.

“No! Google+ won’t have much effect on healthcare at all.”

On the other hand, it’s not likely, the skeptics say, that Google+ could transform an industry when it can barely transform itself into a social network. This is mostly a reaction borne of the disappointment people feel. The network arrived like a cannon blast, but has since fallen to more like kazoo-level excitement. Some pessimists say it’s never going to rise above that level. A social network does need a good structure, but it also needs the user-supplied content to succeed. Without that, it’s just a skeleton. So with people not using Google+… well, if it falls in the forest, will anyone care?

“Maybe? Google+ could matter to healthcare… or it could not.”

The potential effect of Google+ on healthcare depends upon the long-term health of Google+. Thus far, reports of its death, like Mark Twain’s, have been greatly exaggerated. Don’t forget that Facebook didn’t come out of nowhere; it’s just that when anything hits its tipping point, it seems to. Perhaps Google+ will come to nothing, and then, obviously, it won’t change healthcare. But what if its biggest rival, Facebook, does put a foot wrong, and Google+ seizes the opportunity? Then, it may change our social networking, our relation to friends and family, and, certainly, it could also change our healthcare.

Bottom line? It’s too soon to know… but it might not be Google+ who does it.

I can’t in good conscience be as optimistic as Rich Whalley and Steve Dickman, the authors ofthe original post that brought up this topic. They seem to believe pretty wholeheartedly that Google+ is changing the healthcare game. But while the geeks (and I count myself among them) were all thrilled about Google+, in the months since its launch, it’s fallen fallow – and I don’t know for sure if it can come back.

However, what does intrigue me was something our friend Jon Richman had to say recently about the new Facebook Timeline – and, in particular, the new ability to add “health and wellness” updates. Here’s a bit of what he had to say:

They even suggest a few to get you started (“Broke a Bone”, “Had a Surgery”, “Overcame an Illness”). However, you can put in anything you want here. One of the big reasons why people don’t share health information publicly, including Facebook, is because they don’t see others doing it. It’s not the norm. Well, sharing your location wasn’t the norm a few years ago, but people started doing it via “checkins” and now it’s pretty common among a large percentage of people. The question is whether this will extend to sharing health information.

My prediction is that it will. Not today or tomorrow, but in the near future. The tipping point will be when people start noticing some benefit for sharing this information. There really isn’t much incentive now. However, if you knew that you’d get better care by sharing this information, you probably would.

That, to me, is the crux of the matter. When we can use social networks to help patients help themselves faster and better than they could be cared for otherwise – that’s the transformation, the tipping point, the revolution.

So what do you think? Is Google+ going to revolutionize healthcare? Is Facebook? Do social networks have this capability at all? And if they do, what will patients use it for – what will that killer-app functionality be?

by Jason Brandt (@jasondmg3)

1. I don’t understand any of this stuff.
2. Who has the time to really use this stuff anyway?
3. No real business can afford to have employees wasting their time on this stuff when they should be busy working.
4. It’s just a geek thing. Nobody with a life really uses this stuff.
5. It’s just a kid thing. Nobody over 20 really uses this stuff.
6. Even if this new stuff has some applications for some industries, but in healthcare, it’s just too difficult. It will never work here.
7. Even if we wanted to see if this new stuff could work here, we can’t try it yet. We have to wait for the FDA to explain exactly what we can and can’t do.
8. Even if we did try this new stuff, who would own the project? IT? Marketing? Communications? We can’t all try to share it, it’ll be a disaster.

Raise your hand if you’ve heard someone say that about social networks, smartphone apps, blogging or any other type of social digital technology over the last few years.

Now, if you’ve been in this industry over 15 years, look at that list again… and raise your hand if you heard someone say that about websites in the mid-1990s.

The more things change, eh?

As funny as it sounds, people were scared to death of websites – once they stopped scoffing at them. They’d waste employees’ time, they’d never be accessible to most consumers, they’d invite a crippling deluge of adverse event reports from the fanatics who would find them, and the FDA would shut the whole company down if you tried to say anything anyway.

The double-edged sword that breakthroughs carry (in communication technology or anything else) is that they are entirely unformed. They do not come with guidelines. They do not come with user manuals. You can’t always tell which will catch on. You can’t always tell how people will use them. You can’t always tell what next-generations they will spawn.

