About a week and a half ago, I wrote a post called “10 Things I’m Tired of Hearing About Pharma Social Media.” As you might imagine, it stirred up a little controversy (check out the comments and discussion at the end of the post). The big concern that some people had was that if we stop talking about these “10 Things” then some “beginners” in the area of social media will suffer. So, in response, I put together a post called “The Beginner’s Guide to Pharma Social Media.” It included a ton of resources for any beginners who really want to catch up. I also promised that I’d write the positive version of the “10 Things” post by focusing  more positive areas. That’s why today you’re getting “10 Things I’d Like to Start Hearing About Pharma Social Media.”

These are the areas where I think the conversation should be headed and where social media may truly benefit healthcare overall and also be a viable communications channel for pharma and healthcare companies. I wrote the first “10 things” based on near direct quotes I’ve heard from people regarding pharma social media. I’ll do the same here, but these are quotes I’ve yet to hear, but would like to.

10 Things I’d Like to Hear About Pharma Social Media

1. “Participating in social media is a risk for us, but we’re going to do it anyway because we think it’s the right thing for patients.”

Notice that I didn’t say,” the right thing for our market share.” It might very well be beneficial for market share, but that can’t be the only reason why you get involved. You have to get into it because there are people that can benefit from your knowledge about your products. I’m specifically thinking about cases, for example, where there is dangerously inaccurate information about your products published on a disscusion forum. If some random person on a forum somewhere says that it’s “probably” safe to take 10 of your pills at once and you know that this will kill someone, shouldn’t you say something? Here’s how I explained how pharma companies can do this in an objective and beneficial way during my FDA public hearing testimony.

2. “We’ve got a rock-solid measurement plan in place for our social media efforts.”

This would, of course, be in complete opposition to comments like: “there’s no way to effectively measure social media efforts.” There’s a way to measure everything. I explained this in the first “10 Things” post and recommended that you visit Olivier Blanchard’s site, which is completely dedicated to this topic, and read everything. Bottom line, if you can track it, you can measure it. If you can measure it, you can get to an ROI (or certainly very close to it and much closer than you are now). Here are 100 things you can start tracking right now. Don’t throw your hands up in the air until you’ve checked out every one of these.

3. “Our social media efforts are completely integrated into the rest of our marketing efforts.”

Ahh, music to my ears. As I’ve always said, don’t create a “social media strategy.” Create a great brand strategy and use social media as one of the tactics to deliver on those strategies. Nothing more, nothing less. When I say integrated, I’m not just talking about integrating with your website or even all of your digital marketing activities. I’m talking about everything. Online, offline. Remotely, in person. PR team to regulatory team. Social media can potentially support all of your communication efforts, but it has to make sense. No one should look at something you’re doing in social media and think, “where in the hell did this come from?”

4. “We’re using social media to prevent another Vioxx [or insert similar drug pulled from the market because of serious safety issues and leading to massive legal issues].”

Yes, this can be done. It’s not simple, but it can be done. Today.

For example, Google is able to predict with precision the future flu infection rates simply based on search terms and volume changes. Hear me discuss this in the following presentation:

Companies like CureTogether are starting to predict disease correlation and drug efficacy based on user-provided data with only a few hundred people in a database. A comprehensive monitoring plan with some powerful statistical analysis could pick out problems before they start. Simply explained…if your new drug is suddenly being talked about with keywords like “heart attack,” “chest pain,” or the like and you’ve never seen this in your clinical trials, you might have signal that something is wrong. It doesn’t mean that there is for sure, but it’s a valuable “canary in the coalmine” that could prevent a major issue.

But first, you’ll have to do some monitoring. A minor detail, I suppose.

5. “We’ve trained everyone in our company on social media and have opened up access to social media sites completely.”

I mean, seriously…you’re going to do this eventually anyway. Why not do it now? Pfizer just did. At least, they did the latter part. Either one would be a good start, but both would be a big step forward. I’m not sure how company leadership can ask their teams to deliver in “emerging” channels (I cringe to think people still call social media “emerging”) and yet block access to these channels. It’s having the exact same impact that preventing your scientists from reading new research papers would have on your R&D. Not good.

Yes, you’ll need to have some rules in place. And, no, productivity won’t suffer. If someone wants to slack off, there are plenty of places online where they can do it that don’t fit in the social media category. If anything, expect it to have a positive impact on morale, which may lead to better productivity.

6. “Social media is how we’re providing meaningful customer service to patients and doctors.”

Yes, it is that simple. Look at it this way: you already provide great service via your call centers, why not provide the same service using a slightly more modern communication technology called the Internet? For example, when someone sends out this tweet (which I promise is a real)…

…maybe you should respond. But how can you respond to this question effectively in just 140 characters? Answer: you can’t. But you should answer and point people in the right direction. Here’s what AstraZeneca responded with:

If people saw the complaint, give them a chance to see the solution as well. Chances are it’ll spread more through social media than the complaint.

