Dose of Digital - Digital Marketing in Pharma and Healthcare » Mini White Paper

Why Your Facebook Page Doesn’t Exist

Jonathan Richman — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:57:36 +0000

Over the past year or so, many pharma and healthcare companies have jumped into social media with many trying their hand at Facebook. You can see the full list on the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki. Just click down to the Facebook section. There you’ll see around 50 examples (and I’ll be adding about 5 more in the next update). [Note that this post is applicable to every industry and isn't pharma or healthcare specific.]

Nearly all of these pages have one thing in common. They do not allow comments on the page’s Wall. There are a number of different ways I can argue why this isn’t the best approach, but the rationale often given to me by these companies are related to three things. First, they don’t want people to post adverse events on the page or, second, they don’t want people to post off label information about the product, and, third, they don’t want to deal with negative comments of any sort. In today’s post, I’m not going to argue why these aren’t great excuses. I’ll save that for some other time.

There’s another side effect of not allowing commenting. If you turn off commenting, you also turn off the Like function. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, the Like is far less “dangerous” than a comment, as you can’t add commentary to a Like on the Facebook Wall. You just Like it. That’s it. So, I think most companies would, er, like to allow Fans to be able to Like individual Wall posts and updates, but they are not willing to allow commenting to make this happen.

The end result is that Wall posts and status updates receive no comments and no Likes. So, what’s the big deal?

First, let’s remember that most of your actions on Facebook will appear on your Wall.

For example:

Next, let’s say that you are the admin for a brand page (like Dose of Digital’s…sorry, couldn’t resist a promotion opportunity). When you do a Wall post or status update, what happens to it?

Here’s a recent one from Dose of Digital’s Facebook Page:

What you probably think happens (if you’re like most people) is that all of the “Fans” of your Page will see this post. But, it’s likely that the vast majority don’t and, in fact, it’s possible that not a single one of them sees it.

Once you Like (previously Fan) a Page, you essentially subscribe to updates from that Page. Of course, you’re not going to visit every Page that you Like each day, so Facebook makes it easy for you by having a feed of all these updates in one place. It’s your News Feed. This is what you see when you first log into Facebook. It looks a little like this:

Familiar, right?

Stay with me because I’m about to show you the problem you have by not allowing comments and Likes.

Many of you probably have never noticed the setting at the top of the Feed…

By default, everyone’s Feed is set to “Top News.” But what exactly is “Top News”? Before I explain that, I’ll explain the simpler option, “Most Recent.” If you click on “Most Recent,” your Feed will change to show, get this, the most recent updates, posts, Likes and comments (etc.) from your friends and the same from pages you have Liked. It’s strictly based on the time the update was made with the most recent at the top. Raise your hand if you thought that your Feed was showing content in this form by default. Those with your hands up, thanks for being honest. That’s what most people think.

“Top News” is a bit trickier and is also the default setting for the feed. In this setting, the Feed is trying to show you the content that it believes is most meaningful or interesting to you out of all the possible content from your friends and Pages you Like. That means that the newest item isn’t at the top, but rather the item with the highest EdgeRank. “The what?”, you say.

EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine the order of items in your Feed. In the end, it’s really simple, as it has just three factors: affinity, edge, and decay. Fancy words, but here’s what they are. Affinity is basically the connection between you and the piece of content. The more times you’ve interacted with the source of the content (Facebook calls it an “object”) in the past, the higher the affinity. For example, if you comment on your sister’s Wall everyday, content from your sister will have a high affinity score because you interact a lot with her. Second is “edge.” It sounds cooler than it is. All that edge refers to the relative weight of objects. For example, a comment on a Wall Post probably carries more weight than a Like because it take more effort to post a comment. I say probably because this is the proprietary part of the algorithm. Last, and simplest, is decay. This is the time that has past since the object was created.

Multiply the individual scores for each possible object and then arrange the content accordingly. That’s how your News Feed is populated. Now you know. Sleep easy tonight.

Why should you care?

If you’re someone responsible for a brand Facebook Page, you should care quite a lot because EdgeRank is what is likely preventing anyone from ever seeing your content. The reality of the News Feed is that people browse the top entries and dive in when they see something interesting. Sometimes they’ll come right back to the News Feed and many other times, they’ll head somewhere totally unrelated based on something else they find. People certainly don’t read one News Feed item after another until they get to the end. If your content is showing up towards the top of people’s News Feed, you create a virtuous cycle. If more people see it, then more people comment and Like it. The more people that do this, the more their Likes and comments related to your content show up on their Walls, and therefore, their friends’ News Feeds. This exposes your content to more potential Fans who then Like your page and leave comments. This ensures that your content is even higher on more News Feeds and so on. For example, I’m a Fan of Mashable on Facebook. Everytime they put out something new it’s right around the top 2 or 3 stories in my News Feed. It’s because I interact with (read, comment, Like, etc.) many of these posts and so do hundreds of others.

So, the question is this: Does your content ever show up among the first few items on anyone’s News Feed?

To answer this, let’s bring back EdgeRank. First, affinity. If you’re like most pharma and healthcare brands, your affinity score is pretty low. Because you don’t allow commenting or Likes, people don’t interact with you very often. Maybe they read an Update (assuming they see it), but that’s it. Because you probably don’t do regular updates, they probably don’t even do this very often. Low affinity…check. Next is edge. Interactions that require a bit of effort rank higher than those that don’t. From my earlier example, leaving a comment takes more effort than simply Liking something. Similarly, posting a photo requires more work than a text update. You get the idea. Because the only thing you’re likely doing with your page is Wall posts (that are likely just text), there isn’t much edge. These are low engagement activities that score the lowest. People have to interact with your content to create more edge. Finally, we come to decay. If you aren’t updating regularly, then your Posts will always suffer from a low score here as well. The only way to improve decay is to make sure you have regularly updated content to increase the number of times that your EdgeRank is calculated for something new, which would have a higher decay score.

For those scoring at home, most pages will be zero for three. The consequence of this is that all the effort you put into building your Fans on Facebook might have been a complete waste. The point of having Fans is that you can communicate with them. The best way to do this is for them to see your new content. The place they see new content is in their News Feed. But your content probably isn’t in their News Feed. As far as your Fans are concerned, your page may as well have been deleted.

So, now that I’ve got your attention, how do you know if anyone is seeing your content? Facebook recently upgraded their analytics to let you see both the number and types of interactions with content (comments, Likes, etc.) and also the number of impressions. Facebook’s definition of an “impression” is anytime it serves (displays) a certain piece of content. It doesn’t mean that someone actually read it, but that it was there. The content could have been served in a number of places including user’s news feed, a visit to the Page, or through an Open Graph social plugin (which include many of the ones seen here). This is similar to how impressions for banner ads on websites are measured. That is, impressions are the number of visitors who could have seen the banner, not the number that actually saw it.

How do you find the number of impressions for your content? When you are logged into an account that is an admin for the Page you’re interested in, go to: http://www.facebook.com/insights. You’ll get to a page like this:

A word of caution here…many people have reported bugs with the data from these insights pages that cause inaccurate or missing data. It’s the best we have though, so stay with me. This is what the insights page looks like for a given Facebook Page:

I can tell you that for my Page, the interactions numbers are wrong, but let’s continue. If you click on the “See Details” link next to Interactions, you end up here:

What’s missing here and what we need to figure out the number of impressions is, well, the number of impressions. You see that for me, “n/a” is all that appears. There are two different explanations for this, which I’m working on figuring out which is true (or if both are). I’ll post an update to this post when I get an answer from Facebook. Explanation 1: Impressions are only available for Pages with more than 5,000 Fans. This was given by Facebook as the cutoff when they first announced that per post impression data would be available earlier this year. If this is the case, then most pharma and healthcare pages aren’t going to get impressions data. Explanation 2 (potentially related to explanation 1): Facebook answers an FAQ about this noting that “Per-post insights are only available on verified, authentic Pages. If your Page is not verified as authentic, then this feature is not available.” No mention of 5,000 Fans here. So, if you have less than this, then you might be golden. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t tell you how to verify your page in their answer. But, one of the reasons you read this blog is because you know I have to figure this stuff out. So, here’s a link to the form you need to fill out to get your Page verified (hat tip to Inside Facebook for this one). How long that takes or if it works is anyone’s guess.

If you can see insights information right now, then great. Is is what you expected? Higher or lower? On average, it’s a 1:1 ratio for impressions to Fans. That is, if you have 1,000 fans, your Wall Post, for example, will typically get 1,000 impressions. This isn’t because every Fan actually was served the content (much less saw it), but because some were served it multiple times. Remember, impressions don’t mean that people actually saw and read the content much less engaged with it. However, this ratio only holds true for brands that post quality content and that have some engagement from Fans. Remember, EdgeRank and how the News Feed works? You’ll get more impressions if your content is always at the top of people’s Feeds. You’ll get way less if it never shows up. The feed displays around 20 of the top pieces of content. If yours is the 21st based on EdgeRank then you won’t even get an impression. To get to the top, you need a high EdgeRank and we’ve already talked about that.

The big point here is simple. By not allowing comments and, therefore, Likes and by updating content rarely and making it mostly text, you’re all but ensuring that your Facebook efforts are reaching no one. Allow comments and with them, Likes. You may have to remove a comment here and there, but that’s okay. You can remove it as soon as it’s posted if you’d like. No harm done. To me, there isn’t a real regulatory risk if you act in good faith. If someone publishes something off-label, for example, to your Wall or as a comment to your post and you remove it at the first chance you get, do you really think that the FDA is going to penalize you for that? You can’t control what people put on the site, you don’t encourage or condone this type of information, and you act on it as soon as you know there’s an issue. I don’t get what the concern is. There are a handful of pharma and healthcare pages out there that have opened up commenting and the vast majority are handling it just fine. In fact, they’re getting people to actively engage with the brand for the first time. Rather than create a nightmare for the brand, it’s a dream come true. Imagine that.

So, does your Facebook page even exist?

Possibly related posts (auto-generated):

10 Things I’d Like to Start Hearing About Pharma Social Media

Jonathan Richman — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:55:58 +0000

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:

Communicating Drug Risk Using New Media Technologies–Dose Of Digital

View more webinars from Jonathan Richman – Dose of Digital.

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.

__________

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):

10 Things I’m Tired of Hearing About Pharma Social Media

Jonathan Richman — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:49:14 +0000

For those who know me well enough, you’re probably aware that I’m a bit of a cynic sometimes and that I’m not one to hold back my opinion (most times). Of course, if you’ve read this blog before and don’t really know me, you probably figured this out already. So, today I’m unleashing both of these parts of my personality on a topic that’s been bugging me lately.

The spark was following along with a couple different conferences on social media in pharma via Twitter and receiving (no exaggeration) information about and invites to no less than 5 future conferences about…you guessed it…pharma social media. Of course, I’ve been a part of a lot of these conferences in the past, but you might have noticed that I’ve cut down on my attendance and speaking recently. The reason is that I think we’ve run out of things to say and people who haven’t heard them. I know for my part that I feel like I’ve covered every aspect of social media as it relates to pharma on this blog in many, many posts. I know that I’ve read even more from others and heard a ton of presentations about this topic at many different conferences. Haven’t all of you too? (Voice your opinion in this poll and see what the result are so far)

What I’m not doing today is criticizing anyone out there who has been speaking or writing about this topic. Certainly, I’d be among the people who have covered this topic pretty thoroughly by now.

What I am doing is proposing is a moratorium. A moratorium on debating the details about pharma social media that we all know. There are ten of them that I’m going to specifically ask we stop talking about for one month (for starters) and see what happens.

