The time has come after a rounds of voting (and some really long ballots) to announce the winners of the 2011 Dose of Digital Dosie Awards. Rather than explain what the awards are or how they work once again, I’ll let you go back and read this post if you want to know. Let’s get to the good stuff.

This year was different than last year in that there are two different types of awards. First, there is a People’s Choice award that is determined entirely by popular vote. That is, the site/program that gets the most people to come here and vote for it wins. Second, this year, as a new wrinkle, we add Judge’s voting as well. Judge’s were selected from a group of industry leaders who requested to judge the awards or who were nominated by someone else. The Judges were instructed to pick the best of the best, which might not necessarily be the most popular sites. So, while both levels of awards are significant, there was no way for someone to lobby the judges to get more votes and win the award.

Onto the winners…congratulations to each of you. [If you would like to have a PDF of the winner's list, you can get it here: 2011 Dose of Digital Dosie Award Winners (432 downloads)]

First, here are the sites/programs that won in the Judges’ voting.

Judges’ Choice Winners

Round one is over and we have our Finalists for the People’s Choice Dosie Award. Congratulations to the Finalists! It’s now time for everyone to pick the best of the best. We just completed Round one of the popular vote to determine these Finalists. We’re down from almost 500 hopefuls to around 40 Finalists. Now we pick the People’s Choice winners. If you want some background on the Dosie Awards, you can read about them here.

Congratulations to the Finalists for the People’s Choice Award. Interesting to see a few sites/programs that were Dosie Winners last year. But it’s not over yet. You now must vote to determine the People’s Choice Winner and Runner Up in each category. The ballot is below.

[One technical note: unfortunately, we had to eliminate the category for Healthcare Professional Community due to the fact that it was not properly included in the initial ballot, so there were not enough valid votes to make a fair selection. We apologize for the error and will certainly ensure this doesn't happen with next year's awards.]

Here’s the list and the Finalists for the People’s Choice Award in each category. Congratulations to everyone who made the list. Vote your your favorites in the ballot at the end of this post. [Finalists are shown in random order]:

The Winners Announcement

Like last year, all voting will take place online and the final winners will be announced live at a conference. This year, I’m pleased announce that the winners will be announced live at Digital Pharma West, which takes place June 27-30, 2011 in San Francisco. The winners will be announced on June 29. You can find out more information if you’re interested in attending on the conference website. If you’re interested in registering to attend, you can use the discount code “P628DOS” (no quotes when you input) to save 15%. The winners will also be announced on this blog the same day, so don’t worry if you can’t make it.

The Ballot

Here it is…Finalist voting for the 2011 Dose of Digital Dosie People’s Choice winners. You should see the ballot form below. If you don’t, click here to jump to another page to view the ballot and cast your votes. One important note: one ballot per person. We have measures in place to prevent ballot stuffing, so please respect this limit (and we’ll tell the world if we catch you cheating). It ensures everyone’s vote counts.

Feel free to spread the word about your site being selected as a Finalist There’s no rule against blogging, tweeting, or asking for votes. Just share a link to this post. Only the top vote getters move to the next round, so every vote counts. Please note that voting closes on Sunday, June 26 at 11:59 PM EDT.

Thanks for your interest, but voting is now closed.

It’s time once again to vote for the best of the best in pharma and healthcare social media. It’s the 2011 Dose of Digital Dosie Awards. Last year’s awards were a great success and I expect this year to be even bigger. [NOTE: if you know the drill, then jump down to the voting form at the end of this post]

Background

So, what are the Dosie Awards? The Dosie Awards were created to find the best examples of social media in the healthcare industry. The idea came about as the  Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki grew to more than 550 total entries in 2010 with more than 330 of these come directly from pharma and heatlhcare companies. Now the list is even bigger with more than 700 total entries. It’s great to have a list like this (thanks for all of your submissions), but a list of this size begs one big question: which are the best? Who has the best Facebook page? The best YouTube channel? Which patient community is the finest example of social media in healthcare? That’s where the Dosie Awards come in.