This is uncertainty. This is change. This is movement.  This is scary as hell.

But the thing is, it’s not. It is not uncertain, it is not movement or change. It is not new. It is the exact same argument about the exact same ideas – just with a new specific target.

Healthy skepticism is healthy. It can keep you from wasting time, money and resources. It can keep you asking questions. It can keep you thinking critically and strategically.

But unhealthy skepticism is paralyzing, debilitating, deadly. Today, you’d laugh at any company who thought having an online presence was a waste, or who wouldn’t give their desk-based staff internet access. It would be ludicrous.

So, how do you keep the balance between healthy skepticism – and asking the same fear-based questions from decades past?

Here, we get our hands dirty with new technology. We take it apart, play with it, figure out what we’d like to have it for ourselves, and start to piece it into our plans. But we don’t throw out what we’ve got that’s already working. Movies didn’t disappear after TV, and TV hasn’t disappeared because of the internet. The new pieces – the ones that last – learn how to play with the old ones, and vice versa.

How do you stop asking the same old questions?

by Briana Campbell (@MsMatchGirl)

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, so for companies to succeed, they need to either dream big or go home. However, in a competitive world, turning a dream into reality requires action.

With social media becoming a formidable communication tool, pharma and health care companies are devising new strategies to communicate with patients, consumers, partners, and internal constituents. Whether it’s creating branded messages for Facebook, using Twitter to direct people to the corporate website or other relevant content, launching a mobile app to bring interactive information to people’s fingertips, or setting up a Yammer community for employees, everyone has their eye on social media and how it can be used to support marketing efforts, build sales and deliver a point of differentiation.

To stay organized, encourage productivity and support goals, many organized people create to-do lists. When it comes to social media, with all this focus on what needs to get done, it’s easy to lose sight of what you should not do:

Don’t rely on the spaghetti strategy. In a rush to have a social media presence, individuals and organizations established a presence on many social networks, but without forethought to what they’re trying to achieve and the best platform to reach their goals. Is it enough to have a large base of followers? Are you just moving your website content without leveraging different audience dynamics? Is the basis of your strategy “me too”? Are patients looking for active communities, promotional materials or health-related information? Don’t just “throw things out there” and hope it sticks.

Don’t put social media on a checklist. Creating a social media presence might have been on your 2008 checklist. Today it’s about nurturing your networks, and being creative and nimble in response to change. For example, commenting changes to Facebook, have spurred many pharmaceutical companies to pull down their Facebook pages or replace disease-specific information with corporate communication. Don’t assume you can put up a presence and walk away from it.

Don’t suck all the air out of the room. Pharma communication has traditionally been a one-way street with companies providing information and patients, doctors and others consuming it. We’re in a different world where everyone is part of the conversation. While there are restrictions in the types of interactions pharma can participate in, there are no limitations on listening in to what consumers and patients are saying. Don’t forget to “take the temperature” to understand how messages are being perceived so you can alter your strategy accordingly.

Don’t post the same updates on all of your social networks. Of course there are some messages, such as product recalls, that may be appropriate for your entire customer base, but don’t assume people use all their social networks the same way. Delve into the demographics on the platforms you participate in and then tailor messages to the specific audience. Every post, reply or retweet is a chance to deliver additional messaging to support your overall communication efforts.

Don’t lollygag. We may all be gray-haired in rocking chairs by the time the FDA gets around to issuing formal social media guidelines. Rather than wait for that day to occur, begin setting your own internal policies and best practices that are in accordance with industry guidelines so you can move forward.

It’s easy to forget what you don’t want to do. Figure out the things that are keeping you from achieving your social media goals, and don’t do them.

What’s on your to don’t list that’s keeping you from reaching your social media goals?

The Defining Moments series looks back at the biggest events of 2010 to see what we can learn from them here at P&P, to work better in our calling, in 2011 and beyond.

It Gets Better

The Trevor Project

On September 22, 2010, a skinny, redheaded 18-year-old changed education and laws across the country. That would be a wonderful achievement, except that Tyler Clementi did it by killing himself. It happened in a string of four days out of his first month of college – facilitated, it’s worth mentioning, by laptops, webcams, cell phones, text messaging, Skype, Twitter, message boards and Facebook.