7. “Social media has given us a chance to find our biggest brand advocates, so we can start talking with them.”

Yes, even pharma brands have big advocates. Of course, it also has big detractors. Once you get involved in social media, expect to see some of the latter. For an example, review John Mack’s post: “Patient “Unadvocate” Lays Siege to sanofi-aventis VOICES Facebook Page. Where’s S-A’s Social Media VOICE?” John narrates the story of how a Facebook page ran by a division of sanofi-aventis was barraged with negative comments about their chemotherapy, Taxotere, and its side effects. Without going into many more details or discussing how sanofi-aventis should have handled this, I do want to add in one wrinkle.

Instead of the page being dominated by anti-Taxotere comments, what if the opposite happened? There are certainly side effects with this treatment, but there’s also a huge benefit for many people. I’d venture to say that there are a lot of people out their that owe their lives to Taxotere. I’m also sure that these people would be happy to explain that to the world if they thought there was a reason, knew where and when their opinion would be helpful, and had an easy way to share their thoughts. Of course, there isn’t any easier way than Facebook, but the other parts are a bit more of a challenge. Or are they?

If you knew who these advocates were before there was a crisis, then you could turn to them and ask that they weigh in on the situation when something does happen. If you do this successfully, then you don’t have to fight these battles yourself, you let both sides of the story explain it in their own words. You’re free to add in your perspective to the discussion, but which will have more impact on the public’s hearts and minds: your “company line” about the product or an impassioned story from someone who was truly saved by your product? Get to know these people now and get them ready because I’m sure you’ll need them at some point. You can’t try to find them once the crisis starts. It’s too late then.

8. “We’re using our social media resources to do something great for patient advocacy groups.”

Let’s face it. The pharma industry has a lot of resources at its disposal. That’s one of the big criticisms from the public. They don’t like to see their prescription prices increase while they also see more and more commercials for drugs on TV. To them, the solution is obvious: cut the commercials and you can cut the price. Of course, these commercials aren’t cheap; a lot of resources go into making and airing them. At the same time, pharma and healthcare companies have talented people with deep knowledge in specialized areas like government regulations, marketing, pricing and access, managed care, and, of course, medical. And when pharma companies go public with something, people hear about it.

Why not use all of these resources for something more than marketing? Why not use it to create something that’s bigger than your products? Advocacy groups can use your help and you’re looking for a way to reach patients. Instead of figuring out all the legal issues with marketing your product via social media, why not use social media simply to help an advocacy group with their efforts? The benefit to pharma and healthcare companies should be clear. This eliminates many of the legal issues everyone worries about (no fair balance required if you’re not talking about a product), improves the company’s skill and knowledge about social media, and might actually generate some positive PR. Oh yes, and it’s helping an important cause. Some companies have dabbled in this a little bit (see examples on the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki), but most try desperately to connect the program with their product. Resist this temptation for once and see what happens.

9. “Social media is a great opportunity to hear directly from our patients so that we can improve our products.”

You wouldn’t be the first company in the world to do this. Starbucks and Dell are two that have used this concept effectively. They let people submit their suggestions for improving a product, the public votes on their favorites, and then the company actually does those things that have risen to the top of the list. Think about how great this is for everyone. Customers get a place for their voices to be heard and can see that the company is listening and taking their suggestions seriously. The company gets this positive sentiment, but it also gets product engineering, marketing, production, and operations advice…for free. The next big innovation might not come from your lab, but rather your customers.

For pharma, this might mean a suggestion on how to better explain how your product works, a formulation recommendation, or something simple, but with a major impact. Consider when J&J added different color options to it’s popular OneTouch blood glucose monitors. Sales went through the roof all because of a different color shell. While I don’t know for sure, I’d venture to guess that this idea came from a diabetic somewhere. Create a process around this concept and you’ll have a continuous stream of new ideas and innovations.

10. “We’re moved way past the Dose of Digital ’10 Things I’m Tired of Hearing About in Social Media.’”

That right. Until everyone is saying this, then we’re still going to be stuck. I do mean everyone. It’s not enough for one or two companies to move forward. Everyone needs to move forward together. We’ll all learn more together, have a bigger impact on patient health, press government regulations, and find new approaches that benefit everyone. And we’ll do it all more quickly than if we each go at it alone.

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So that’s the new list of what you should start talking about in pharma and healthcare social media. If you didn’t like the idea of not talking about certain topics, that’s okay, but then you do have to promise to start talking about these topics at the same time.

Possibly related posts (auto-generated):

1. 10 Things I’m Tired of Hearing About Pharma Social Media
2. Pharma Should Forget About Social Media Monitoring
3. 9 Simple Steps to Getting Started in Social Media