Voting Process

Last year, to determine the winners, we relied completely on a popular voting system (i.e., those with the most votes won). There are some great things about doing it this way including the fact that “the people” decide, but there are also some negatives. It’s possible for one site to rally people to vote for their site better than another in order to win, but that didn’t necessarily show which sites were actually the most valuable to users. That was part of the point of last year’s awards. While finding out the best sites, we also got to see social media in action and further demonstrate the point that you can’t control it sometimes. This year we’ll be keeping some of the popular voting features, but also adding in a different judging format.

For the 2011 Dosie Awards, there will be a People’s Choice winner in each category. This People’s Choice winner and runner up will be determined entirely based on popular voting. There will also be gold, silver, and bronze winners in each category. These will be determined by the voting of a large panel of judges.

Last year, every single listing on the Wiki was eligible to win and that’s the same this year. There are no submission fees or applications. If it’s on the Wiki, it’s eligible. The same is true for this year. Since the list has gotten so long,you now have to choose from 700+ entries to pick a winner. So, for each category, we’ll narrow the list down to 5 Finalists for the People’s Choice Award in Round One (today’s voting). You then get to vote on these nominees to select the People’s Choice Winners and runners up (that voting starts on Thurs, June 23).

The categories for this year are the same as last year. Here’s the list:

• Brand-Sponsored Patient Community (Communities created by a pharma or healthcare company for a brand or corporate effort)
• Patient Community – Non-Brand Controlled (Communities created with no direct affiliation to a pharma or healthcare company)
• Healthcare Professional Community (Communities exclusive to healthcare professionals)
• Facebook Page (All pharma and healthcare Facebook pages and apps whether corporate-sponsored or not)
• YouTube Channel (Pharma and healthcare company YouTube pages or videos including corporate and brand specific efforts)
• Twitter Feed (Pharma and healthcare companies using Twitter at a corporate or brand level)
• Company Blog (Pharma and healthcare company created blogs at the corporate or brand level)
• Patient or Caregiver Blog (Blogs created by patients or caregivers, not owned by a pharma or healthcare company)
• Industry Observer Blog (Blogs created by industry observers and commentators…like Dose of Digital)
• Pharma Company of the Year in Social Media

The Winners

Like last year, all voting will take place online and the final winners will be announced live at a conference. This year, I’m pleased announce that the winners will be announced live at Digital Pharma West, which takes place June 27-30, 2011 in San Francisco. The winners will be announced on June 29.  You can find out more information if you’re interested in attending on the conference website. If you’re interested in registering to attend, you can use the discount code ”P628DOS” (no quotes when you input) to save 15%. The winners will also be announced on this blog the same day, so don’t worry if you can’t make it.

The Survey

[EDIT, 6/23: VOTING IS NOW CLOSED]

Here it is…voting for the 2011 Dose of Digital Dosie Awards. You should see the survey form below. If you don’t click here to jump to another page to view the survey. One important note: one survey per person. We have measures in place to prevent ballot stuffing, so please respect this limit (and we’ll tell the world if we catch you cheating). It ensures everyone’s vote counts.

Feel free to spread the word about your site being nominated. There’s no rule against blogging, tweeting, or asking for votes. Just share a link to this post. Only the top vote getters move to the next round, so every vote counts. Please note that voting closes on June 22 at 11:59 PM EDT. On June 23, you’ll have a chance to vote on the Finalists. Check back here on Thursday.
Thanks for your interest, but voting is now closed for this round.

A couple of weeks ago, I announced the 2011 Dosie Awards. Check out this post for all the details. Today’s post is a quick follow up on that post. As I mentioned when I announced the awards (the 2nd annual by the way), I explained that voting this year would be a bit different from 2010. This year’s awards will feature gold, silver, and bronze winners like last year plus a new award, the People’s Choice. The voting for the People’s Choice will be strictly by popular vote (which is how all of last year’s voting happened). However, for the gold, silver, and bronze winners, the voting will be done by a panel of judges. I’m hoping this ensures that the best, but not necessarily the most popular, sites have an equal chance of winning.