It’s great if you’ve covered these details in the past, but you are hereby banned from creating anymore content about these 10 topics within pharma social media. If you have something new that is outside one of the ten areas, let’s hear about it. If you’re creating a presentation that doesn’t include any of these ten, more power to you. Share it with us. I’ll even post it on this blog for the world to see if you manage to avoid all ten.

So, do you think you can keep yourself from talking about these ten topics for just a month? I present these to you as almost near direct quotes that I’ve heard or read over the past 3 months…in no particular order…

10 Things I’m Tired of Hearing About Pharma Social Media

1. “Pharma is heavily regulated, so doing anything in social media is a challenge.” This is typically the first line of every invitation I get to every conference on this topic. We know. Pharma=regulated. Always has, always will. Whether it’s TV, print, face-to-face sales calls, and, yes, social media, it’s all regulated…heavily. Having said that, it’s not impossible for pharma to do something in social media, as some may suggest. I constantly see objectives for conferences that are something like this: “Determine ways that pharma can legally engage in social media.” Well, I’ve got 350 ways on the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki. 350 examples of pharma companies engaging right now in social media.

2. “Social media may be the ‘holy grail’ of marketing for pharma companies.” Feel free to substitute your own hyperbole for “holy grail” if you prefer, but you get the idea. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but social media isn’t the answer to pharma’s marketing woes anymore than TV ads are. It may become a useful channel over time, but if you’re counting on social media to revive your floundering blockbuster or to launch your next one, you’re out of luck. Social media may become a valuable tool for other aspects of pharma company operations, particularly research (clinical and marketing), but it’s not going to be a powerful marketing tool that solves any marketing challenge. I’m not going to get into all of the reasons why, but this visual might help explain it.

Think you’re ever going to see that anywhere?

3. “Because of the rise of ‘e-patients,’ pharma needs to take an active role in social media.” To be clear, I’m not saying anything negative about ‘e-patients’ or the concept behind this term. That’s the last thing I need. Not sure what an “e-patient” is? Check out my prime example, E-Patient Dave. I love what Dave is doing and what he’s advocating, so that’s not what I’m proposing a ban on. Instead, it’s the connection of e-patients, social media, and pharma. Instead of e-patients being the reason why pharma needs to get involved in social media, it actually should be the reason they avoid it. E-patients will provide each other the information they need without the input from pharma companies. At the same time, make an enemy of some e-patients, and you’re done for…as well you should be. E-patients are important to the success of any pharma product, but you’d better bring something big to the table if you plan to focus your efforts on them. Just throwing together a Facebook page isn’t going to be enough and making it all about your products will likely backfire (again, as well it should).

4. “More and more people are turning to the Internet and social media to get healthcare information.” You know how on those legal dramas when the two lawyers are going at each other and then at some point they say something about “stipulating” something. That’s what I want here. Can we all just agree and accept the fact that, yes, the Internet is an important source of healthcare information? And, yes, some people, maybe even a lot or most people, use information found within social media as part of their healthcare decision-making. Haven’t we all seen enough charts from enough sources to say, regardless of which side of this argument you’re on, that you can stipulate that this is true?

I know I have seen enough and I’d imagine that you have too. How do I know? When I was presenting before the FDA panel on social media late in the day, after many other people, I came to my slides that included a bunch of these stats. Stats that had been shown about 50 times already that day. What did I do? I said that I was going to skip those slides because the point had already been made by others. The reaction from the crowd? Applause.

5. “With the impending guidelines on social media from FDA expected later in 2010…” This is going to not sound really nice, but if you’re following the developments of pharma social media use and haven’t heard about the FDA hearing that happened in November 2009 or that some guidelines might come out before the end of 2010, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. These guidelines might come, but they will not write a marketing plan for you. They will not grant carte blanche freedom for pharma companies to do whatever they want in social media. In fact, expect them to be frustratingly vague simply because FDA can’t write explicit rules for every platform and activity you’re considering for the next marketing cycle.

We get it. Guidelines. Coming soon. Talking about that they might come and speculating what they might include probably isn’t much help at this point. It’s already pretty clear that some things can be done today (again, I give you the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki). Get out there and do instead of wringing your hands about what might happen. Or don’t.

6. “As social media grows in importance, it’s critical that you have a solid social media strategy.” Ugh. I should have listed this as number 1 in case people don’t make it all the way to number 6. This one makes me crazy. I’ll handle this one really simply. First, this doesn’t only apply to pharma. It applies to every industry, regulated or otherwise, selling pretzels or fishing line, liberal or conservative corporate culture. Listen closely: you don’t need a social media strategy.

Rather than write something new, I’m going to recycle a paragraph from one my personal favorite posts from this blog, “9 Simple Steps to Getting Started in Social Media.” Step number 1 includes this advice: “DO NOT define a ‘social media strategy.’ You should not have a social media strategy. Instead, you should brand objectives. This might be something like ‘increase market share to 25% by December 2010,’ for example. In order to achieve these objectives, you’ve put together a set of strategies that will get you to those objectives. To deliver those strategies, you’ve come up with a number of tactics. Social media is one of those tactics. Nothing more, nothing less. If you create a social media strategy, it’s highly likely that your social media efforts won’t line up with your overall business objectives. This will make it even harder to measure the impact of these efforts or will outright fail. Perhaps you need social media, perhaps you don’t. Look at it as part of a larger marketing plan to figure this out.” Enough said.

7. “You can begin your social media activities by just trying something small.” Since I said, “ugh,” for number 6, I probably shouldn’t say it here, but if I could I would. Please don’t just do something social media related because you can. Anyone can set up a Facebook page for their brand in minutes and a Twitter account in seconds. Don’t. Yes, it’s easy, but it’s also likely a waste of resources. It might take a second to set up, but if you’re not allowed to use it, then it was a waste. If you are allowed and it takes forever to get content approved or rules on how you can engage with patients, well then your minute invest has turned into weeks.

So, while trying something is important and a good step, it’s not the first step. It’s the last step (of my 6 Steps to Getting Your Healthcare Social Media Idea Approved anyway). Try something if you’ve got everything else aligned and do it to test your process and not simply because you can. You’ll probably find that getting things approved is harder than you imagined. It’s good to know this now when there isn’t a crisis you need to respond to or after you’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on a program. Don’t try anything. Do something with intent.

8. “There is a need for useful healthcare-related social media tools/content/platforms/communities that pharma companies can help fill.” What? There are so many things wrong with this, I’m not sure where to begin. I’ll just cover two though for the sake of time. First, there is not a lack of these things. Again, check out all the communities on the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki. If your big idea does not add something well beyond what some of these existing, established 3rd party communities provide, it’s time to put that big idea in the trash bin.

It might not be fair, but here’s the reality. It’s harder for a pharma company than, say, a neutral 3rd party (like a patient) to create something in social media that people value. A lot harder. Why? Well, here’s the “not fair” part: people don’t like pharma companies. They are trusted about the same as oil and tobacco companies (and remarkably, less than banks). So, in order for a patient to be part of a pharma-controlled community, he or she would have to put this distrust aside and willingly share personal information about themselves, their disease, and their treatments with “big pharma.” Seem like a bridge too far? It should. There are still some unmet needs out there, but going it alone probably isn’t a winning strategy for most pharma companies. If you build it, unlike in Field of Dreams, people won’t come. Finding a trusted partner who is established and neutral might be the logical path.

9. “Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Something Else is the future of social media.” Pick your favorite and substitute it at the front of this statement. It doesn’t matter which you choose, I’ll still be making the same point. Here goes: Facebook is not social media. Yep, you heard me, and, yes, I’m familiar with Facebook. Twitter isn’t social media either. Nor is YouTube…you get the point. These are social media platforms. They employ the principles of social media, but a platform can’t be social media. They are simply a means to access the social part of social media. The connections and interactions between people and the sharing of information and data are social media. It’s the bridging of distance, time, and status to connect people together in support of a common purpose. That purpose can be anything, but the connection part is what’s critical. If you think that creating a Facebook page or Twitter account means that you’re “doing” social media, you’re wrong. If your social media doesn’t share in two directions, doesn’t connect people, and doesn’t treat everyone as equals, then you’re probably still just broadcasting. You may as well stick with TV and journal ads…less risky.

10. “Because of the unique nature of its business, measuring ROI for social media is impossible for pharma.” If a consultant or agency person comes to your company and tells you this, fire that person on the spot. No questions asked, just show them the door. Yes, it is hard to measure ROI (return on investment) in a meaningful way in pharma, but it is far from impossible. The rationale for this feeling of futility is two-fold. First, most people think that the ROI for social media in any industry is impossible. Add to this the fact that you can’t track which people actually filled a prescription unlike how you can track the use of, say, a grocery shopper loyalty card and it’s a perfect excuse. To be clear, measuring ROI for social media is possible and it’s done all the time. And for the record, counting the number of fans (or Likers, whatever they’re called today) you have on Facebook isn’t going to give you an ROI. It might be a first step, but you’ve got a ways to go.

If you really want to measure ROI for your social media efforts, visit Olivier Blanchard’s site, which is completely dedicated to this topic, and read everything. He shows that it’s more than possible, it’s expected. You can do it in pharma too and certainly as well as you can measure the ROI of a TV commercial. I’d argue that it’s far easier to measure the ROI for most social media efforts (namely anything digital) compared to any other pharma marketing channel. Period. I’m out of space in this post to demonstrate fully, but I promise to show you in an upcoming post (or contact me and my company will set it up for you).

___

So that’s the list of 10 topics that you are not allowed to talk about for the next month. If you make it that far, then we’ll extend it. I’ll be watching to see who breaks the pact first. When I see it, I’ll call it out and I invite you to do the same. Just add the hashtag #smprotest and we’ll all know what you’re talking about.

If you’re with me on this and want to show your support for the cause, I invite you to proudly display this badge. Put it anywhere you think people will see it.

You can just save the file from here or use this little bit of code to embed it anywhere with a link back to this post.

Remember…I’ll be watching. Let me know if I missed anything, as I’d be happy to make a “15″ or “20″ badge if necessary.

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Can Your Electric Bill Show Us How to Improve Medication Adherence?

Jonathan Richman — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:27:12 +0000

I’ve talked about medication adherence a few times on this blog including some thoughts on how to improve it (most recently: “The Only Way Pharma Can Improve Compliance: Fun“). [Quick disclaimer: I'm using "compliance" and "adherence" a bit interchangeably in this post. I know they're different, but I'm going to spare a big debate. Just go with it. Thanks.] It’s certainly not an easy challenge and one that no one has figured out yet. There are certainly incremental improvements that have been made over the years, but we have yet to discover a “magic bullet.” But perhaps there isn’t one. Instead, maybe there are a number of different “cures” with one working for one person and another working for someone else. If we believe this is the case, then the only way to find these “cures” is to try something. In fact, we’ve got to try a number of different things, see what works, and throw out what doesn’t.

One area where I think a big impact can be made is in game theory. That is, using the concepts and theories of this field of study to help improve adherence. I’m going to cover this concept in more detail in an upcoming post, but the short version goes like this (via Wikipedia): “Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences, most notably in economics, as well as in biology (most notably evolutionary biology and ecology), engineering, political science, international relations, computer science, and philosophy. Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, in which an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others.”

Classic Wikipedia definition, so here’s the English: Don’t worry about anything but the last part of the definition. As you likely have observed, we humans don’t make perfectly predictable or rational decisions when it comes to health, but game theory could be used to figure out that these decisions might not be so irrational after all. There’s certainly application when it comes to medication adherence where even for life-threatening conditions, adherence rates remain startlingly low.