Sunday, he asked his roommate, Dharun Ravi, for privacy. Dharun went to the room of a third freshman, Molly Wei. Once there, he used her laptop to view the webcam on his own laptop, left in his and Tyler’s room. (One assumes that before he left, he set Skype to automatically answer incoming calls.) Dharun spied Tyler and his guest (another male) kissing and Tweeted about it.

Tuesday morning, Tyler saw Dharun’s Twitter feed, and in considering how to handle the situation, posted his dilemma on a message board. That evening, Tyler texted Dharun with the same request, and he agreed, but arranged the same setup, and tweeted about it. Tyler, moved the laptop and told their resident assistant, who had him report the situation in writing.

Apparently he situation bothered Tyler more than he let on. Apparently he had not yet come out to his family. Apparently, although he was academically and musically gifted, he’d felt “very defeated by [high school] and hated the whole thing”. Apparently he didn’t see a way that the situation could resolve itself positively. Whatever he was thinking and feeling, that Wednesday night, Tyler posted “jumping off the gw bridge sorry” on Facebook from a newly downloaded mobile app and committed suicide before two witnesses.

It was just one of a string of youth suicides, many related to the child being, or being perceived as, gay. But Tyler Clementi’s was the tipping point. Since then, anti-bullying resolutions, proposals, public vigils and laws have taken place at the district, state and federal level. There are, clearly, many important lessons that can be learned from this tragic situation. Let’s just touch on two.

We have to educate kids about the implications of digital information. While a trial has not yet happened (and Ravi’s lawyers are asking for a dismissal), Dharun Ravi does not seem to have premeditated a complex campaign to drive Tyler Clementi to kill himself. He seems to have been possibly homophobic, but mostly just simply, stupidly, cruelly thoughtless. Making a secret public was just a joke. Tweeting was just fast and funny. He was just goofing around in his friend’s room, bored on a school night. It wasn’t anything that could have serious implications. Except, of course, it could, and it did. Tyler Clementi is dead, and Dharun Ravi could spend five years in prison.

This is the most extreme example of the blasé attitude many youth have toward sharing information online. Not all digital natives fully understand that it is permanent and public, and something teenagers through the ages have had problems understanding: a moment’s whim can have lifelong consequences.

All of us who work with these media have a responsibility to make sure they’re understood: not just by our bosses, colleagues and clients, but to the kids in our houses and our communities. We’re shepherding these technologies into the mainstream, and there’s an obligation that goes with that.

We have the ability to make something good out of something bad. The Trevor Project and The It Gets Better Project are two organizations who have stepped up to provide positive messages and encouragement for kids floundering, dealing with adolescence and bullying.

This is a lesson that should not be new to us in pharma: that digital media can assist us in taking something awful to make a positive movement to save lives. Support groups like Planet Cancer and Psoriasis Cure Now are given worldwide reach and power; and harness abilities like shared video for awareness-raising efforts like contests. Let’s never forget that these media can reach the patients who are most self-conscious, most afraid, most ashamed: the patients, in short, who need information, empathy and advice most of all .

by Briana Campbell (@MsMatchGirl)

Just the other day Richard Meyer posted an article entitled, “STOP! Social Media Is Not the Answer” in which he makes a strong case against pharma marketers turning to social media for their campaigns. He points out that people don’t want to connect with their drugs on social networks. He points out that it doesn’t work for drug companies because they have a long history of not responding to consumers’ feedback.

Great points, but not ones with which we necessarily agree.

Let’s take a step back from whether pharma brands should or should not be on social networks. The fact is that they are.

Because an industry has historically ignored their customers’ needs does not mean that they should stay on that road. What has worked, or been the status quo, in the past, is not going to fly going forward. And even if patients may be hesitant right this second to interact with a drug manufacturer on Twitter or Facebook, that doesn’t mean they will feel the same in the future. The very near future. Social media platforms and their usage is growing exponentially and marketers who don’t take advantage of them are going to lose out in the long run.

So. Now that we’ve stated our position, which social network to use? Where to begin?

The big players in the social media space right now – Facebook, Twitter, Google+,  LinkedIn – all have their high points and their low. And, while they all offer a space to connect, those spaces are very different.

So, where does pharma fit? And is there a right answer? Where should they be?