Why am I telling you all of this? Simple. I want you to be a judge. Judges will be selected based on relevant experience in either the healthcare industry or digital marketing in general (or both) and, unfortunately, not everyone can be a judge. We’re looking for a good mix of people from inside the industry and outside, on both the “client” and “agency” side, and with varying degrees of experience and areas of expertise. In other words, not all judges will be pharma industry folks. There’s also a finite number of people who can be selected, so please understand if you’re not selected.

To be considered as a judge, all you need to do is fill out the form at the bottom of this post. We’ll contact you in a couple of weeks one way or another. As a judge, you’ll have two responsibilities. Every judge will be asked to review all the nominations in a particular category (or two), for example, pharma industry Facebook pages. Nominated sites include every site on the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki. Your initial round of voting will create a group of finalists. This step is necessary since most categories have more than 40 listings. Your second job will be to vote on the finalists in every category once they’ve been selected. It shouldn’t be much of a time investment when all is said and done. All judges will have their name listed on the judges page with a link to their company or blog. You’ll even get a cool Dosie Judge badge to display on your site. You can also choose to not be listed.

One final thing before the form…sponsorships. One other new addition to the Dosie Awards this year is sponsorships. There were no sponsorships last year and I’ve never had any sponsors or advertisers on this blog. I’m adding sponsorships for one reason this year: all of the money that the sponsors pay will be donated to charity. Specifically, it will all go to the Red Cross to support relief efforts in Japan and in the US after the recent tornadoes and flooding. 100%…I’m not keeping a cent. If you’re interested in sponsoring the Dosie Awards, you can contact me or head over to the sponsor information page for more information.  I’ve already had interest in 3 categories, so hurry up if you’re interested.

Onto the form. Thanks in advance for your support of the awards.

EDIT: May 31…sorry, judges have already been selected and voting has begun. Stay tuned for the People’s Choice categories for the Dosie Awards, as that voting is open to the public.

It’s time once again for the Dose of Digital Dosie Awards. Last year’s awards were a great success and I expect this year to be even bigger. There’s a lot of info in this post, so I’ve tried to break it up a bit into sections, but please try to review everything, as there is important information on the voting process, how to become a judge, and about sponsoring the awards (with all money going to charity).

Background

So, what are the Dosie Awards? The Dosie Awards were created to find the best examples of social media in the healthcare industry. The idea came about as the  Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki grew to more than 550 total entries in 2010 with more than 330 of these come directly from pharma and heatlhcare companies. Now the list is even bigger with more than 700 total entries. It’s great to have a list like this (thanks for all of your submissions), but a list of this size begs one big question: which are the best? Who has the best Facebook page? The best YouTube channel? Which patient community is the finest example of social media in healthcare? That’s where the Dosie Awards come in.

Voting Process

Last year, to determine the winners, we relied completely on a popular voting system (i.e., those with the most votes won). There are some great things about doing it this way including the fact that “the people” decide, but there are also some negatives. It’s possible for one site to rally people to vote for a their site better than another in order to win, but that didn’t necessarily show which sites were actually the most valuable to users. That was part of the point of last year’s awards. While finding out the best sites, we also got to see social media in action and further demonstrate the point that you can’t control it sometimes. This year we’ll be keeping some of the popular voting features, but also adding in a different judging format.

For the 2011 Dosie Awards, there will be a People’s Choice winner in each category. This winner will be determined entirely based on popular voting. There will also be gold, silver, and bronze winners in each category. These will be determined by the voting of a large panel of judges (more info on that in a moment).

Last year, every single listing on the Wiki was eligible to win and that’s the same this year. There are no submission fees or applications. If it’s on the Wiki, it’s eligible. This year, things will be a little different. Since the list has gotten so long, it’s not practical to have people choose from 70+ entries to pick a winner. So, for each category, a group of the judging panel will narrow down the entire list to 10 nominees in each category. The entire judging panel will then vote on these nominees to select the gold, silver, and bronze winners. For the people’s choice category, the same process will be followed. People’s choice voting will be on the nominee list created by the judges in each category versus the entire list. Again, this is to keep the list to a manageable length for people to review and vote. For example, there are currently 108 listings in the Patient Communities (Non-brand controlled) category. That’s a bit too long of a list for people to vote on.