For those of you who read the last part of the game theory definition carefully, you might be a bit puzzled as to why this applies to adherence. It ends with: “…an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others.” What do the choices of others have to do with your behavior especially when it comes to adherence? Again, more to come in future posts on this topic, but the short explanation is this: the decision as to whether or not to take your medication as prescribed is equally influenced by factors you develop for yourself as factors that others develop. In other words, the reasons you use to justify whether or not to take your medication come in equal parts from your beliefs and perceptions as they do from the people around you. You’re not the only one who determines whether or not you take your medication. Other influencers include spouses, children, doctors, nurses, pharma companies, friends, pharmacists, and many others (and in different orders for different people). Yes, ultimately, you have the final decision, since you’re the one putting the pill in your mouth, but you aren’t the only one with a say in what you do.

The question then is this: which behaviors of others have the biggest positive influence on a person’s adherence?

This is where the real gaming aspect comes into play. As humans, we are genetically programmed to want to be winners. There is no second place in evolution. For that reason, many of our behaviors are geared to ensure our genetic success. This is why find spouses and take care of our children. It’s a primordial drive in all of us. In most cases, we strive for our genetic success over others. This is far more pronounced in the animal kingdom where you can watch males square off (sometimes to the death) for the right to mate. We humans don’t exactly do this, but sometimes we do either literally or figuratively (see any reality TV show for examples).

Since we’re programmed to want to come in first, that means we’re similarly programmed to not want to come in last. This is one of the big motivators in game theory and the explanation behind the problem, Prisoner’s Dilemma.

The question is, can this same fundamental theory apply to medication adherence? I think it can. But first, you should know where this idea came from.

I recently read an article in USA Today, “Do you use more energy than your neighbors?”, that talked about how some electric companies were trying some innovative things to reduce their customers’ use of electricity (interesting…wonder if pharma companies would be interested in helping reduce their customers’ use of their drugs?). There are a few reasons why the companies are interested in doing this, but I won’t get into them here. It also turns out that these companies have tried a number of things, but finally hit on an idea that involved comparing customers’ electricity use to that of their neighbors. This is the basic idea of what it looks like:

(Image from: Treehugger)

Well, imagine that this was your electric bill. What would you think? Would this be enough to get you to make a change? It probably won’t make you run out and buy solar panels for your roof, but I bet it will be in the back of your mind when you leave a room and don’t turn off the lights. This bill would be pretty hard to ignore for most people and most would make some minor changes even if the changes were subconscious. Game theory at work…no one wants to be last. This is especially true when your identity is attached to last place. Of course, here the information is anonymous (i.e., no one knows which specific neighbors are included), but you know where you stand. While you don’t like to be in last, you also don’t want someone else to be in first place. The higher your use of electricity the easier it is for everyone else to exceed the average (mean) performance. After all, you’re the one skewing the average much higher. So, you reduce your usage to both move yourself up in the standings and also to make it harder for others to achieve what they want. This, of course, motivates others to perform even better. In cases like the electric bill where it isn’t a zero-sum game, one person winning doesn’t mean that everyone else loses, there are grades of “winning.”

This innovative idea was presented at a recent TED conference and you can see the presentation below if you want to find out a little more. However, for now, know that this program has reduced electricity use by around 2-3%. As USA Today put it: “While that may sound small, the savings add up. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which started sending the reports to 35,000 households in 2008, says the households saved enough energy in a year to power 800 homes for a year.” That’s meaningful. Over time, I’d expect that these numbers only improve as people do more to try to be among the most efficient.

Here’s the TED talk:

Now, let’s apply this same concept to medication adherence. Let’s say that we knew you were on a chronic medication and how often you took this medication. What if you got a report each month that showed how often you took your medication? What if this report not only had your adherence rate (actually compliance rate, I suppose), but also that of others taking the same medication? If you found out that your rates were well below the average, what impact might that have?

Of course, it’s not this simple…here’s why…

First, you need a way to track someone’s adherence. I’ve already told you that people don’t really use trackers, so we’d need a solution for that piece. Among big reasons why people don’t use these trackers is because they’re hard to use and there’s not a real motivation to use one. Plus, they aren’t fun. Now, if you knew you were in a competition against others and the only way to ensure that you got proper “credit” in this competition is to track your actions, would that motivate you to track your actions? The answer is “it depends,” but, to be sure, this is a proven, effective model to get people to track their actions. Look no further than foursquare. Make no mistake, foursquare is a game. Period. The only reason why people get so religious about checking in is to steal mayorships from others and maintain their own (and get badges). Take mayorships away from everyone and I guarantee that foursquare goes away overnight. So, perhaps by adding a little competition to the mix, you can get people to track their medication use. Alternatively, you can use pharmacy refill data as a surrogate for adherence.

Second issue…privacy. All of this, of course, would have to be opt-in…or would it? If all the data is de-identified and pooled, there isn’t a privacy issue. And if people are actively using some tracker, then you can ensure that there’s a proper opt-in. If you can show that people get a benefit from giving up a little privacy, you’ll also be successful.

A few more details we can consider: what if the report that people got wasn’t just the numbers, but also included tips for how to improve your adherence and also medication-specific stats on why taking the medication is important (e.g., reduced mortality rate by X%).

The question then becomes: is seeing your rates compared to others enough of a motivator to get you to change your medication adherence? It’s probably not for most people. While we don’t want to come in last place, we also choose not to be involved in some “contests.” Just having a higher rate probably isn’t enough bragging rights to make it worth the effort. So, let’s up the ante. What if the standings weren’t in compliance rates, but in years left to live instead? On average, we can show for some drugs that there’s an improvement in mortality or other outcomes by taking your medication as prescribed for as long as your doctors deems appropriate. So, instead of showing that you took your medication 45% of the time and the average was 65%, we show that your additional years of life gained from taking the medication was 1.2 and the average was 2.5. That’s a game worth winning.

This wouldn’t be an easy system to implement, but it could be done reasonably simply via smartphone applications. There’d need to be a little data crunching to get to the outcome data, but it could be done for a lot of medications (just look for the pharmacoeconomic data to get started). Stay tuned in future posts for more of my thoughts on how we can use basic game theory to improve all sort of things in healthcare. In the meantime, feel free to give me your thoughts and turn off some lights. You don’t want to be in last place, do you?

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Why Cataloging and Calculations Should Be King

Jonathan Richman — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:34:54 +0000

Do you know all of your national capitals?

Quick.

The capital of Norway.

Got it? Stumped?

Stay tuned for the correct answer.

For those of you who learned and remembered this type of information from your grade school days, congratulations. Geography is a tough subject for most of us. There was a time (not too long ago) when it would have been pretty challenging to find the answer to this question if you didn’t learn it at some point in the past and remember it. For those who didn’t know the answer and “Googled” it, accidentally stumbled upon the point of today’s post.

Recall a time not too long ago when you didn’t have Internet access. If you wanted to find out a capital of a country, you didn’t have much choice but to look it up in a book. If you had some encyclopedia’s on hand, you could find it there. You might even find it in one of those giant unabridged dictionaries or an almanac. If you didn’t have any of those, you were out of luck. You could call a friend to get the answer, but you certainly couldn’t send them a tweet or even an email.

Things have changed very dramatically in the past 15 years or so, such that it isn’t necessary for you to have a set of encyclopedias in your house should someone challenge you on the capital of Norway (which is, of course, Oslo). To find the answer today, you just search for it online. We even have a new word to describe it: “I Googled it.” For you youngsters out there, there wasn’t always a company called Google, much less a verb based on it. Today, of course, you can find out the answer to any factual question almost instantly no matter where you are. With mobile technology advancing very quickly, you can do much of what a desktop PC can do with only an iPhone. If you compared the guidance computers used for the Apollo moon missions to an iPhone, the two wouldn’t even appear to have been developed by the same species, much less separated by less than 40 years. One stat: the Apollo computer’s speed was 1.024 MHz. My iPhone’s is 600 MHz (my laptop is 2.53 GHz, which is about 2000 times faster than Apollo’s). Enough geek talk, what’s the point?

The point is that there’s no reason to waste your time learning capitals of countries. With this type of information at your fingertips in an instant, wouldn’t your time be better spent elsewhere versus the hours required to memorize information you might never need? Yes, there’s value in learning, but not memorizing information like this. The value come from learning how to remember things and how to process information.

Let me put it more plainly. Basic information has no value. It has no monetary value and very little time value. Since you can get it anywhere for free, almost instantly, it’s a waste of resources to learn it and have it cataloged in your own head.

Instead, what you do with this information is far more useful. That’s what people pay money for. That’s why we hire consultants. For example, we don’t pay them to tell us the capitals of countries, but rather which ones are likely to have the biggest influence in global economics in the next 10 years.

The question for content producers (and if you’re reading this and have a website, you’re one of them) is what this means for your content creation strategy and what value you provide to people. If you’re giving them information they can get elsewhere, then you aren’t adding value. I’ve already shown you “How Google and Bing Plan to Eliminate the Need for WebMD” by providing basic disease state and medication information, such that you never have to even leave the search engine to get it, much less dig through your website.

This change is happening now and will only exacerbate in the future. Less and less content will be stored in people’s heads and we’ll focus more on interpretation. Less and less value will be placed on basic information, as it will be everywhere, easy to access, and completely free. As a marketer, do you know how you can prepare for this future and to lead the change as it’s happening now?

That’s what I’m here for.

Before we go any further, you have to accept the fact that “content is king” isn’t really true anymore. While Bill Gates coined the term (good trivia question BTW), it’s been adopted by entertainment companies most recently. Ironically, you don’t need to look much further than these companies to see that this phrase no longer holds true. They have been the first to have their business models turned upside-down simply because the content itself isn’t as valuable as it used to be.

There are two different areas that you need to look for a future “king.” Cataloging and Calculation. Try these on for size: “Cataloging is king” or “Calculation is king.”

Cataloging is King

For as much as I might talk about how wonderful it is that content is available everywhere, in massive amounts, and for free, there’s a problem. Content is available everywhere, in massive amounts, and for free. That’s right…it’s good and bad. You already know the benefits, but here’s the downside. With all the content out there, it becomes very difficult for people to find exactly what they need. It’s simple to find the capital of Norway, but what about finding how many people lived in Norway in 1980 compared to 2000. That information exists, but not all in one, nice, neat place and not in this format. At best, you’d have to look up the populations in both years and break out your calculator to do the rest. Or do you? The evolution is already in up and running: WolframAlpha. While it’s still a little hard to use if you’re not familiar with it, it’s a powerful computational tool that does more than just math and was able to instantly give me the answer to my question. The power lies not in the data, as it comes from free, open-source databases, but rather in how you access the data. Here, WolframAlpha saved you two steps, as you don’t have to look up the population information for each country or do the math on your own.

Companies that make it easy for people to sift through the data that’s available will lead in the future. For healthcare companies, this means being able to take information about a certain disease and personalize it. Picture this: I want to find only information that’s relevant to my condition and treatment stage and history. Let’s say a patient has stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). I’ve already taken carboplatin and Gemzar (together) and then Taxotere after progression. His question is simple: “what treatments are now indicated and what’s the average time to progression for these treatments?” If you think about it, that’s really a simple question, but it would be almost impossible to find out the answer online quickly and easily despite all the information needed to answer the question being freely available.

If this person visited the average website, he’d have to sort through all the different stage information to find stage IV, then look through each of the treatments and data to see what’s applicable to him. The WolframAlpha-style solution would allow him to type (or use drop-down selections) in his stage and past treatments, what parameters he needs to know and then spit out an answer. The companies who present the data, the content, in this format will lead in the future. How hard would it be to create this tool? Answer: not very.

