Regulatory concerns shouldn't deter pharma brands from social media: Weber Shandwick

The findings from the study, Digital Health: Building social confidence in pharma, revealed that companies recognised that they must find ways to engage. It’s now more about ‘how’ rather than ‘if’. Although regulations are a persistent issue, companies say they are more challenged by internal strategy.

The 12-in depth telephone interviews conducted with senior pharma executives responsible for social-media decisions in the US, Europe, Asa and Latin America also revealed that ROI in an unbranded space is another challenge.

Without the ability to correlate social media to profitability, non-branded disease and corporate social efforts are difficult to value. However, pharma marketers are increasingly recognising that listening to patient communities is a powerful benefit of being social. They admit that insights gained through monitoring and assessing social-media postings are comparable to participating in 24-7 focus groups at a fraction of the cost. As a result, pharma companies are now starting small pilot projects.

Marketers agree that social engagement should not assume a one-size-fits-all approach. While Facebook continues to be effective, especially for disease awareness and community building, Pinterest and YouTube can effectively communicate employee culture to job applicants while Twitter can help build a following among government and media audiences with its simple and targeted features.

Interviewees cite a variety of advantages from their existing social-media programs:

• Marketers appreciate the ability to communicate with patients and caregivers in such a direct manner.
• It adds value to patient and physician communities so much so that the social programs managed by these interviewees are driven by the needs of their communities and not by the communication priorities of the pharma company.
• Inaction on social media had led to misinformation about the company and its products.
• Some have gained valuable learning into the lives of patient groups through hosting or monitoring of social communities. For example, one interviewee learned why patients were not complying with a treatment regimen. This insight resulted in a company-sponsored education effort around the advantages of the treatment and led to better patient outcomes as well as business results.
• Marketers view social media as a complementary channel that strengthens key messaging programs. One company’s core priority is to demonstrate how it serves as a trusted partner in health and education, and therefore the communications team uses Twitter to share proceedings from medical congresses with healthcare professionals and journalists. Slideshare is also considered an excellent and cost-effective resource.

Based on the study, Weber Shandwick recommends 10 rules of engagement to build social confidence in the pharmaceutical industry:

Start small: Interviewees agree that starting small, such as with pilot programmes, is key to gaining the experience and assurance they need to build their digital social strategies.

Prepare but be flexible: Many state that preparation is important, principally to anticipate problems and devise solutions. However, interviewees caution against devoting significant resource to developing a fully “buttoned-up” strategy, as it will change and evolve over time.

Focus on content, not channel: Anything you can do offline, you can do online, as long as your content adheres to current regulatory standards. Companies have had difficulties with regulators when they have not followed standards that apply to non-digital rules of communication.

Choose channels wisely: Some interviewees portray industry colleagues as quick to jump into social media simply for the sake of “being there” and they advise on a more strategic approach, especially in choosing platforms.

Ensure transparency and honesty: Interviewees insist on clear rules of engagement and making them plainly visible on all social platforms. Some companies make a digital code of ethics available to both internal and external audiences.

Depute a person and give them full support: Allocating staff resources for social endeavours and providing appropriate training and support are key for successful social programming.

Involve others: Working to gain the support of internal colleagues, especially from legal, regulatory and medical teams is critical.

Ramp up internal education: Sharing the benefits and best practices around social communications will go a long way towards gaining broad support for the medium. Some interviewees are engaging outside experts to promote social platforms to internal company stakeholders.

More resource for social confidence: A large proportion of interviewees find the level of current staff experience to be lacking, while others recognise that they require additional resources to effectively execute social media programmes.

Push the limits of ROI: While no one has answered the unique ROI (return on investment) challenges faced by the pharma industry, it is imperative to persistently seek better ways to articulate the ROI from social media.