The categories for this year are the same as last year, but with one new addition. Here’s the list:

• Brand-Sponsored Patient Community (Communities created by a pharma or healthcare company for a brand or corporate effort)
• Patient Community – Non-Brand Controlled (Communities created with no direct affiliation to a pharma or healthcare company)
• Healthcare Professional Community (Communities exclusive to healthcare professionals)
• Facebook Page (All pharma and healthcare Facebook pages and apps whether corporate-sponsored or not)
• YouTube Channel (Pharma and healthcare company YouTube pages or videos including corporate and brand specific efforts)
• Twitter Feed (Pharma and healthcare companies using Twitter at a corporate or brand level)
• Company Blog (Pharma and healthcare company created blogs at the corporate or brand level)
• Patient or Caregiver Blog (Blogs created by patients or caregivers, not owned by a pharma or healthcare company)
• Industry Observer Blog (Blogs created by industry observers and commentators…like Dose of Digital)
• Pharma Company of the Year in Social Media

The new category will be:

• Pharma and Healthcare Digital Digital Innovation of the Year

The Winners

Like last year, all voting will take place online and the final winners will be announced live at a conference. This year, I’m pleased announce that the winners will be announced live at Digital Pharma West, which takes place June 27-30, 2011 in San Francisco. The winners will be announced on June 29.  You can find out more information if you’re interested in attending on the conference website. If you’re interested in registering to attend, you can use the discount code ”P628DOS” (no quotes when you input) to save 15%. The winners will also be announced on this blog the same day, so don’t worry if you can’t make it.

Sponsorships

[Edit: 4/28, a few people recommended that some money also go to Red Cross relief efforts in the US after recent tornadoes killed more than 250 people and caused widespread destruction, so I've updated the charity information here.] One other new addition to the Dosie Awards this year is sponsorships. There were no sponsorships last year and I’ve never had any sponsors or advertisers on this blog. I’m adding sponsorships for one reason this year. All the money that the sponsors pay will be donated to charity. Specifically, it will all go to the Red Cross to support relief efforts in Japan and in the US after the recent tornadoes. 100%…I’m not keeping a cent. If you’re interested in sponsoring the Dosie Awards, you can contact me or head over to the sponsor information page for more information. The basic idea for sponsorships is that there will be one overall sponsor and a sponsor for each category. It won’t be cheap, but it’s all for charity and you’ll get exposure to a huge portion of the pharma and healthcare industry. I’ve already had interest in 3 categories, so hurry up if you’re interested.

Spreading the Word

Since this is a contest primarily about social media, please help spread the word by tweeting or posting to Facebook (or your favorite social network). If you tweet, add on the #dosie hashtag and follow along to see all the discussion about the awards.

Becoming a Judge

I’ve already mentioned that there will be a large panel of judges this year that will help select the nominees for each category and to ultimately pick the winners. So, how do you become a judge? Simple…there are two ways. First, I’ll be contacting a number of people directly and asking them to participate as judges. The goal is to have both people from inside and outside the industry serve as judges. Alternatively, you can fill out the form at the bottom of this post. Judges will be selected based on relevant experience in either the healthcare industry or digital marketing in general (or both). Not everyone who requests to be a judge will be selected. We’re looking for a good mix of people from inside the industry and outside, on both the “client” and “agency” side, and with varying degrees of experience and areas of expertise. There’s also a finite number of people who can be selected, so please understand if you’re not selected. We’ll contact you in approximately 2 weeks whether you’re selected or not.

In Closing…

Stay tuned for more information about the 2nd Annual Dose of Digital Dosie Awards and thanks in advance for your support of the awards. We’re looking forward to settling who’s the best.

Okay…I’ll admit it. It’s been way too long since I updated the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki. I won’t say exactly how long, but let’s call it 24 weeks (sounds better than 6 months). Thank you all for continuing to send me updates and for accepting my promises that I’d be updating soon. If you’d like to submit something for the Wiki, there’s a form at the end of this post. Please feel free.

Please take a moment and read through the entire post. I’ve got some information in here about this year’s Dosie Awards at the end of this post that I’d like everyone to take a look at (including how to become a judge or sponsor).