The second part of aggregation is alerting people when information has changed. To take our example above of the NSCLC patient, if a new treatment is approved or studied that matches his current status, he needs to know about it immediately. He shouldn’t have to go online and dig around everyday for new news. It needs to come to him. That’s the idea behind RSS, but this needs to go even further to make feeds automatically from any source, not just pages that happen to have feeds already. This exists in many areas, but for customized data like we need here, it’s not that simple. Making new, relevant information available to people that finds them instead of the other way around is the future.

When you wrap all of this together, whoever is able to simply and effectively catalog and deliver all the content that’s out there will win the day.

Calculation is King

I take this theory very much to heart and have tried to practice it here on this blog. Rarely will you ever see me simply stating a bunch of facts or statistics (that you can get anywhere else) without an interpretation of that information. The statistics and facts have no value. I hope the interpretation does. That’s the reason why some posts (like this one) run a little long. I try to present the data, what it means, and what it means for you. That’s calculating.

The main point here is that you’re trying to help people make choices. This is what Bing’s entire “Decision Engine” positioning is based on. They don’t want to just give lists of information (i.e., links) leaving you to pick which is the right one, they want to guide you to the answer. Here’s how they’re promoting this concept via a series of clever commercials:

If you want to see the actual features that Bing is touting to deliver this new type of searching, then you can check out the video here (big points off for Microsoft since I can’t embed the video here). While I’m not totally sure that Bing delivers on this big promise (helping you make decisions) just yet, it’s a step in the right direction. What Bing understands is that the content (in this case, links) isn’t as important as helping you find the information. When you search for something on Google (or Bing), you aren’t doing it to see what links come up, you’re doing it to find the answer to your question. Think about that for a minute.Today, both of these search engines are trying to do this for basic searches. That’s why, for example, if you type “define” followed by any word in Google, you get the definition as the first listing, so you don’t have to go to another page on another site to find the answer. You don’t want links, you want answers.

It’s the same thing for any other type of question. Going back to our NSCLC patient, he doesn’t want bunch of links. He wants to know the answer to this question: “what treatments are now indicated and what’s the average time to progression for these treatments?” The answer(s) should be easy to find and immediately available (that is, he shouldn’t have to dig through tons of pages to find the answer). That’s a good first step and is why “Cataloging is king.” To deliver “Calculation is king,” you need to be able to not only answer this question, but to then tell our patient which treatment of the possible choices is best and why.

Of course, this already exists. We call them doctors. But a doctor isn’t always available to answer these questions. When you’re researching, you’re probably doing it to educate yourself so that when the doctor does recommend something, you understand why. I’m not recommending that we cut doctors out of the equation or that they won’t be important in the future. Rather, I’m saying that the “calculations” they do based on their knowledge and experience is what is valuable and what people need. But it’s not the sole domain of doctors or any other expert either. The companies that can effectively find the information and analyze it for people are the ones who will win in the future. They will win because they will be the go-to source for answers. If people come to you for answers and you can supply them, then you’ve provided something of almost limitless value and will have created a very powerful bond with your consumers.

Contrast this to the information and content you supply today for people visiting your sites or through brochures or any other medium. How far are you away from being able to provide calculations and not just content? I know that there are limitations to what pharma companies can recommend, but that’s narrow thinking. It’s not the way the world works now and certainly not the way it will work in the future. Far from being a starry-eyed optimist, I’m even more of realist. If you can’t figure out a future where you can provide this service to patients in some form, then you will be left behind. The good news is that you have some time to figure it out. The bad news is that it isn’t that much time.

Remember: content isn’t king anymore. Cataloging and Calculations are king.

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9 Simple Steps to Getting Started in Social Media

Jonathan Richman — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:53:39 +0000

It’s clear that more and more companies are getting the green light from their leadership teams to get started in social media. That’s right…you’ve fought long and hard and patiently explained the rationale. You’ve shown examples (including a bunch from the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki) and statistics and even set out some clear objectives. Whatever you did…it worked. You’ve got the green light. Question is: what now?

When it’s finally time to get started, here are the simple steps you need to follow.

9 Simple Steps to Getting Started in Social Media

Define business objectives
Monitor with intent
Choose the proper platforms
Secure and create profiles
Learn the lingo
Dive in
Go offline
Track your progress
Automate

1. Define business objectives

No, you can’t skip this one. It’s probably the least “sexy” of the nine steps, but it’s also probably the most important and will help define what you do in the next 8 steps. Ultimately, it will be the difference between a successful social media effort and a failure. There are a couple of questions you need to ask yourself as part of this step.

First: Why social media? Why now?

If you don’t have good reasons for this beyond “we just want to try some stuff,” then forget it. You’ll probably be better off spending your time and money elsewhere.

Second: What do you want to accomplish?

This is a bit of a trick question. DO NOT define a “social media strategy.” You should not have a social media strategy. Instead, you should brand objectives. This might be something like “increase market share to 25% by December 2010,” for example. In order to achieve these objectives, you’ve put together a set of strategies that will get you to those objectives. To deliver those strategies, you’ve come up with a number of tactics. Social media is one of those tactics. Nothing more, nothing less. If you create a social media strategy, it’s highly likely that your social media efforts won’t line up with your overall business objectives. This will make it even harder to measure the impact of these efforts or will outright fail. Perhaps you need social media, perhaps you don’t. Look at it as part of a larger marketing plan to figure this out.

2. Monitor with intent

I’ve talked quite a bit about social media monitoring on this blog including Pharma Should Forget About Social Media Monitoring and Monitor This, Forget That — “The Monitoring Continuum.” Catch up on those two posts to get my entire take on monitoring. For those looking for the short version, monitoring is important, but you need to ensure that you have a purpose for that monitoring. One important quote:

“The point [is] not that everyone should truly forget about monitoring, but that they should forget about it if they don’t plan on doing anything with what they find. In other words, if you’re not going to respond to discussions or don’t have a FORMAL plan to use what you find in some research setting (presumably to inform some brand strategy), then you’re wasting your money. Monitoring for the sake of monitoring or to “see what people are saying about your brand” (my favorite consultant quote) is useless. It’s a bit like getting punched in the face to see if it hurts. I’ll save you the time…it does.”

Of course, since you’re ready to get started in social media, you have a reason to monitor. First, you need to get a gist for the volume and tone of discussions about your brand, but more importantly, you want to figure out where most and the most significant discussions are taking place. That’s a formal goal. A simple one, but still a formal goal.You don’t need to spend a fortune on this. Instead, for this purpose, you can rely on free tools such as Google Alerts, Social Mention, or Who’s Talkin.

That leads us to the next step.

3. Choose the proper platforms

This is where you’re going to pick the platforms where you’ll participate. There are a number of factors you’ll need to consider here. First, the discussion volume you measured in step 2 should be a big factor. Second, you need to consider where your target audience is online. It’s likely that these two will overlap, but not necessarily. What digital tools (including social media) are your key targets using online? Some of you know that I have a “mini-book” in the works that will help with this step (tentatively called “Digital Savviness”). If you want to know more about this or be informed when it’s completed, head over to the Digital Savviness page.

Another consideration here is how you might be received if you do participate in discussion. Are outside brands welcome? Is there a formal way for them to participate? Check this all out before you dive right in and start chatting it up. The final consideration is your risk tolerance. Each different social media platform has a slightly different risk profile. I’m referring to regulatory risks here. Specifically, the more open the platform, the more risk. For example, it might look like this, with riskier platforms on the left. The less you can control the discussion, the greater the risk.

Determine what your company’s risk tolerance looks like and factor that into your platform decision.

4. Secure and create profiles

Another seemingly simple, but somehow regularly overlooked step in the process is this one. Once you’ve settled on the platforms, then your first step needs to be to lock down your brand names. What you’re trying to prevent is squatters from stealing your brand names and, at best, locking you out or, at worst, posing as you while doing significant damage to your brand. Go out to the sites you’ve targeted and see if your brand names are available. If so, great. Secure the profiles now. Not next week or tomorrow…now. You’ll thank me later. If your brand name is taken by someone else, you’ll need to dig a bit further to see if you can secure it from them. Each platform has different rules here with some being more willing to help you get back your trademarks and others just the opposite. If you don’t do this early, you end up with this:

Suffice it to say, this isn’t the actual Pfizer (though the image of “big pharma” enjoying Family Guy makes me smile). For the record, the actual Pfizer account on Twitter is @pfizer_news.

Rather than going to each site one by one, you can use a service like KnowEm, which will secure your name on hundreds of social media sites (for a fee). This is great for locking in profiles even on those sites that you might not have any intent of using at this point, but you never know what you might want to do in the future. Better safe than sorry.

After you lock in the right user name, spend some time on this next part: creating profiles. I can’t express the importance of this enough. What I’m referring to is completing those profile boxes like “About you” and “Websites” and adding a picture of yourself (or your brand). You know the ones I mean. You probably haven’t done this on most sites. There are a number of reasons why you should. First, on Twitter for example, many people will not follow someone who does not have a competed profile. This means picture, description, and website (like mine). Second, most of these profiles on social media platforms are indexed by search engines. If you’re like most companies, you can use all the help you can get in the way of search engine optimization. Take it where you can get it.

5. Learn the lingo

Nothing will end your social media foray quicker than not playing by the rules. That is, you need to participate in way that follows the accepted norms of that site. (There are a bunch of other rules that healthcare folks need to follow. You can get them from this presentation: Annotated Version of Healthcare and Social Media…Know the Rules (1225 downloads).) A big piece of this is learning the terms of service (TOS) for the site you’re interested in. These TOS documents will include things like what’s considered spam and other obvious violations, but it will also cover more subtle, but equally important guidelines.

Case in point. If you are planning to edit your company’s article on Wikipedia, do you know how to properly do it? Sure, you can simply go and edit it, but I can assure you that your changes will be undone almost instantly. If it’s your company, according to the accepted norms of Wikipedia, you have a conflict of interest and should follow the guidelines they clearly define. This explains that you shouldn’t edit the page directly, but rather should use the discussion (talk) pages and include this tag on your entry:

If you dont’ follow these rules, you’ll quickly find the community “mob” making you into an outcast. Beyond rules, you need to understand the way people talk and the jargon they use. If you don’t know what an “RT” or the “#” symbol means in Twitter, study up before you get involved. If you don’t know, look it up. Even better, observe some of the community’s leaders. You’ll also find that these leaders (in general) are open to helping new people use the site correctly, so ask questions. They’ll appreciate that you value their opinion and that you want to play by the rules.

6. Dive in

We’ve come to the fun part. After months (or years) of wrangling with your regulatory team and studying the different communities, you’re finally ready to actually go online and participate. One major recommendation for this step is to participate personally first. That is, try out everything you’ve learned as a regular person and not a brand. Do this with using personal accounts. This will give you a little leeway to make some mistakes without damaging your brand.

When it comes to finally participating on behalf of your brand, there’s one simple rule that I like to follow when figuring out what to do or say and what not to do or say. The “Golden Rule” tells us that we should treat others as we’d like to be treated. My social media “Platinum Rule” is basically the same, but with a key difference. Here it is: Act as if YOU are watching. That’s right. You. If you’ve gotten this far in getting your idea approved, you’re probably pretty smart and know a bit about marketing. You’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. You’ve seen it as a marketer and as a consumer. So, here’s what you do. Take a look at what you’re planning on doing and think how you’d honestly react if another brand did the same thing. Would you roll your eyes and quickly log out or would you find it interesting and useful? If you’re honest with yourself, you can be your best critic here, but it requires being honest. Bring your normal dose of skepticism and cynicism just as you would as a consumer and apply that to what you’re about to do. How does it fit?

