Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

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The elephant in the ‘breakfast’ room

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

This week saw the launch of the Government’s first ever national campaign to raise awareness of the signs of bowel cancer. ‘Be Clear on Cancer’ encourages those with persistent symptoms to present promptly to catch the tumour earlier, with an ultimate aim of improving survival rates across the UK.

In spite of the condition being the third most common cancer across the country, to date there’s been clear reluctance to focus the public spotlight on it. Be Clear on Cancer has of course been backed by leading charities, such as Beating Bowel Cancer and Bowel Cancer UK, both of which provide exceptional ongoing support to patients and their families.

The launch of the initiative has received extensive press interest but the way in which it’s been welcomed by the media is somewhat ironic. Despite the whole point of the campaign being to raise awareness of the symptoms of the condition, it seems a proportion of editors have shied away from the nitty gritty ‘below-the-belt’ symptoms and left key campaign messages out of their reporting. We do appreciate it’s not exactly what you want to hear blaring out of the radio during your morning ablutions or digest while eating your bowl of cornflakes. However the media are such a powerful communications vehicle, and in this day and age there must be a more palatable way in which to educate the public via these still important traditional routes so that we can talk more frankly and hinder the number of cases soaring?

There’s a raft of disease areas where Pharma, healthcare professionals and charities can really collaborate with the media and work together on the best means to communicate to the masses/stimulate discussion that suffer the same taboo, and each deserve the appropriate air time!

In the meantime, on behalf of all those supporting #BeClearOnCancer, the initial symptoms of bowel cancer include:

  • blood in your stools
  • a change to your normal bowel habits that persists for more than six weeks
  • abdominal pain and/or unexplained weight loss

Embarrassed? Uncomfortable? You shouldn’t be.

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Creative engagement for healthy apps?

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Did you know that Apple’s App Store currently offers 9,000 mobile health apps (including nearly 1,500 cardio fitness apps, over 1,300 diet apps, over 1,000 stress and relaxation apps, and over 650 women’s health apps) and by mid 2012, this number is expected to reach 13,000*.  Impressive? The sheer quantity available is irrelevant unless there is a demand for such apps. According to Juniper Research, mobile healthcare applications for tablets and smartphones are set to reach 44 million downloads by next year, growing to 142 million downloads by 2016. But how many of these apps actually get used?

Research has found that about 20 per cent of users return to an app after the first day they downloaded it but that the average app has a less than five per cent chance of being used for more than 30 days. Furthermore, around 20 per cent of the free apps available in the Android Market have not even clocked 100 downloads.

This is why creativity and engagement is key. Identifying a niche that will entertain, educate or ease the life of the consumer is vital to its success. But in this increasingly crowded marketplace, both creativity and engagement are crucial to differentiate and activate demand but it can come in different forms – from a quirky idea to impressive use of technology.

Take for example, the augmented reality (AR) app called Lungs designed to show smokers the damage caused by cigarettes. Users can control settings to reflect their own experience based on factors such as their age and how many cigarettes they smoke each day; these all impact on both the visual representation and ‘time taken for lungs to recover’ statistic.

Or how about the BeerGut Fitness app, the calorie check book that will assist you in avoiding the dreaded beer gut telling you whether you’ve earned a drink or need to exercise?

With NHS waiting lists growing daily and falling disposable income making private healthcare more unaffordable, combined with an increasingly informed patient base, the market is ripe for the countless new apps and devices actively targeting consumers keen on preventing, examining, improving and managing their health. So the question remains, is this a route more healthcare companies should be focusing in on in 2012?
In a world where audiences are publicly disclosing increasing amounts of personal information about their lives on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, health apps are becoming more relevant and increasingly invaluable to companies wishing to have a social media presence. However, it is clear that without a healthy dose of engaging creativity many of these apps are destined to fall by the wayside.

* (Source: MobiHealthNews, September 2011).

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Is engagement the key to charity’s austerity challenge?

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

With the economic downturn, many charities are really feeling the pinch (59% of UK charities are negatively affected according to the Charity Commission’s last report Charities and the Economic Downturn). Of these charities, 62% say that have experienced considerable reductions in contributions, specifically housing, health and education charities.