This update is the biggest ever with 56 new entries. Including…

• 13 new industry Facebook pages
• 6 new HCP communities and 6 new patient communities (non-brand controlled)
• 9 new Twitter accounts
• 2 new industry blogs

One other new thing is the removal of a few accounts that no longer exist. I’m hoping this isn’t a trend, but we’ll see. Of note, these were NOT removed because of any intervention by the FDA (specifically DDMAC), so don’t panic.

And a final note, get your submissions in now if you’ve got them. It’s time once again for the Dose of Digital Dosie Awards. Last year’s awards were a great success and I expect this year to be even bigger. The rules will be a little different this time, but the nominees and winners will be selected from the Wiki. There are no submission fees or applications. If it’s on the Wiki, it’s a nominee.

More details on how the awards work will be coming soon, but this year we’ll have a “People’s Choice” award for each category and the gold, silver, and bronze Dosie award winners will be selected by a (large) panel of judges (here are last year’s winners). If you’re interested in being a judge, just send me a tweet (@jonmrich) and let me know. I’ll be putting together the panel soon. No guarantees you’ll be a judge, as I still need to figure out a final number.

One other new addition to the Dosie Awards this year is sponsorships. There were no sponsorships last year and I’ve never had any sponsors or advertisers on this blog. I’m adding sponsorships for one reason this year. All the money that the sponsors pay will be donated to charity. Specifically, it will all go to the Red Cross to support relief efforts in Japan. 100%…I’m not keeping a cent. If you’re interested in sponsoring the Dosies, you can contact me or head over to the sponsor information page for more information. I’ll be posting more information soon, but the basic idea is that there will be one overall sponsor and a sponsor for each category. It won’t be cheap, but it’s all for charity and you’ll get exposure to a huge portion of the pharma and healthcare industry.

Thanks again for all the submissions to the Wiki, keep them coming.

As a reminder, the Dosie awards were created to find the best examples of social media in pharma and healthcare. The nominees for the awards were drawn from the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki you’ve seen on this blog. If a site or program was listed on the Wiki, then it was a nominee. This means there were about 550 nominees, so we had to pare this list down to a set of finalists. You voted for the finalists and we revealed the finalists a few weeks ago. You then voted on the finalists to pick the ultimate winners and now we have them. For the Pharma Company of the Year in Social Media award, a company needed to have at least five entries on the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki to be nominated.

A few stats about the contest:

• 500+ nominees
• 700+ #dosie tweets
• 400+ Facebook shares
• 3500+ votes over two rounds

For those who have wondered who actually voted in this contest, the results might surprise you. We asked an optional question in the ballots and here is how people identified themselves in the final round voting:

• >50% “patients”
• 15% “caregivers”
• 10% “industry service providers”
• 5% pharma/healthcare manufacturer employee
• 5% HCP
• 4% “consumer advocate”

And, for those who are wondering which pharma companies had the most Finalists, wonder no more:

• Johnson & Johnson – 6
• sanofi-aventis – 4
• Novo Nordisk – 3
• Pfizer – 3
• Roche – 2

This contest also yielded some really interesting insights for me. I’ll share some specifics about that later in this post. In fact, the Dosie Awards were a bit of an experiment and demonstration. What I wanted to demonstrate was three things:

1. The power of social media
2. Our lack of control of social media
3. The tremendous opportunities of social media in pharma and healthcare

Based on the participation in voting, the winners, and many of your comments, the demonstration was a success, but more on that later. Let’s get on with the winners. If you don’t like or agree with the winners, don’t blame me…you voted for them. I’ve included a bit of my commentary about the contest and the Finalists and winners later in this post.