If you still can’t tell, then send it to me and I’ll give you the honest truth.

7. Go offline

After you’ve had some success and are starting to get a following and some good reactions from your social media efforts its time to take it offline. I know that sounds like counterintuitive advice after all the effort you’ve put in to get online, but hear me out. I’m not saying to abandon your online efforts. Rather, I’m saying you should augment them with some offline work as well. While the relationships we form solely online can be useful, there’s still no substitute for meeting in person like humans have for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s simpler to communicate and often easier to build deeper levels of trust since you can see and read someone’s behavior and create deeper mental connections as well.

That’s not to say that you should invite all of your Twitter followers over to your house or all of your brand’s Facebook Fans to your headquarters, but from time to time you can bring together several key influencers from your network for a face-to-face, in-depth discussion. You can do this when you travel to different cities by putting together a “Tweetup” or making it a formal meeting with other members of your company. Either way, know that you can only go so far in a relationship with another person without meeting that person in real life.

8. Track your progress

I won’t get into how specifically to measure your social media efforts here, that’s a series of separate posts. The bottom line is that you need to measure your efforts opposite pre-defined goals. The pre-defined part is the key here. It’s possible to meet just about any goal that you come up with after the fact, so those don’t count. Whatever you choose to use as objectives for your efforts, define them ahead of time and create a plan to track your progress against them. This will allow you to not only gauge success and failure, but also to make adjustments while you’re still running the program. Keep the good (and add more) and throw out the bad. A good measurement plan will give you guidance on how to make changes on the fly.

If you’re looking for some advice on how to measure ROI for social media, check out this Mashable post that contains a ton of great resources. If you’re stuck on how to measure your social media efforts, here are 100 different options.

9. Automate

Last but not least…automation. While some of you are breathing a sigh of relief that the hard work is over, I’m not talking about that kind of automation. I’m not recommending you simply run your RSS feeds into all your social media profiles and walk away. Quite the opposite. What I mean by automate is to make social media participation automatic. There are three key parts to this: integrate social media as a standard marketing channel, implement tools that make it easier for more people to participate and manage, and make participation a standard part of your day.

As I’ve already said, don’t create a social media strategy, but rather add it to your list of tactics to deliver the strategies you already have in place. Use tools like CoTweet for Twitter to allow multiple people to use and manage one account (and provide better service to consumers). Lastly, you’re participation (and your brand’s) can’t be a one time affair. It needs to be ongoing. The best way to do this is to make it a standard part of your day. If you’re one of those people that only look at email at set times of the day, set a time for social media as well. If you aren’t one of these people, then find another set time. This will both ensure that you actually do it and also limit the amount of time, so you aren’t spending too much. Everything in moderation.

Those are the nine steps. Follow them and you’ll be among the best. I’ve created a PowerPoint presentation that covers the information in this post, so that you can share it with your colleagues at your next company meeting (or whatever you think makes sense). It’s basically the hugely abridged version of this post. If you’re interested in getting a copy,head over to the Dose of Digital Fan Page on Facebook. Fans get all the content from this blog plus sneak previews and exclusive content like this PowerPoint. You can get the link to download the presentation right from the Dose of Digital Facebook Fan page (check out the Wall).

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10 Healthcare Dinosaurs Digital Technology Will Make Extinct

Jonathan Richman — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:01:20 +0000

It’ll probably come as no surprise to find out that I’m a big advocate for the increased use of digital technologies in healthcare. And it’s not just in marketing where I think a greater use of digital is not only inevitable, but also in nearly every facet of the healthcare system. It’s essential to improving healthcare for everyone. Over the past five years, the industry has changed dramatically as more and more digital technologies have replaced “traditional” ones. Some have been for the better and others still have a ways to go before we can decide if we’re better off.

As we look into the future a bit, I’ve noticed that some of the things that we all stereotypically associate with our healthcare system are starting to go away and are being replaced with digital technologies. Some things have already been replaced completely or are close to being extinct while others are just starting their descent. I’ve tried to predict the future before with varying degrees of success (such as my paper “The Future of Pharma Digital Marketing” (1061 downloads), so here’s yet another look into our digital future. For each item below, I’ve given a guess at when I see each disappearing for good. Please feel free to leave your comments on what you agree or disagree with (I’m sure they’ll be plenty of the latter) and what you think I’m missing. Here they are in order of my predicted extinction:

10 Healthcare Dinosaurs Digital Technology Will Make Extinct

1. Pharma Brand Facebook Pages — 2-3 years

My first entry in this forward-looking post is likely the opposite of what you expected. While more and more brands and pharma companies move onto Facebook (check out the full list on the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki), and as we await some guidelines from the FDA that could make it far easier for companies to participate in social media, I’m heading in the opposite direction. That’s right, dead before it even lived. To be clear, I’m not saying that all social media participation will go away, but just this one tactic. There are very few pharma brands currently on Facebook, as most have taken the “unbranded” or corporate approach where the drug isn’t mentioned. This is smart. Outside the regulatory hurdles and risks that exist, there’s another good reason not to have a Facebook page for your pharma brand. Recall that the main way these pages work is that people become “fans,” which essentially subscribes them to whatever content you put out via their News Feed. Many non-pharma brands have done this spectacularly well and gathered massive numbers of Fans on Facebook (like Pringles, the largest brand-created page on Facebook, which our agency, Bridge Worldwide, helped pull together). But, here’s the difference. When someone becomes your Fan, they announce it as an update to all their friends on Facebook automatically. That’s fine when they tell the world that they’ve just become a fan of Pringles. However, it doesn’t work for most other products, especially pharma drugs. Are you ever going to see this?

Doubtful. The biggest pharma Facebook page actually is for a brand, Gardasil. However, you’ll notice that people aren’t being asked to become fans of Gardasil, but rather “Take a Step Against Cervical Cancer.” Who isn’t against cervical cancer? It’s a clever way to make it more likely that someone will become your friend, but don’t take advantage of it. By the way, now’s a good time to join the Dose of Digital Facebook Page.

2. Paper “detail” aids — 3-5 years

You’ll notice that paper is going to take quite a hit in this list and it should. Not only is it incredibly expensive to produce (the final product, that is), it’s also completely inflexible. Once you print it, you can’t change it. Most pharma companies still send their sales teams out into the field with printed information to share with their physicians. Some have adopted electronic presentations that reps can show in their laptops. These have much more interaction and can include media such as video, which makes them far more engaging than paper. In addition, the information can be updated instantly when something changes at a negligible cost. One problem I do see here came while I was working with a major pharma company who adopted all electronic detail aids only to go back to paper. The system they were using was so unwieldy that it was prone to crashing during presentations on a very regular basis (not good when you have less than a minute to show something to a doctor). In analyzing why this was happening, it was pretty obvious. The system (which will go nameless, but is used by many pharma companies) used a massive amount of CPU resources meaning that it rarely ever worked the way it should. These proprietary platforms also mean that only a handful of companies can create content for them, which overly inflates the price and excludes some of the best creative shops from working with you. There’s no reason for this. Create a simple presentation shell and make the content in Flash (plus XML) and make it possible for anyone to create content for you. Some companies have ditched these proprietary systems and replaced them with what I just described and are much happier. Number 3 on this list should be “Proprietary electronic detailing platforms,” but it’s not…

3. Single-purpose medical devices — 5 years

People have begun to monitor more about their health than ever before. Whether you have some sort of disease or not, this tracking is becoming more common. This could be a simple analog pedometer or something much more advanced like Nike+. Either way, even completely healthy people are gathering data about themselves. Of course for many with chronic conditions, this type of tracking is an everyday affair (and hassle). Diabetes is a condition that immediately springs to mind, as many diabetics must regularly test and track their blood glucose levels. For this, they carry around a device that does this…and only this. Apple has already envisioned a future where this isn’t necessary. The testing is, of course, but carrying around another device isn’t. Many people (and many more will) already carry around a very capable computer in their pocket everyday in the form of a smartphone, so why not combine the two…a blood glucose monitor as part of your phone?

Apple introduced this concept when they released their version 2.0 software for the iPhone, but we don’t quite have this on the market yet. There are already integrations for the iPhone for sleep tracking and many other conditions, but expect many more in the future that are designed to eliminate single-purpose electronic devices.

4. Pharma Brand Websites — 5-7 years

Interesting prediction from a guy who works for a digital agency that, among other things, makes brand websites. I’m not saying that websites will go away, but I do think a certain kind of site will start to fade away. I’m talking about pharma brand.com sites (e.g., lipitor.com). Already, most people get their drug information from third party sites like WebMD or even product reviews from sites like iGuard. There’s really very little reason to go to most pharma brand website these days. Some of the sites out there do serve a purpose, but a sales pitch about the product isn’t it and isn’t why people come. Most visitors come to find very specific bits of information about our products, but we make it hard for them to find it. Perhaps they come to find out about a certain side effect or to find out if there’s some sort of co-pay assistance. Why do we hide this behind page after page of product messages and the same four types of stock photos (a subject for a future post)? Brand websites need to behave more like Google today than a product-selling page. That means that searching (and being able to find) specific items has to be a priority. Keep in mind that many of the people visiting are already on your product, so what are you trying to sell them? More of the content on disease conditions that pharma companies have accumulated at considerable expense will become the key focus. So, as brand.com sites go away or lessen in importance, disease condition sites from pharma companies will take their place.

5. Paper prescriptions — 5-7 years

Already common in many practices and institutions, little pieces of paper that we take to our local pharmacy in order to get our medications are destined to be a thing of the past in the near future. Electronic medical records (EMRs) will of course speed the death of this ancient practice, but it’s advancing on its own whether or not EMRs become the norm. However, there’s still quite a bit of inefficiency in this part of the system as you still have to drive to the pharmacy to pick up your pills. Mail order pharmacy services have increased dramatically, but have a long way to go, but will dominate in the future for those on chronic medications. Today, however, many of these programs are so difficult to sign up for that people simply pass on the option. For those of you out there that administer these programs and who are trying to convert retail pharmacy users to mail order, consider this: most people would call their pharmacy every month to get a refill, drive there, get out of their car to actually pay for the medication, drive home AND pay a premium to do all this versus having it sent to their house automatically at a lower cost via mail order. That ought to tell you that you need to fix the sign up process.

6. Massive healthcare portals — 5-7 years

Healthcare information online is dominated by a few players today. Sites in the WebMD and Everyday Health networks make up a big share of the healthcare-related traffic online. This is starting to change. There are a couple of factors at work here. First, search engines are getting into the healthcare content business by including basic information as part of the results for many healthcare-related searches. In fact, for many people, there’s no reason to go beyond the information that Google and Bing (Yahoo! is far behind here) serve up automatically (check out my post: “How Google and Bing Plan to Eliminate the Need for WebMD (and Your Website)” for more details on why). Since the search engines can supply much of the basic information about most diseases there’s no reason to look much further unless you need highly specialized information. However, for some conditions and some people this specialized information is going to be required. This might mean turning to a knowledgeable community that is full of others with a similar condition, such as Tu Diabetes or PKU.com. That’s community, but what if you just want information to research on your own? In most cases, highly specialized, detailed, credible, and unbiased information doesn’t exist. That is, finding very deep content on a specific condition that is approachable for your average person isn’t easy to find and certainly isn’t found in one place. There are two ends of the spectrum out there where most online content fits: general information written at a 5th-7th grade level and highly specific information written for physicians. Where’s the stuff in the middle for someone who wants more than what they get on WebMD, but doesn’t want to read the New England Journal of Medicine? This will come in the near future.