Facebook: Everyone is on Facebook. And their mother. It’s where companies should be to reach the most people. While recent changes in their policies have some companies running scared, there are tools available (like Zemoga’s patented Semantic Filter for Social Media Moderation) that can help companies jump this hurdle, and reply to consumers in a timely manner. Facebook is where companies should be to spread their message to the most people – and where other people can very easily assist in spreading that message. Looking to market to your consumer, then Facebook is where it’s at.

Twitter: While a lot less people are active on Twitter than are on Facebook, Twitter is a great platform for customer service. With listening tools, a company can see who is talking about them and what they are saying. And, with proper community management (yes, that probably means a dedicated person or group of people), the company can reach out to those people who are talking about them – they can address their questions, concerns and even quell a bad situation, all in 140 characters.

Google+: This is the new kid on the block, and where it will go… That’s really hard to say. But the community is growing. People are sharing more there than they are on Twitter and it has had the fastest growth of all the networks. Google+ is the the unknown “x” right now. But if I were a pharma marketer, I think I’d hop on those brand/business pages the moment they opened. In a year, it is where their target market is going to be living.

LinkedIn: Not necessarily the place to go to connect with customers, but certainly a great social site for business. There are several groups dedicated to pharma marketing where marketers can not only post and share ideas, position themselves as thought leaders in the space, but drum up a little new business. A smart pharma marketer will be on LinkedIn, answering questions about the space or their product in the many forums that are on the site.

There are no easy answers when it comes to pharma marketing in the social sphere. There is only the fact that social media platforms are the direction in which marketing, overall, is moving. And if pharma doesn’t change their mindset and get on board, they are going to be left behind.

by Briana Campbell (@MsMatchGirl)

Wrath. Sloth. Greed. Gluttony. Lust. Envy. Pride.

The seven deadly sins.

In June of this year, PM360 laid out the Seven Deadly Sins of Pharma Marketing (you can take a peek at the digital edition here). And Dave Sonderman laid out his accompanying thoughts on the unintentional sins in a post on the GSW Worldwide blog. In light of Facebook’s latest position on walls for pharma companies, we thought it would be interesting to re-visit those old no-nos with a fresh, and more social, spin.

Because, while those articles may only be from 2 months ago, a lot can change, and has, in the world of social media in that time.

Here are seven ways you can really mess up your company’s social media outreach:

Don’t listen. There are a lot of tools available for nearly every social media channel you can imagine. And you need to utilize them. Just because your brand does not have a presence on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn (or any number of other social platforms) does not mean that people are not talking about it there. Use the right tools and find out what people are saying about you.

Don’t respond. Especially with the changes to the Facebook wall for pharma, it’s crucial to have a response for every inquiry. Taking down someone’s comment of your wall? Make sure to respond to the person when you do. No response or explanation might just put you on a path to bigger problems or more unsavory comments.

Don’t react. It’s possible that you have only one person managing your social channels. It’s also possible that you have a couple of people monitoring them, in addition to whatever their full time position may be. But your brand needs to react. Pharma companies are bogged down in legal, making sure not to make any misstep in the eyes of the FDA, but this should not be an excuse for not offering a timely reaction.

Don’t reach out. Are people talking about your brand? Are their influencers blogging about you or Tweeting your praises or negative reactions to your brand? Are there people talking about your space but not your product – and you want in? You need to be proactive and reach out to them. Reach out and say hello and engage those who are actively engaging those around them.

Don’t be timely. Having an editorial calendar is important in any social media campaign or engagement. But pharma, as we all know, is a space where the conversation is constantly changing. Make sure to have enough flexibility in your editorial calendar that you can make changes that will keep your blog, Tweets and Facebook page current with the conversation that’s happening around you right now.

Don’t follow up. This might sound similar to some of the don’ts we mentioned earlier, but it’s just enough different that it deserves its own point. Are you organizing or attending conferences? Hosting events? Bringing people together for a moment and not sustaining that engagement is a surefire way to lose their interest in the future.

View it as advertising. Social media can be an important and integral part of your brand’s marketing plan. But it’s not the same tool as traditional advertising and cannot/should not be viewed or measured in the same way. The ROI uses an entirely separate set of (constantly evolving) measurement tools. No matter your business.

Social media platforms are still relatively new in the grand media landscape. It’s important to remember that as they evolve, we, as marketers, need to be flexible enough to evolve with them.