2010 Dosie Award Winners

-

There were 10 categories in this year’s awards:

• Brand-Sponsored Patient Community (Communities created by a pharma or healthcare company for a brand or corporate effort)
• Patient Community – Non-Brand Controlled (Communities created with no direct affiliation to a pharma or healthcare company)
• Healthcare Professional Community (Communities exclusive to healthcare professionals)
• Facebook Page (All pharma and healthcare Facebook pages and apps whether corporate-sponsored or not)
• YouTube Channel (Pharma and healthcare company YouTube pages or videos including corporate and brand specific efforts)
• Twitter Feed (Pharma and healthcare companies using Twitter at a corporate or brand level)
• Company Blog (Pharma and healthcare company created blogs at the corporate or brand level)
• Patient or Caregiver Blog (Blogs created by patients or caregivers, not owned by a pharma or healthcare company)
• Industry Observer Blog (Blogs created by industry observers and commentators…like Dose of Digital)
• Pharma Company of the Year in Social Media

There are three award levels in the Dosie Awards: gold, silver, and bronze. Each category has five Finalists. Just making it as a Finalist is quite an achievement since some categories had as many as 50 nominees. All Finalists can proudly display the Finalist badge on their site to show the world that, according to the voters, you’re among the best in healthcare social media. Here’s the nifty Finalist badge:

The winners will  get to display either the gold, silver, or bronze Dosie Award badge on their site:

Below I’ve listed the finalists for each category followed by the winners at each level (gold, silver, bronze).

Enough already…here are the winners:

Best Brand-Sponsored Patient Community

Accu-Chek Diabetes Link

Children with Diabetes

Crohn’s and Me

Diabetes Handprint

Voices of Diabetes

Winners

Children with Diabetes

Diabetes Handprint

Accu-Chek Diabetes Link

Best Patient Community – Non-Brand Controlled

American Diabetes Association

Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America

dLife

Juvenation

TuDiabetes

Winners

dLife

TuDiabetes

Juvenation

Best Healthcare Professional Community

doc2doc

Medscape Physician Connect

Ozmosis

Sermo

SocialMD — this site was voted in as a Finalist, but was not eligible to win since it no longer exists

Winners

Medscape Physician Connect

doc2doc

Sermo

Best Facebook Page (pharma or healthcare company)

Changing Possibilities in Hemophilia

The Coalition to Prevent Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT)

Gardasil

Johnson & Johnson

sanofi-aventis VOICES

Winners

Johnson & Johnson Corporate

The Coalition to Prevent Deep Vein Thrombosis

Changing Possibilities in Hemophilia

Best YouTube Channel (pharma or healthcare company)

GoInsulin

Johnson & Johnson Health Channel

Mayo Clinic

Pfizer Europe

Pfizer UK

Winners

Go Insulin

Johnson & Johnson Health Channel

Mayo Clinic

Best Twitter Feed (pharma or healthcare company)

AF Stat (@AF-Stat)

Expressions of Kindness (@xpresskindness)

Johnson & Johnson (@jnjcomm)

Race With Insulin (@racewithinsulin)

Roche (@roche_com)

Winners

@racewithinsulin

@jnjcomm

@xpresskindness

Best Company Blog (pharma or healthcare company)

Advancing the Science (Mayo Clinic)

GSK More than Medicine

J&J BTW

Pfizer Think Science Now

Red Cross Chat

Winners

Advancing the Science (Mayo Clinic)

JNJ BTW (Johnson & Johnson)

Red Cross Chat

Best Patient or Caregiver Blog

Beyond Meds

But You Don’t Look Sick

DiabetesMine

Lemonade Life

Six Until Me

Winners

Six Until Me

Diabetes Mine

But You Don’t Look Sick

Best Industry Observer Blog

ePharma Rx

Pharmalot

Pixels and Pills

Roska Digital

Wall Street Journal Health Blog

Winners

ePharma Rx

Wall Street Journal Health Blog

Pixels and Pills

Pharma Company of the Year in Social Media

Allergan

AstraZeneca

Bayer

Boehringer Ingelheim

Eli Lilly

GSK

Johnson & Johnson

Novartis

Novo Nordisk

Pfizer

Roche

sanofi-aventis

Shire

Winners

Roche

Johnson & Johnson

Novartis

Congratulations to all the winners! If you would like to display the badge on your site, you can copy it off this page or contact me and I can get you a higher quality image that you can adjust to whatever size you need.