7. In-Office Doctor Visits — 8-10 years

Once again, a futuristic idea that already is happening. I talked about this in a post called “How Pharma Can Cut Out the “Middleman” (aka “The Doctor”). It’s already possible to see a physician without leaving your house at any hour of the day. By no means is this a mainstream idea today, but it will become more and more common in the future. For some conditions, you’ll still need to see a doctor in person so they can do some diagnostic things that require you being in the same room, but many chronic conditions and follow ups could be handled at a distance. Ironically, one other trend that is leading to fewer in-office doctor visits comes from the past. House calls. More physicians are starting to once again make house calls (at a price) just like they did fifty years ago. Some have even switched their entire practice to this model. When you combine these trends together, it leads to only one conclusion, which is a dramatic decrease in in-person visits to the doctor.

8. Paper medical records — 8-10 years

This was an obvious prediction, as it’s talked about quite a bit now in mainstream media. We’re already well on our way to never seeing another piece of paper in a doctor’s office. Some large institutions are already largely “paperless,” but many are much further behind. As part of the recent economic stimulus programs here in the US, a large sum of money (~$10-15 billion depending on who’s counting) was allocated to making our system paperless. We’ve got a long way to go, but the process is underway. Despite these government and local physician level efforts, many people have already given up on expecting their doctor or insurance company to keep their records for them so Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health have come forward to give you a free and easy way to do it. On top of this, some smart hospitals like Cleveland Clinic have already partnered with Google rather than expecting people to maintain their records in multiple places (e.g., Cleveland Clinic’s site AND Google Health).

9. Clinical trials — 15-20 years

Before all the scientists reading this get all upset, let me finish (or start). Clinical trials are an integral part of the healthcare system. They are used to define what medical treatment is the right one (or most right) for specific patients at a specific time. Without these trials, it would be anyone’s guess as to which treatments were the best option in a given situation. However, they are frighteningly expensive and take a long time. It’s possible to replicate some clinical trial results right now without the time and expense. To be sure, these don’t have the same rigor, nor, in most cases, the same scientific validity, but they could help prevent us from heading down the wrong path and wasting time and resources on a larger study. Sites like Patients Like Me and Cure Together gather a great deal of information on their users and make it possible to use “simple” math to find correlations between diseases or treatments. CureTogether has been able to do this (and matched the accuracy of much larger studies) simply based on the data of several thousand people. Imagine if everyone’s records are electronic and there are millions of people who volunteer their data for these types of analyses. There are links between diseases that we can’t even imagine today that will be found this way. Patients Like Me, where users input their progress on a regular basis, makes it possible to do “real-time” trials with large numbers of patients almost instantly (such as this one for lithium use in ALS). Read more about this in my post “Can Social Media Improve Your Health and Save Your Life?”

10. Healthcare Privacy — 25 years

I saved the most controversial for last because I think it will take the longest to achieve. However, I also think that it will have the biggest effect on our society’s health in the long-term. Recently, I was at an amazing brainstorming-type meeting held by a healthcare company that I wish I could tell you more about, but due to confidentiality agreements I can’t. What I can tell you is that I heard some amazing predictions for the future, but one really stuck with me. At one point, someone came out with this very eloquent quote that shut up a room of very opinionated people for a while (including me): “In the future, the less private you are, the longer you’ll live.” Think about that for a second. Imagine that you could choose (you don’t have to participate if you don’t want) to release information about your health and in exchange you’d receive highly personalized recommendations on treatments, which diseases you likely have already or are likely to get, and maybe even how long you’ll live. Would you do it? Our current society norms say to keep everything about our health private and today there are practical reasons for this (like insurance denials). But in the future, you might not be able to discriminated against because of preexisting conditions (it’s already part of Obama’s healthcare plan today). If you give up your data, it can be pooled with millions (or billions) of others that through some mathematical analysis can tell you everything about your current and future health. This would include which drugs are likely to work for you and which diseases you are likely to develop. It’s an extension of what CureTogether has just started to explore. Power their concept with billions of data points and it becomes a difficult to imagine database.

That’s my list of 10 for now. They’re sure to change when I look back on this next year. Some of these predictions will come true before my predicted dates and others might never happen. As a healthcare marketer, it’s important that you know what’s coming and to figure out not only how to prepare for it when the future does arrive, but what you can do to make it happen.

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Are You Reminding Me or Annoying Me?

Jonathan Richman — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:12:39 +0000

One of the very first areas I started blogging about on Dose of Digital dealt with medication compliance. After working on compliance challenges for my final two years at AstraZeneca before moving to my current job at Bridge Worldwide, I’d seen pretty much every tactic you could think of to improve compliance. So, this seemed like a natural place to start blogging. You can read my first post on this subject (from back in December 2008): “Glorified Alarm Clocks.”

Since then, I’ve written a few posts about compliance/adherence (yes, I know the difference, but won’t get into it here) issues. One of my favorites, “The Only Way Pharma Can Improve Compliance: Fun,” was a big hit with a number of people. I still believe that adding elements of fun (yes, even to serious diseases) helps people cope with their disease and better learn how to manage it. I think there are also many tactics that have very little impact on compliance for the vast majority of people and yet, they remains a very popular. One of these is the reminder. In fact, I wrote about this too a long time ago, but wanted to add some additional perspective.

On the surface, medication reminders seem like the perfect solution to the huge issue of compliance (i.e., the lack of it), which affects a huge proportion of people taking all manner of treatments. From drugs for asthma to allergies to high blood pressure and even cancer and birth control, many people simply don’t take their medications as they are prescribed. Importantly, they typically don’t take their medications for as long as they should especially when these are chronic, lifelong treatments. This is the case even for the most serious conditions. Take people with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). Prior to the release of Gleevec (from Novartis), studies showed that patients diagnosed with CML the “median survival time was 69 months.” In other words, half the patients lived more than 69 months and half less. That’s not a great prognosis. Enter Gleevec. A study from the NEJM showed that “the estimated overall survival of patients who received imatinib [Gleevec] as initial therapy was 89% at 60 months.” That is, almost 90% lived at least 60 months when starting with Gleevec versus about 50% prior to Gleevec.

So, you’d think that this would be the drug with the highest compliance rates. Right?

Wrong. A full third (33%) of Gleevec patients were non-adherent in one large study. Why? The authors added this fact: “Poor compliance was not related to length of treatment or to side effects of Gleevec. Poor compliance occurred despite the fact that patients knew they would be monitored for compliance, as they had signed a consent form for this purpose.” So, do you think they didn’t take their medication because they forgot? You have a disease that can kill you in months AND you know someone is checking to see if you’re taking your medication and you still forget? Sounds unlikely to me. I don’t think you can easily forget that you have CML.

From all the research I’ve read and been a part of, for most people, the drivers of compliance are related to the patient truly understanding the risks and benefits of their treatment and their willingness or openness to persuasion (notably, from a physician or other HCP). Hats off to Andrea LaFountain, who I worked with at AstraZeneca, and who pioneered a lot of this work (be sure to check her company out) and can explain it far better than I can.

So, in other words, reminders aren’t enough. They can be a component, but aren’t enough on their own. Yet, that’s what I see today…reminders. Reminder programs put forth as the cornerstone of improving compliance. I’m not suggesting that you forget about offering reminder services to your patients, but I am suggesting that you shouldn’t expect too much from them.

For today, I want to show you some of the reminder programs that are out there and highlight the good and the bad. I’ll also show you that it doesn’t need to be as complex as we sometimes make it out to be.

First, to the title of this post, “Are you reminding me or annoying me?” Many “reminder” programs are simply annoying programs. They are annoying because they aren’t smart and don’t learn from your actions (or lack of actions). Case in point (and the inspiration for this post), eTrack. Their first program is for ADHD and it tops my list for annoying. I signed up for this program after someone mentioned it on Twitter so I could see what it was all about.

After signing up, you can turn on reminders…oh wait…you don’t turn them on…they turn them on for you automatically…a personal pet peeve.

Not only do they turn on reminders, but they sign me up to get them twice a day, five days a week (and also sign me up for their newsletter). And, the reminders start coming…

You’ll notice that I haven’t even opened one yet and still, they keep coming. If someone never opens your email (and you can tell if you have a proper email delivery platform), when is enough enough? When should you give up, so that you avoid annoying your customers and finding yourself the subject of a blog post? Sure, you can’t always tell when someone opens an email (e.g., if they use the “preview pane”) or perhaps opening these emails isn’t important, as they only are supposed to jog your memory. Okay. Well then, how about stopping these emails when I don’t go to your site after, say, a week to input whether or not I took my medication? Isn’t that an indication that I don’t care or I’m not interested in your service?

One other major problem with this whole concept is that you have to remember to track your medication, which involves visiting a site everyday (or twice a day) to report whether or not you took your medication. Think about that for a moment. You can’t remember to take your medication, so I’m sending you reminders so that you remember to take your medication AND remember to visit another website to track it. In other words, now I have to remember two things, one of which has no bearing on my health whatsoever. That seems extremely unlikely to me and not a viable long-term solution. A reminder to be reminded. Odd.

PS: if you do opt me into your program, make it easy for me to opt out. For example, I should be able to reply to these annoying emails and say stop, but that’s not an option.

And how come these emails don’t actually remind me to take my medication? They remind me to track it on their site. If you really care about my outcomes, shouldn’t you encourage me to take my medication before you encourage me to visit your site. Just saying…

Some other options for reminders involve the use of text messages or SMS. Depending on the target audience for your product, I like these much better than the email reminders. I’ve seen a lot of expensive, complex SMS reminder programs in my day and have always argued that they shouldn’t be this difficult. Enter Free Rx Reminder. Simple…enter your medication, when you want to be reminded, and your mobile number and get an SMS at that time.

They even created a handy widget that anyone can embed on their site: You can try it out by visiting their site.

How simple was that? Did you pay a fortune for an SMS reminder system for your brand? I did once. Here’s what you get from them when the time you designated comes around:

A couple of things I should point out. First, unlike eTrack, spelled out in the message is a simple way to opt-out. This is a must. You’ll also notice that I can reply with “MORE” and get additional information about discounts, so I checked it out and got this:

I have no idea what this discount is nor how much it’s worth, but as a “customer” (I don’t take Nexium) I certainly would appreciate this. It would be nice to see exactly what the discount is ahead of time though.

One final reminder system involves using “push” notifications that are common on most smartphones today. For example, many applications let you set up push notifications to alert you when some new piece of information or message is available. Because it’s push, you don’t have to open the application to see what’s new. Instead, the update is “pushed” to your phone no matter what you’re doing. This is what a push alert looks like:

Notice that I didn’t need to be in the AP News application to get this, it just shows up on my screen when the server pushes it to my phone. This is another way to set up a reminder.

What you notice is missing from each of the examples I’ve shown you is a simple way to track that you actually took your medication (if this is important to you or you’re part of some program that needs this data). However, this can easily be incorporated into each reminder type. For email, you can include the option to reply to the message with “yes” or “no” (as in: did you take your medication today?). SMS could work the same way and allow you to reply with “yes” or “no.” For push notifications as part of an application, you can include an action in the push message. Check out how Remember the Milk does this for its application:

You see here that you not only get the push notification, but also can open the application right from the notification. This could open a screen in the app where you click “yes” or “no.”

Of course, if all this is too complicated for you, then you could always just set up your own tracking application.

Bottom line: feel free to offer people the option of signing up for reminder services for your product, but don’t expect this service to solve your product’s compliance problems. Reminders can be one tactic in a series of options that could impact compliance, but reminders aren’t enough. If you do use reminders, please keep in mind these simple rules so that you ensure that you’re just reminding people and not annoying them.

