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social media engagement

#pharma are you keeping an eye on new social media trends in engagement

Let’s take a look at how social media engagement has changed just within the last couple of years. #pharma are you on top of this?

Social media bypasses traditional media

  • Basically bypassing the broadcasters & mainstream media and filter bubbles
  • Therefore many people turning to social media for primary news source
  • Social media also enables content makers to publish their content again avoiding filter bubbles

Social media controls the news cycle

  • Audience can select information depending on their interests and values
  • Again bypassing the filter bubbles

Social media is more instantaneous

  • Which provides for instant engagement
  • More rapid information sharing
  • Instantaneous dissemination of news, images, audio, video and multimedia content
  • People upload photos/videos for people to view, read and comment on

Messages on social media are short and emotive

  • Thoughts expressed in 140 characters
  • #Hashtags are important and allow to follow information of interest
  • Emotions also bring people to share or interact on social media

Social media encourages people to speak their minds

  • It provides a two way conversation
  • Allows people to express themselves in ways that were not possible before
  • People’s voices are no longer lost
  • People are not afraid to share what they really think and feel

modeling the response you want online #bigpharma

So you want people to look and engage with your content. So you should be doing the same. Model the response you wish to have from your online audience, don’t just expect it.

Reply

  • Social media platforms do not wait
  • They are on 24/7
  • Respond quickly and fast

Comment

  • If you want people to comment on your posts, you have to do the same
  • It shows you have authority
  • It shows you are an expert in the sector
  • It allows you to gain ideas from your audience
  • It allows to build your following
  • It allows to build your brand

Engage

  • It shows you are human
  • It shows you care
  • It shows you are authentic
  • It shows you are real
  • It allows for an exchange of opinions and views
  • It allows to gain deeper insight
  • It allows for CEOs to be in contact with their audience

Share

  • Do not only share your content but share other content that may interest your audience
  • Share on different social media platforms
  • Share to inform people
  • Share to help people

Content

  • Content is king
  • 80% informational and only 20% promotional
  • Who are you creating content for and how will you change their life
  • Ask and engage with your readers for ideas
  • Experiment with different types of posts
  • Look at your archives – some may need updating
  • Experiment with different mediums
  • Write with personality
  • Be human
  • Be authentic

#bigpharma who is your real competitor

So #bigpharma who is your true online competitor?

Mobile

  • Mobile is the future
  • People are using mobile to do everything they do
  • People are using mobile to access social media platforms
  • Try and understand how your online audience wants to use their mobile devices to interact with you
  • Do you have a mobile strategy – if not you are a little late in the game

Followers

  • Creates relationships
  • More followers the more of an authority or expert you are
  • Gauges you online presence
  • Followers today access internet mainly via mobile devices (see mobile above)
  • Engage, create value content and use hashtags to increase following
  • Learn how to keep followers
  • Learn how to get followers

Engagement

  • Social media is all about engagement
  • More engagement means you get more reach
  • Engagement helps build reputation
  • Learn to respond promptly:
    • People expect businesses to respond on social media and fast
    • Respond even when pulled into discussions

  • You learn from your online audience when you engage
  • Engagement helps to create better brand awareness
  • Engagement sets yourself as an authority in the sector

Creativity

  • Create unique content for social media
  • Adapt content to each social media platform
  • Experiment with user-generated content (UCG)
  • Make engaging content
  • Try humor
  • Tell a personal story – not an advertising story
  • Make sure to create content for mobile devices (see mobile above)
  • Create content to digest on the go – make it simple and shorter

Original content

  • Content needs to be valuable
  • Content needs to be relevant
  • Content needs to be original
  • Content needs to be engaging
  • Images need to be original and high quality
  • Your content is not diverse from other #bigpharma – too cookie cutter
  • Avoid posting same corporate content over and over
  • Vanity content does not work well for #bigpharma

2 strong views about #bigpharma on Twitter

Twitter seems to have created 2 waves of conversations around #bigpharma, supportive or unsupportive. Is #bigpharma addressing this in their social media strategy?

Which topics are most common?

  • Maximize profits rather maximizing the number of people they can help
  • Invented diseases
  • Unfair drug pricing
  • Boycotts

What does this say about the interests of the online community?

  • #bigpharma is not addressing community issues
  • #bigpharma is not engaging with online audience
  • #bigpharma is not trusted

We tend to find most of the unsupportive comments?

  • On business & finance posts
  • Promoted tweets probably, due to increased visibility in feed

We tend to find the most supportive comments?

  • Company or corporate handles, probably colleagues and stakeholders sharing corporate posts

How about the use of retweets and mentions?

  • Retweets are mostly affirmative or supportive in nature
  • Mentions are mostly unsupportive

two major shifts #bigpharma needs to know about

How can #bigpharma distinguish itself from all the noise of mass content marketing online? We are seeing two major shifts taking place. First, there is a shift of going from social first to audience first. Basically, this means being *on all the time*. Second, a shift from content scale to content quality. Brands are seeing an evolution from brand centric to creating value, quality content & relationships.

Why the shifts?

  • Too many marketing messages competing for the same audience
  • Brands have taken note that they need to do something different
  • Audience needs and demand are changing
  • A more personalized approach is demanded by the audience
  • A more intelligent approach is requested by the audience
  • Audience wants marketing ads to sound authentic and also be relevant

What do we mean by audience first?

  • Your audience is made up of human beings – real humans
  • Your audience becomes your active contributor – they are shaping your content
  • You always have to be *on* – remember social media does not sleep
  • You need to develop and attend to your audience
  • You need to engage and start a conversation with your audience
  • Audiences today expect more – gone are the traditional TV, ads print or radio

How can you shift to audience first?

  • Look at your data
  • Start asking your audience questions
  • Start leveraging your metrics early on during content development
  • Perform an audit of your content and see which content has been performing better
  • Get your audience involved in the development of your content (User Generated Content)

What do we mean by shifting from content scale to quality?

  • It is all about quality content over quantity
  • Content needs to be relevant, informative and fun
  • Post with a purpose and not just for the sake of posting
  • Quality content brings on quality engagement

How can you shift to quality content first?

  • Create value-added content
  • Make sure your content is aligned with what is going on in the world
  • Your audience is changing every day so make sure your content is aligned with the trends
  • Need to understand the different platforms – adapt content to each platform
  • Identify the social media platforms that best suits your content
    • no need to be on all platforms
    • focus on the platforms that your audience are most likely on
    • do not post the exact thing on each platform – a more tailored strategy is more powerful

general rules of social media engagement for pharma

 

Fact social media is about being social. Fact pharma still has a fear of social media. But with learning a few basic techniques and practice those fears can slowly dwindle away. Here are some very general social media rules of engagement for #bigpharma.

Listen to the conversation

  • Listen to what people are talking about
  • Listen to what people are saying about your organization
  • Don’t forget niche conversations

Respond in a timely manner

  • Social media does not sleep
  • Pharma needs to develop a customer service mentality
  • GSK Response Center on Twitter (@GSK_ResponseCtr) is setting an excellent example
  • Do follow others, it is only polite

Do not be tone deaf

  • Be mindful of what is happening around the world:
    • Tragedy,
    • Disaster,
    • Death of a celebrity

Hashtags are a very powerful tool

  • They allow you to join in a conversation
  • They help to identify and connect with an audience
  • They help you to identify what is trending
  • You have more engagement when using hashtags
  • Excellent hashtag research tool for medical field is Symplur

Be relevant and tailor content on every social media platform

  • Frame your content specifically for each different social media platform
  • Different things play differently on different platforms