Commentary

-

I should say at this point that the Finalists and winners didn’t at all surprise me. That doesn’t mean that I agree that they are necessarily the best examples out there, but rather that what happened was exactly what I expected to happen. That is, the only thing I knew for sure was that it would be impossible to predict the winners or Finalists and that literally anyone could win. That’s the thing with social media and is part of my demonstration…you don’t control the conversation, you don’t control the debate, and you don’t control the outcome. If you try to exert control, it just might all collapse around you and make matters even worse. I chose not to try to influence the voting in any way or restrict how many people and who could vote for what. The only rule was that there was one vote per person. Anyone was free to vote for who they wanted, for whatever reasons they wanted.

You might argue that this format means that the awards wouldn’t necessarily find the best examples, but the most popular. That’s not quite true. What this format does is exactly what I outlined in my original post about the awards. When I explained that there wasn’t formal voting criteria, I did add that this: “This year’s Dosie Awards will focus on finding the best uses of social media in pharma and healthcare.” So, you might argue that those sites and programs that used social media the best (i.e., most effectively) were the ones that won. In many cases, this was true. Some winners and Finalists are great programs and they effectively used social media to get people to vote for them. Other programs that I’d say are mediocre won because they were able to use social media to get people to support them. This leads me to the demonstration I was attempting with the Dosie Awards.

Yes, the awards were designed to find the best examples of social media in pharma and healthcare, but there was also a secondary goal…this demonstration. I wanted to demonstrate was three things:

1. The power of social media
2. Our lack of control of social media
3. The tremendous opportunities of social media in pharma and healthcare

My hope was that this demonstration would help us all understand social media a little better and how best to use it (and not use it). So, the Dosie Awards were more than a contest, but also (I hope) a bit of an educational session for all of us. Here are my thoughts on  each of the three things I wanted to demonstrate.

The Power of Social Media

When I opened the awards to public voting, I figured that a few people or groups would be really successful in getting others to vote for them. What I didn’t anticipate was that  they could start a mini-movement within the awards. For those paying attention, you’ll notice that the Brand-Sponsored Patient Community,  Best Patient Community – Non-Brand Controlled, and Best Patient/Caregiver blog categories were dominated by diabetes sites. Of the 15 Finalists in these categories, 11 were diabetes-related (and also the Gold winners in each category). How’d this happen?

Well, some of the diabetes communities who rallied their members to vote for their community also mentioned that people should vote for diabetes sites in other categories. It was a really smart way to bring even more awareness to diabetes via this contest. It just so happens that, in my opinion, many of the diabetes sites that were Finalists are some of the best examples of social media use out there. We could all learn a bit from them, so it’s a good thing they got some additional exposure.

To further show the power of social media, some less well-known, but well-promoted sites also were Finalists and winners. A couple of examples that come to mind are Changing Possibilities in Hemophilia (only 206 “Fans” on Facebook) and @xpresskindness (630 followers now, but only 420 when the contest started). For Changing Possibilities in Hemophilia, they put out messages on their wall asking for people to vote for them. @xpresskindness’ inclusion is a bit more of a mystery, as they did no promotion that I could find, but managed to get support from someone (perhaps the agency that created it?). However it got there, it got there thanks to the power of social media. Without social media, neither of these programs would have been Finalists. They would have been overshadowed by much larger, more well-known programs, but social media sharing gave them a chance to win. Another great example was doc2doc beating out Sermo, which has many times the number of members, or how Roche (2 Finalists) beat out J&J (6 Finalists) for Pharma Company of the Year in Social Media.

One final demonstration of the power of social media is how quickly this contest spread. There were more than 400+ Facebook shares and 700+ tweets that used the #dosie hashtag (and a bunch of others that didn’t). In addition, votes came from all over the world (30 different countries at last count). Without social media, would any of these people have found out about the contest?

Our Lack of Control of Social Media

This goes hand in hand with the power of social media. It’s not always going to work out the way you want it or how you expect it to work out. This contest was a great demonstration of this. I’ll go back to the domination of some categories by diabetes sites as an example to demonstrate my point here as well. I certainly wasn’t planning to have one disease state exert this much control over the awards and, yet, this is exactly what happened. I’m not saying it’s bad, but it’s not what was planned.