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The Seven Uses of Social Media in Business — The 7 “C”s

Jonathan Richman — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:31:48 +0000

Whether it be healthcare or any other industry, different companies have come up with and rely on different uses of social media to meet their brand objectives. After surveying a bunch of different social media programs (including the hundreds found on the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki), I figured out that for the nearly infinite number of final executions, there are really only seven distinct uses of social media in business. Seven might sound like a lot, but it’s nothing compared to the number of channels within social media from Facebook to WordPress to Flickr to Foursquare and so on (see a hundred or so on Wikipedia). Whatever channel marketers ultimately decide to use to bring their social media idea to life and meet their brand objectives (I know, that last bit sounds almost crazy), they’re trying to do one of seven things with social media. Keep in mind that these seven things overlap a bit, but you’ll see how they are distinct.

If you think there’s one I’m missing, then let me know in the comments.

To make it easy to remember, the seven things all start with “C”, hence the sub-title of this post “The 7 ‘Cs”” [that's a punctuation nightmare]. I should note that these are actually in some order, as I tried to order them by the frequency of use by the healthcare industry. For each use, I’ve included what I see as the pros and cons of each. [Also, for those who are Facebook Fans of Dose of Digital, part of the benefit of being a Fan is that you get occasional exclusive content. This is one of those times. If you want a PowerPOINT version of this post to share with others, instructions for how to download it are now posted for Fans. Not a Fan? Go to Facebook and become one.]

The 7 Cs of Social Media Usage

Communicating
Cause Support/Sponsorship
Contests
Consumer Research
Connecting Others
Customer Service
Community Building

Communicating

This is a fairly generous use of the term communicating, which to many people typically implies a two-way dialogue. However, the true meaning of communication is all about “conveying information.” And that’s what most marketers who use social media are doing. They are communicating. I suppose every one of the other Cs could also be characterized as communicating in some way, so for the purposes of this example, I’m talking about communicating a message in one direction: in other words, broadcasting. Many companies who have started using Twitter use it in this way: the one-way communication of information. Basically, it’s used as another channel to get out news about their company.

Pro: Gets message out to the masses with potential to spread virally
Con: No interaction with community, the opposite of “social”

Cause Support/Sponsorship

Helping out a cause such as a patient support society or other non-profit organization is another common use of social media for marketers especially in healthcare. It’s a smart approach if you think about it and its how several brands have managed to get as many “Fans” as they have. There are a bunch of good examples of this in healthcare including programs like EMD Serono/Pfizer’s use of MS Champions in Facebook.

The most impressive example to me is another use of Facebook and it’s Merck’s program for Gardasil. I’m not impressed with the page or content per se, but rather the very smart angle they’ve taken with their Fan page. Cleverly, Merck didn’t create a Gardasil brand page and ask people to become a fan of their brand. That would look a bit funny in someone’s news feed. Who wants to broadcast to the world that they’re friends with a “big pharma” product that also happens to be a vaccine. You can easily imagine that you wouldn’t have too many takers. So, Merck went in a different direction and created a “semi” unbranded page called Take a Step Against Cervical Cancer. Instead of asking people to be a fan of Gardasil, they ask you to be a fan of fighting cervical cancer. Who among us isn’t against cervical cancer? 108,000 fans later (an impressive amount for any brand, much less a pharma brand), the strategy seems to have worked.

Pro: Low barrier for people to “Fan,” easier for people to share
Con: Limited (if any) connection with the brand, platform often “owned” by third-parties

Contests

There are a number of these types of programs out there and they’re common in many industries. The typical idea is to have users submit a video or story about a specific topic, conduct some sort of judging process, and then announce the winners (and award some prizes). Interestingly enough, this category is one of the pharma industry’s first forays into social media, back in 2007. Way back then, before every pharma company was on YouTube, Novartis sponsored a contest called Flu Flix. The contest was designed to help raise awareness of the flu and why it’s important to get vaccinated. (Funny that we’re doing the same thing three years later, no?) This contest’s introduction video alone has had nearly 800,000 views. As best I can figure, this is the most popular pharma YouTube video ever by about a factor of about 40. Of all the entries they received, they picked 60 as finalists. Here’s the contest introduction video:

Other examples include AstraZeneca’s contest on YouTube for Symbicort (contest now over). These programs can be great if people actually participate. They participate in two ways. First, actually submitting content to the contest and, second, voting or commenting on other submissions. Many contests I see cut out the last part and the “winners” are picked by the company. This misses a huge opportunity. If voting helps determine the winners, then those who entered will encourage their friends to vote, which means that they’re doing your marketing for you. In addition, it’s important to connect the contest to the brand benefits. Don’t just have a contest for the sake of having one. Naturally, we think the Official Sponsor program does all of this pretty well.

Pro: Good exposure to the brand, highly participatory, can spread among networks
Con: Little opportunity for product messaging (especially clinical ones), potential lack of a connection with product benefits

Consumer Research

Nearly everything in social media can be monitored. I won’t get into the pros and cons of monitoring social media here, but feel free to read more about it in my post “Pharma Should Forget About Social Media Monitoring“. If you are monitoring and not planning on responding, that’s fine, but be sure to use the information you find while monitoring. Essentially, you have a giant market research study going on. You can see what people think about your brand and how they talk about and treat the conditions in which you’re most interested. UCB has gone one step further in partnering with Patients Like Me to create a new epilepsy community that they can monitor to find out how people treat epilepsy. As a maker of epilepsy treatments, they clearly have an interest in the information that a community like this can yield.

Pro: A huge amount of information is available, “real-world” data
Con: Adverse event reporting issues, can be expensive to set up and maintain

Connecting Others

There’s no question that, from a regulatory standpoint, it would be difficult for a pharma brand to set up a branded community centered around one of their products. What’s more, who is going to join this community? For example, why would anyone join the Lipitor community on the Lipitor.com website, when there are plenty of neutral third-party communities out there? Answer: they wouldn’t. However, it’s possible to connect people without having an on-site community. Consider how Epilepsy Empowerment works. This is a site created by Valient Pharmaceuticals (who makes an epilepsy treatment), but you don’t see any mention of the brands. Instead, they’ve created a service for those with epilepsy and those who care for them. Rather than have discussions on the site (which some people don’t like to do whether it is pharma owned or not), Epilepsy Empowerment basically matches people together with those who have a similar profile and allows them to share off-site contact information. It’s up to the participants to decide how to communicate after this. Maybe via email, maybe via phone or perhaps something else. Bayer’s Betaplus program operates under a similar model, but with trained moderators supplied by Bayer involved in the calls.

Pro: Greater participation as people see this as a more independent from the brand, lower regulatory risk
Con: Limited connection with the brand, brand typically has no participation, control, or exposure to the conversation, connections between users often random, some liability risk

Customer Service

While very common in other industries, the healthcare industry has only just started to supply some customer service via social media. Twitter seems to be a popular place for customer service since it also happens to be a place where people tend to complain and need customer service. Companies like Comcast and Best Buy have each gotten both great press and good results from the customer service they’re providing via Twitter. One pharma company who is doing this now is AstraZeneca. Basically, it’s a pilot now, but here’s how it works: AZ monitors Twitter for tweets that mention Nexium and refer to either an adverse event or the cost of the medication. When one is found (about one a week), AZ responds with the tweet seen above (yes, the same one for everyone). This tweet invites people to connect with folks in AZ’s call center who can handle these types of questions and supply solutions. Some argue that AZ should engage more by giving the answer on Twitter. I’m not so sure. It’s pretty hard to give all the relevant information about a product assistance program in 140 characters. This is a good start.

Remember: doing this type of customer service in social media doesn’t just affect the person who you respond to; others will see your response as well. In addition, if someone complained about you on Twitter, they’ll like tweet about the great service you provided if you do solve their problem.

Pro: Can stop “firestorms” before they start, shows brand’s sophistication with the channel, low-cost of entry
Con: Problems not solved publicly, action is required by customer

Community Building

The final way social media is used by companies is to create communities. Similar to “Connect Others” above, this one is about creating a community from scratch that is related to your brand or disease state. These communities can literally be created from scratch, meaning they don’t reside on third-part platform like Facebook or Ning, which can be leveraged to host the community (and handle the backend technology). The latter, of course, is more cost-effective, but offers less control. As I mentioned earlier, it’s difficult, if impossible, for a pharma company to create a community-related specifically to it’s brand. However, a few companies have shown it can be done for unbranded, disease-related communities.

The single best source of information about the rare disease PKU is on an unbranded community created by Biomarin called PKU.com. Biomarin makes Kuvan, a treatment for this disease. There’s a great community on this site and Biomarin made it happen. They don’t appear to be involved really in any way except for their company logo appearing on a few pages. Apparently, if you provide enough value, people will come. If you do it right and put patients first, they’ll come. And stay. You’ll have to resist the temptation to try to control the conversation.

Pro: (if unbranded) Limited connection with the brand (a plus for regulatory), great research opportunities
Con: Limited (if any) connection with the brand (a minus for marketers), expensive to set up custom community, recruitment

Those are the seven ways social media is being used. As I said before, if I’m missing something, just leave a comment. As a reminder, for those who are Facebook Fans of Dose of Digital, part of the benefit of being a Fan is that you get occasional exclusive content. This is one of those times. If you want a PowerPOINT version of this post to share with others, instructions for how to download it are now posted for Fans. Not a Fan? Go to Facebook and become one.

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14 Things That Will Inspire Your Digital Marketing in 2010

Jonathan Richman — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:03:34 +0000

As you catch up on all the emails you missed over the holidays and wonder where to start on your massive list of “to-dos,” I’m going to recommend you take a moment for a quick read. Today’s post is really simple. It’s not another “XYZs of the DECADE!” or “The Most Important Things of 2010″ type post, of which I’m sure you’re seeing plenty.

Instead, I wanted to start you off with some things that are sure to recharge your creative thinking. I plan to show you things that might amuse, inspire, upset, annoy, confuse, encourage, frustrate, and all of these at once. While I typically write about healthcare related topics, this post is for every marketer out there. There are quite a few healthcare examples included (I can’t help it), but the vast majority have nothing whatsoever to do with healthcare.

What you aren’t going to get here is a list of things to do. I’m not going to show you a bunch of ideas to copy. You’re going to have to work a bit to figure out the applicability to your industry. In the end, I’m sharing many of these to simply expand your thinking and force you to look at things a bit differently. You’ll also probably come across a few resources that might just make your job simpler in 2010. You may have seen some of these before, but hopefully, they still make an impact.

I’ve tried to loosely bunch things together into “topics.” It sort of worked, so allow me a little poetic license.

14 Things That Will Inspire Your Digital Marketing in 2010

Simplicity

Been in a drugstore aisle lately? Did you feel slightly overwhelmed with the choices? You walked into the store with an aliment and wanted a solution. Maybe your allergies were acting up. Where’s the allergy section? Which of the thousand products do you need? The online buying options on sites like Drugstore.com can be equally overwhelming and frustrating. Enter Help Remedies (their homepage below)…

They have a handful of products (you’ll notice that some are duplicates). There are no brand names. Rather, each product is named based on the aliment it treats. Each treatment uses common, generic medications (loratadine [aka: Claritin] for allergies, for example) in simple packaging at a fixed ($4) price.

Make it simple for people to find what they need to fix their problem. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sometimes we really over-think things. In our efforts to make things more simple, we have the opposite effect. The more complex idea, the less likely you are execute it successfully. At the same time, the complex execution of your complex idea is more likely to leave your consumers confused and frustrated.

