Recent blog posts over at Ignite Social Media show some great insights into what’s big on Facebook right now. For pharma and healthcare social media, Facebook offers quite a lot of opportunity, not least because of how easy it is to moderate comments and how ‘low-risk’ this is when compared to something like Twitter. While the only health ‘brand’ in Ignite’s top 50 is Breast Cancer Awareness (US), there is still much to be learned from non-health campaigns. So what are the brands with thousands of followers, who post hundreds of pro-brand comments on these pages, doing right?
Brands like Starbucks reward fans who ‘like’ the page with customer discounts. Many brand Twitter feeds do the same. While this is not permissible in most healthcare scenarios, the concept of ‘giving something back’ fosters loyalty and encourages communities to form. So it’s something any healthcare Facebook page should keep in mind (although the application of the concept will obviously vary).
So how does a brand update its status on the Facebook wall? A brand can hardly say the same things a person would. But Skittles manage to come up with the funniest and charming updates which invoke curious people looking in to respond. Fond examples are ‘High fives should always be followed by guitar solos’, ‘Shark Week is pretty awesome, but Shaolin Ferret Week is even better’ and our favourite, ‘Belly button, eh? I just call it a Skittles holster’. Give a brand a personality, and people engage with the personality, and as a result, the brand.
You might ask ‘This is all very well, but what about healthcare Facebook pages?’ If you haven’t yet done so, Jonathan Richman’s Dose of Digital page has the best three Facebook healthcare pages listed (as voted in the Dosie Awards). One example is The Coalition To Prevent Deep Vein Thrombosis, an unbranded page by Sanofi-Aventis in the US. It does not allow comments on products, which could easily be done in the UK, but it does motivate an entire community of people who have been touched by the condition. It reflects the personality of those in the community itself – one of determination, motivation and an urgency to do more for people affected by DVT.
Clearly the motto is meaningful engagement is key.
Tags: digital pharma, Facebook, pharma online
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Hi Angie – great post.
US Sanofi-Aventis FB example you cite is a good one. Given the correct value proposition (what people are going to want to chat to you about) FB is a good channel for health and pharma communication.
It is worth listening to the following @pharmaguy podcast with an interview from a senior chap at Sanofi-Aventis around the problem they had with a FaceBook page. Some good learning to be had here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/johnmack/2010/04/06/what-sanofi-aventis-learned-from-its-facebook-expe
@aurorahealthpr ^NC
Great post — completely agree with the need to insert some personality into health care social media updates! Just wondering if you could clarify why you would consider Facebook to be low-risk compared with Twitter? Is it because followers are more tied to “true” identities?
Firstly, you can moderate comments on Facebook, which means you can set out a policy on what is and what is not allowed to be posted. This is the case with our above example, The Coalition To Prevent Deep Vein Thrombosis, which clearly informs anyone looking at the page that such comments are not posted: this page is not intended as a forum for discussing sanofi-aventis’ or other companies’ products. As such, Postings that contain product discussions will be removed by sanofi-aventis.
Secondly, discussions in Facebook tend to be kept in specific areas, such as a wall on one particular page. This means that if some kind of problem did occur, you’d be able to track the conversation more easily. In our eyes, conversations on Twitter can be harder to monitor, and misinformation less easily addressed. The point here is that information must be accurate, especially when it comes to healthcare. Twitter is by no means a ‘no-go’ area, but for anyone running a campaign who is just finding their feet, Facebook seems preferable.
We hope this is a useful answer to your question?