So are charities needing to become more creative in how they attract donations? Certainly, the recent collaboration between Dulux and UNICEF, which invited people to own a colour, is a brilliant example of a fresh and more importantly engaging approach to fundraising which we mentioned in a recent blog.

In a bid to make it easy for people to donate, we are seeing more and more charities turning to social media sites which can be linked directly to sponsorship platforms such as JustGiving, which help supporters to collect funds and eliminate the hassle of filling out sponsor forms.  In fact, this has helped 13 million people raise over £930 million for more than 12000 charities since 2001. Unsurprisingly, Facebook and Twitter have been most successful in driving these donations – in September 2011 it was reported that over 27% of all JustGiving’s on line donations were driven directly through Facebook and the highest value donations were received through Twitter.

So the question is in tough times are charities the first to suffer or is creativity and engagement the key to success? Well, last month’s high profile ‘Children in Need’ campaign seems to refute this having raised a record-breaking £26 million.  The question is was it the content that drove the rise in donations or was it the integration of donations via social media and texting alongside the traditional that broadened the scope and made it all so much easier to give.  ‘Meaningful’, multi-channel, or a combination of both, is that the way to improve charities fortunes?

 

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Google’s quest for world domination, is it only a matter of time?

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Yesterday saw the launch of Google Music , a download store in a similar mold to Apple’s iconic iTunes. It’s clear that the company is playing catch-up to its biggest rivals, all who have integrated music into their online and mobile products to varying degrees. The company will be the first to admit that they’ve had to scale back original ambitions and despite music partners having already labelled the music service as “unexciting”, we can’t help but give one of the world’s largest companies a pat on the back for trying. It’s hard not to argue that ongoing developments such as these elevate them up the ladder of success and bring Google executives closer to harmonising the tune of “He’s got the whole world in his hands”.

Back in July we blogged on the launch of Google+. We highlighted how it could offer an opportunity to reconsider how we share our lives online and offer the potential to take a different path altogether. Since then the social network has opened up to the masses and only last week rolled out company pages across the social network . To this end, any business, group or entity can create a profile. Sound familiar?

Skepticism aside (for now), we’ve been reassured that the site offers some new “unique features” thereby enticing company presence. Save the Children, BBC News, the Daily Mail (and good old Madge!) are some that have already delved in and among the first to create profiles. In this light, what does this mean for brand’s social media strategies? Do they need to expand and integrate all things Google within their programmes or can they choose to ignore, but at risk of missing an increasingly influential trick?

Over the coming months, it’ll be interesting to see if there’s collective movement across industries from key competitors, such as Facebook, or if marketing leads will allow brands to co-exist and evolve across an increasing number of channels.

Google’s global conquest is well underway but with a proportion of companies (pharma especially) only just getting into the swing of things with pre-existing social networks such as Facebook, are we ready to take on a full-blown affair with +1? Discuss…

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Facebook drinks advertising in the spotlight

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

You may have read today that the multimillion-dollar deal that drink company Diageo has agreed with Facebook is causing outrage amongst health experts and alcohol campaigners. This is because they believe alcohol marketing on the popular social network site will fuel the under-age drinking epidemic.

There is no denying that advertising on Facebook has been hugely profitable for Diageo – this activity alone has resulted in a 20% increase in sales but perhaps announcing this at the same time as the deal only serves to add fuel to the fire. Some think that it’s not right that marketers can target Facebook users given the social network was originally supposed to be about genuine friendship and real relationships, not business.

Although Facebook argues that pages set up by alcohol advertisers are ‘age-gated’, and therefore only accessible to those who are over 18, health experts counter that the age verification process for social networking sites is ineffective given many youngsters lie about their age.

The reality is, many youths are exposed to alcohol marketing every day, whether it is TV, online, outdoor or print advertising. Some might argue that Facebook advertising offers more control than other mediums and that parents can monitor what children are doing online more easily than what they are seeing on billboards or on TV. But there is a legitimate concern about online promotion because of the highly targeted, personalised nature of social media marketing. There is a feeling that the private, personal spaces we inhabit online are becoming infiltrated without our awareness or consent. That everything you write is being used to sell to you. To many, it just feels more underhand and more devious than traditional advertising, where you know where you stand a lot more.