For Windows users out there, you probably hate that little strip at the bottom of your monitor–”The Taskbar”

Did you ever notice that you can’t move around the programs in that taskbar? I have and it annoyed me to no end. But Microsoft allowed no way to do this in Windows XP. Rather than a massively complex program or huge upgrade to Windows, someone (not a Microsoft employee) decided to simply write a tiny little script that makes those programs movable. Meet Taskbar Shuffle. It’s a tiny 640k-sized “program” that fixes something that Microsoft hasn’t. Sometimes a massive project or update isn’t necessary when you need a simple solution.

Technology

What’s the “proper way” to use YouTube? You post a video and direct people to it, right? Maybe you embed the video in your site and you sit back and hope that people see it. Well, that’s one way to use it, but that might not be the most engaging for your customers. How about looking at YouTube a bit differently?

Did you know you could do this with YouTube? I’ll bet you didn’t and I’ll further bet that you probably watched the second video in the series and the third (and probably more). It’s an engaging use of the technology. Try not to be confined by how you think about the technology. Instead, investigate what’s possible and see if it’s applicable to what you’re trying to accomplish.

Speaking of rethinking YouTube, why not put your entire website on YouTube? Not all of your videos, your entire site. What’s that you say? You don’t want to pay the outrageous “partnership” fees in order to have your own page. No problem. That’s not what I’m even talking about. I mean putting your entire site into a video. Think there’s no way to do it? Tell that to the folks at Boone-Oakley. They didn’t get that memo.

Make technology your friend. How? You’ve got to invest some time in learning it for yourself. That means more than just reading a blog post about it. It means using it. Do you think the Boone-Oakley people used YouTube for the first time while making this video (er, website)? No. They likely use it all the time and figured out some interesting things you can do with the technology and they put it all together.

Blogging is really hard, right? Just the set-up alone is enough to deter most people. Then the thought of using some complex platform and hosting and editing and getting the graphics just right (and on and on) is enough to ensure that there aren’t too many regular bloggers out there. I’ve seen companies send hundreds of thousands of dollars setting up their blog only to watch them do one or two posts and give up. Blogging takes time to write posts and think of interesting topics, but it shouldn’t take time to set up or actually use. Meet Posterous. If you can use email, you’ve got a blog. Here’s how complex it is to have a Posterous blog:

See for yourself. Right now (I’ll wait), send an email to post@posterous.com. Attach a picture if you’d like or an MP3. Add a little text and see what happens.

Congratulations, you’re a blogger.

Engagement

Do you have a lot of boring data lying around? You’ve probably got stacks of binders filled with it and an entire section of your hard drive dedicated to spreadsheets. Do you really use any of this data? Did any of it really change the way people do things where you work? Did any of it help serve your customers better? What I’ve found from a lot of data is that it’s unactionable (if that’s a word). You can’t do anything based on the findings. That’s one problem. But let’s assume your data is actionable. The next step is to explain it to everyone else at your company. That’s not easy. Data is boring (sorry, analytics friends). However, the presentation of that data doesn’t need to be.

After watching this, do you promise to never again show a PowerPoint slide with a spreadsheet embedded within it, and then say, “You can’t read this, but…”

Good.

Tired of car commercials? I am…have been for years. So, I’m glad to see that they’re using my money (via government bailouts) to make even more. They’re worse than ever of course, but only slightly. So, do you think I can get you to watch a five minute commercial for a car? No? I accept your challenge. Check this out from Volkswagon of Brazil for the Eos and come back (warning: make sure your connected to a solid broadband connection…you’ll need it).

So, how much did you watch? You’ve got to give them credit for “forcing” you to pay attention throughout in an entertaining and challenging way. How are you encouraging people to watch your content all the way through? Is it ever good enough that they should watch it all the way through? [Thanks to Adverblog for the heads up on this one.]

Creatitivy

By now just about everyone has seen this next video. If you’re a digital marketing and you haven’t, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. So, for those who have seen it, my apologies, but watch it again. It’s that good.

Instead of spending millions on TV and print advertising, in 2006, Dove took a different approach. It created “Evolution” (credit to our sister agency Ogilvy Toronto). It was a ”simple” video all to support a campaign that would later be called “The Campaign for Real Beauty.” This concept was borne out of research the agency did that showed that 50% of women say that their body “disgusts them.” 50%. “Disgusts them.” Clearly, there was an opportunity to change that. So, with little hype (and no mass media buying), “Evolution” was launched.

If that doesn’t stop you for a minute, I’m not sure what will. That video, thanks to a massive viral spread, has been seen more than 500 million times. How much would it cost you for 500 million impressions? How about 500 million impressions on people who WANTED to see your commercial? $500,000? $1,000,000? $3,000,000? Nope. Try $50,000. That’s how much “Evolution” cost to create. Sure, not everything is “Evolution,” but you probably don’t need 500 million views of your video. However, you probably want more than the few hundred or few thousand your videos have now.

That’s your inspiration. That’s the best of the best. If you intend to create a video that people will watch and spread to others, this is your guide. Watch your video and then watch “Evolution.” Close? If not, keep working.

If you read this blog regularly, I know you’ve seen this next one, but I’m going to show it to you again. Everything you do can be creative. That means that even the lowly banner ad can be creative. What’s that you say? It’s not possible to make a banner ad that people want to see and click? Try this one on for size:

Told you so. Even banner ads can be good. The ad for Pringles you just saw (and probably clicked a bunch of times) was the winner of the Gold Cyber Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival this past year. It’s the highest honor you can get for digital work…and it was a banner ad. [Fair balance, my company, Bridge Worldwide, created that banner for Pringles (we are the digital agency of record for the brand).]

Yes, even your banner ads can show some creative thinking. “Can Hands” isn’t appropriate for everyone, but the thinking that lead to it should be required for everyone.

Coming up with the next big idea is hard. There’s only a finite number of people at your company and the time they each have to spend on thinking is pretty limited. But, no one knows your market or products as well as you do, right? What about your customers? Don’t they have a pretty good sense of where your brand should go? They certainly have a good idea of where they want it to go and that’s worth paying attention to. Moreover, they might be the ones to give you the next big idea.

Both Dell (with Ideastorm) and Starbucks (with My Starbucks Idea) are two companies that have figured this out (along with many others). Dell has implemented 390 ideas that were submitted and voted for on the site. Starbucks has done more than 50. Cost to these companies? Nearly free. It’s really just the time investment from a handful of employees. How much would you pay for the next big idea and to have an ongoing discussion with engaged customers about how to improve your brand?

Community

When I asked pharma marketers what they would do if there were no rules or regulations, their number one answer (as I predicted) was “create a brand community.” Why? I don’t know and I certainly don’t agree with their idea.

I think there are two problems with this idea. First, who wants to join a community owned and maintained by a pharma company that’s likely to be laced with brand selling messages? People don’t trust “big pharma,” so to think that they’ll be willing to have open and honest conversations when they know that “big pharma” is watching and potentially controlling what they say is a ridiculous notion. Second, why join a pharma-owned community when there are so many that aren’t controlled by pharma companies? Yet, this is one of the first things that pharma marketers want to do.

Okay, I get it. You want to do it regardless of what I say. Fine. Here’s my only request: make your community better than what’s out there. If it is better, then people might join up even if “big pharma” owns and controls it. If you’re not going to make it better, it’s a waste of time and resources. Need to know what your comparators are? No problem. If you want to see what true community engagement looks like, then look no further than Tu Diabetes. There are more than 12,000 members and it has an extremely engaged and active community. It’s alive and you can tell right away that you’re dealing with a group of people who are passionate about an issue. By the way…interested in knowing what they think about pharma or healthcare companies participating in their community? You should be. Check out this thread all about it. Think you’ll be welcomed with open arms?

Need another example? How about Patients Like Me? If you’re thinking about including tracking tools in your community, this is the gold standard (in healthcare at least). Not only are the tools used by a very large percentage of users (and used regularly), the data that people provide are used to help others determine the best treatment for their disease. Are you willing to provide this kind of help on your website even if it’s help that might include telling someone to stop taking your treatment? If not, then your community doesn’t stack up well.

Everything Else

I’ve got a few more that didn’t quite fit into a neat category, so I’m lumping them together here as things you should know about (and likely don’t). Some of these are simply to show you some really interesting technologies just for the “wow” factor and others are essential to being a good digital marketer.

If you haven’t figured out how to incorporate Facebook Connect into what you’re doing, then you’re missing out. Of course, many marketers have figured it out and now use Facebook Connect. If you aren’t familiar with it, then check out this primer from Facebook (be sure to check out all the tabs). Very simply: “With Facebook Connect, users can easily share your content and their actions with their friends on Facebook. As these friends discover your content, they click back to your site, engaging with your content and completing the viral loop.” Think of it as a way to connectyour site with Facebook. People share you site’s content with their friends on Facebook and these friends, hopefully, come check out your site for themselves.

And that’s the way most marketers have used this very powerful tool. They simply make it easier to share links on Facebook and pray that others click on them. However, Facebook Connect is far more powerful than that. When you give permission for a site or application to use your data, they have access to everything your friends do. This means all your updates, your pictures, your information (job, interestes, etc.) to name a few. What you do with this information can be pretty amazing. Think completely customized experiences.

If you want a great example of how you can use Facebook Connect to create a VERY memorable experience, then you should try the Discovery Channel’s Frenzied Watersused to publicize its “Shark Week” or Activision’s The Prototype Experience to promote its platform game, Prototype. CAUTION: you might not like the ending of the former and you might be a tad bothered by the latter if you’re not a fan of first-person shooter games and the storylines behind them. If you want to see some other, more tame, examples, check out this post from Mashable.

All right, here’s a little technology “wow-factor” you can share with your friends. Try out Photosynth from Microsoft. Try clicking on different parts of the image, zooming in and out, and scrolling around. Essentially, Photosynth takes hundreds of photos of a single place and stitches them all together so that you can view the place from multiple angles almost as a 3D experience. Can you come up with a way to use this technology for your next promotion? [note: this embed won't work properly if you're viewing in "mobile" mode or email].

Slightly less cool, but more likely to impact you day-to-day is Get Satisfaction. What is it? In their words: “Get Satisfaction is a direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships. Get Satisfaction is open, transparent, and free. Tens of thousands of companies use this neutral space to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services. Everyone is invited and encouraged to participate.”

In my words, it’s a place where people are complaining about your brand and looking to each other to solve the problems they are having. Well, that’s what’s going on if you’re not there. You could be there though. You could be officially representing your company or brand and answering questions as they come in and cutting down on unchecked, Internet-based, brand firestorms. Is anyone talking about your brand and looking for answers right now? Go to the site and check it out (use the search box in the upper right).

If they are talking about your company or products, I’d recommend getting officially involved. To me, this service started as a tool for small, start-ups to help them manage customer service, while big companies relied on their call centers. But now, big companies are joining in because their customers are used to going to and using Get Satisfaction. Big companies like who? How about Nike and Microsoft for starters?

And finally, to close this out, I thought a glimpse into the future was necessary. Here it is:

What is it? Here’s the description from Popular Science’s The Year’s Most Amazing Scientific Images (number 24): “A dead heart beats again, thanks to the efforts of scientists at the University of Minnesota. To rebuild and reanimate the organ, which was harvested from a rat, scientists first stripped the old heart cells away with a detergent typically found in shampoos. That left behind a collagen matrix—the protein fibers that hold groups of cells together and help give organs their overall shape—which they then reseeded with heart cells from a newborn rat. They attached the organ to electrodes and waited. Then it happened: The heart started to beat regularly.”

Wow. If that doesn’t inspire you to think that anything is possible, I’m not sure what will. Best of luck for an inspired 2010.

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