One thing that was certainly not planned was SocialMD showing up as a Finalist. It was among 30+ nominees in the Healthcare Professional Communities category. After seeing that it made it in as a Finalist, I decided to check it out a bit more, as I wasn’t very familiar with it. Turns out that SocialMD doesn’t exist anymore and hadn’t for about 4 months. And, yet, it was among the top vote-getters in this category. We very carefully audited all the votes in this category and were not able to detect anything fishy. So, why would a defunct site end up with this many votes? I have no idea and haven’t been able to figure out why (if you know, please let me know). If the voting is open, as it was, there’s not much control that you have over who wins and that’s just what happened. I certainly didn’t want a defunct site to be a Finalist, but it wasn’t up to me. I did decide to take it out of the running for any gold, silver, or bronze awards though, which I think only made sense.

One more example would be Pfizer UK‘s YouTube channel, which was a Finalist. Far from a channel, there’s only one video on the channel (I must admit that it’s good though). Combine this with the fact that Pfizer Europe‘s YouTube channel was also a Finalist. How’d this happen? That’s an easy one…support from Pfizer. It’s tough to say that Pfizer UK’s channel is a good one (especially when you compare it to the winners), but that wasn’t the competition. The most votes won. It was out of my control, just as much as what happens in a lot of social media is out of our control.

The Tremendous Opportunities

When I announced the awards and listed the nominees (all 500+ of them), I got emails, DMs, and calls from about 10 people who all had a similar concern. They each thought that having this many nominees (50+ in some categories) would make it impossible to select a winner. Their main concern was that they weren’t familiar with all of the sites to make a fair comparison and that it would take a long time to go through them all. And, to be sure, these are some of the people that I consider among the most knowledgeable about this space, so for them to say that they weren’t aware of everything tells me that most people are in the same position.

A few people urged me to cut the number of nominees to a more manageable amount, but I let everything on the wiki count as a nominee for a reason. I wanted people to be overwhelmed by the number of examples. That was the point. While some of the sites and programs on the wiki have a long way to go before they are ideal, there is no shortage of them. That is, there are a bunch of examples of pharma and healthcare companies using social media today. They aren’t waiting for guidelines that might never come (or be terribly negative and restrictive), they’re out there now. If your strategy is to wait because it isn’t clear what can be done, I’d call your attention to the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki where you can see 300+ industry examples of social media programs. 300+ examples of your direct and indirect competitors using social media to reach their customers today. What are you waiting for? 300 more examples?

Of course, there is one warning that comes with all these examples as well. During the course of the awards, I hope that people got to see programs that they didn’t know existed in disease states they didn’t think had much social media activity. I want people to see the list for one more reason beyond letting them know that it’s all right to do social media programs. I want people to see the list for the exact opposite reason too: so they DON’T do social media programs.

I’m not saying to avoid all programs. I’m saying to avoid creating something that already exists. There is no need to have 5 different support communities for a certain disease. Doing this makes each community a little weaker, as it dilutes the wisdom of the group. But, some companies can’t resist and insist on having their own community despite the fact that there’s no need or call for it in the market. That’s a waste of time and money that could be better spent (donating that money to help cure the disease in question is a good start). Instead of creating another community that essentially already exists, how about working together? How about directing your customers to a resource that is already working well and that members are getting real value from today? That might require (gasp!) you working with a competitor. However, nearly every pharma company now has something like “patient health first” as part of their vision or mission. Well, creating another community that’s  drain of resources isn’t putting patients first.

Need an example?

There are 12 multiple sclerosis (MS) specific communities on the wiki. That doesn’t even count the MS communities on sites like Patients Like Me.

12.

Do we really need 12 or would everyone be better off if these people could all go to one place and share their knowledge and insights with everyone else? I think the latter would be a richer experience for everyone. My point? Before you jump in and create something in social media, especially a community, see if one already exists. If one (or 12) exists, then you need to ensure that your community offers something well above and beyond what’s already out there. If  you don’t, you might be wasting your money, which could be used much more effectively somewhere else.

Final Thoughts

It’s been a month and half since announcing the Dosie Awards and it’s been an interesting and exciting time for me. Thank you to everyone who voted, tweeted, or otherwise supported the awards. I hope that you got something out of the process as well. Next year there will be even more categories as we expand beyond social media to other digital technologies and platforms. For now, congratulations to the winners!