The key point is that social media marketing is a very sensitive area, especially in the health arena, and that any kind of healthcare communications must be transparent, well judged and learn from the big developments in other arenas to be effective and well received.

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What’s the deal with location based services? All hype or more hype needed?

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

With social media week well and truly underway all around the world, we thought it would be appropriate to explore recent social media technology which has really spilt opinion… location-based services (LBS). Not everyone is totally convinced by this new ‘check-in’ craze and it’s interesting that 31 per cent of people don’t even know what checking-in is. Is there any value to LBS or are we creating cool new technologies for the sake of it?

Facebook Places is now quite a commonly used feature and sometimes people wonder, what’s the point? But there are actually some really useful apps currently available such as those that can help you find your way when you’re lost or those that show you where the nearest cash point or toilet is within a one mile radius; Around Me, Addison Lee and Odeon to name but a few.

It’s safe to say that many companies are jumping on board the LBS love boat and incorporating this technology into their apps, but it’s particularly interesting to reflect on how this has been done in healthcare. Quite recently, as part of their fight against HIV, AIDS and STIs, MTV Staying Alive developed an app called iCondom, which in essence is a condom distribution map. The app allows users to upload information on where they can access condoms nearby. Handy!

Though not healthcare related, we’ve also stumbled across this new gaming app currently in development in the States called Foursquaropoly. It combines Foursquare (another well know LBS) and Monopoly by pulling information from Foursquare and giving players the ability to buy and sell properties as well as collect rent from other people who check into their properties. It’s definitely a pretty innovative way of bringing to life the whole ‘check-in thing’.

Many people don’t value LBS and, at the moment, it doesn’t seem that its real worth has been established in healthcare communications. We now live in a world where pretty much everything is striving towards being online, interactive and personalised to you. Maybe it’s time for healthcare to embrace the potential before we can genuinely evaluate its potential?

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A review of medical regulation for patient interaction online

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

The topic has been discussed at length over the last few years, but only in the last couple of months have professional medical organisations begun to draw up online codes of conduct.

Most notably, the British Medical Association (BMA) issued guidance to its 140,000 members advising doctors and medical students to steer clear of activities that could compromise public confidence in the profession, with specific recommendations to adopt high privacy settings, reject friend requests from patients and avoid work discussions, particularly those involving patients or colleagues, online. Essentially anything that might breach patient confidentiality or, with employers increasingly using the web to screen applicants, jeopardise career prospects.

The BMA recommendations came just days after the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) guidance for its 660,000 members. This guidance, which was developed in response to an increasing number of enquiries about online misconduct and the fact that some nurses and midwives have been investigated and struck off for improper use of Facebook, stresses that ‘virtual’ incidents will be treated as seriously as ‘real’ ones and urges members to make a clear distinction between their professional and personal lives online.

Interestingly, a recent poll of nearly 1,000 Nursing Times readers suggests that healthcare professionals (HCPs) themselves believe there is a need for this type of regulation. More than 40% of nurses surveyed said a colleague had inappropriately posted details of patients or colleagues on Facebook or Twitter, while 32% of respondents felt nurses were sharing too much information about work issues.

Despite the fact that HCPs are encouraged to use social media to build professional networks and patients are happy to disclose personal stories and health data on information-sharing websites like PatientsLikeMe and the IBM Patient Empowerment System, the BMA and NMC guidelines appear to be based on the age-old advice not to mix business with pleasure. In the same way that the General Medical Council (GMC) has always cautioned doctors against treating friends and family for fear that personal relationships could cloud clinical judgement, the latest recommendations seem to stem from concerns about maintaining objectivity when the HCP and the patient know one another.

While doctor-patient communication could often be improved, it is often most appropriate for this to take place face-to-face in a secure environment. But any suggestion that HCPs should not be able to discuss health issues with patients online could be missing the bigger picture. If the end goal is to improve health outcomes surely no route should be totally blocked to ensuring progress for all? Whether doctors actually want to interact with patients online is another thing altogether…

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D-Day for Pharma and Facebook

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
That time we were all waiting for has finally arrived… D-day for pharma and Facebook! Given that Facebook is supposedly meant to be a social network, they have taken, in our eyes, the right decision to allow wall comments on ALL Facebook pages. This has riddled some in the pharma industry with panic and several companies are now choosing to close down some of their, until now, comment-closed Facebook pages due to fears of inappropriate and uncontrollable user-generated content (the most concerning being comments about side effects and off-label product use) and a lack of adequate resources to moderate these pages. This does however raise the fundamental question,  why set up a Facebook page without comments in the first place? Was this just a tick in the box to ‘do digital’?
Let’s think about this… Facebook is a social community with two-way dialogue at its very core. A Facebook page allows a company to directly engage with the public and vice-versa. If you take away the ability to comment, then surely all you’re left with is a website within Facebook?
In light of these changes, Dose of Digital’s Jon Richman has been keeping a watchful eye on which pharma Facebook pages will be closing with his Pharma Facebook Deathwatch. This draws attention to those that are closing and raises a question about how valuable these initiatives in social media ever really were?
In our opinion, a page without comments is missing the fundamental point of Facebook. But for those pages that have a genuine intent to social interaction surely with a dollop of open-mindedness, a spoonful of (minor) risk-taking and a sprinkling of moderation, there’s no reason why some of these really valuable Facebook pages can’t stay open.

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Facebook’s growing role in ‘social journalism’

Friday, April 8th, 2011

The success of the internet has led to an explosion of conveniently accessible information. Within this the social media landscape continues to grow and evolve.

Social networks are becoming an important source and outlet for news, not only for Joe Blogs but for reporters themselves. In an attempt to promote the use of Facebook in the newsroom, they have unveiled a new page and meet-up programme for journalists.
 
Facebook’s growing role in ‘social journalism’ has already been recognised, with a Facebook-only news organisation being touted as only a matter of time. This new development brings us one step closer.

‘Journalists on Facebook’ is a resource for individuals who want to incorporate social media into their reporting. Facebook Director of Media Partnerships Justin Osofsky explained how “the Page will provide journalists with best practices for integrating the latest Facebook products with their work and connecting with the Facebook audience of more than 500 million people.”

The social network will also be hosting workshops worldwide highlighting how Facebook can be used as a reporting tool – the first of these taking place later this month at the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

A useful service to the journalism community or another unneeded attempt to shift operations online? The jury is out.

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Content isn’t the only King: How presentation can make ALL the difference

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

Once upon a time, in a certain village, there lived a little country girl – the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was excessively fond of her and her grandmother doted on her still more. This good woman had a little red riding hood made for her. It suited the girl so extremely well that everybody called her Little Red Riding Hood.

Cast yourself back to the seventeenth century (or just rewind a couple of years!) and no doubt you’d have had the ol’ bedtime tale read aloud to you. We all know how the story goes but, in my eyes, gone are the days where we rely solely on emotive and elaborative text to carry the word – we demand an increasingly vibrant and/or exciting and engaging mode of presentation…

 

Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

 

Admittedly, this video might be taking the use of modern tools one step too far. However, it does illustrate how ideas, thoughts and concepts can be shared in a visually engaging and stimulating way, thereby placing the user at the centre of the experience.

In an era where iPads are the new sliced bread and children are practically logged in from the womb, we need to embrace new ways to channel our communications and fuel two-way dialogue.

Presentation is key. More of us are on the move and living a faster pace of life than ever before. Information needs to be shared in both a digestible, innovative format thereby capturing readers’ attention and allowing us to hold on to the ultimate aim of kick-starting discussion and allowing it to thrive.

More often than not, it’s not the overarching principles which differ but the way in which we present ideas. We need to embrace our creativity and where there is an appropriate opportunity to contribute, imaginatively empower people to prioritise and personalise their health. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about?

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