Which pharma companies topped IMS Health’s social media chart and how can they improve?

Despite the regulatory minefield social media poses to pharmaceutical companies, new research from IMS Institute for Healthcare Analytics shows they are raising their social media profiles across Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Twitter is the social media channel of choice for about half of the 50 largest pharmaceutical companies, followed by YouTube with 17 and Facebook with 15.  The relatively short post format on Twitter and the ease in building relationships on it make it a bigger draw than other social media outlets. Johnson & Johnson came out miles ahead of other pharma companies with a score of 70 compared with the 9 to 25 point range of other companies. Why? It has a substantial reach and it scored big on its level of interactions with those who post, reply or interact with the company’s postings, according to the report.

On Facebook alone, J&J generated an average of 6.9 comments per social media post, 589.5 likes per social media post, and 65.7 shares per post. Its closest rival, GSK, averaged 5.9 comments per post, 159.7 likes per post and 34 shares for its posts. On Twitter, J&J averaged 6.3 retweets but UCB tended to respond the most to tweets about it. Shire had the most favorites per tweet. on YouTube, GSK had 35,979 total views per post compared with J&J with 25,543 and Novartis with 25,804.

Here’s the list in order of scored points:

1 Johnson & Johnson 70

2 GlaxoSmithKline 25

3 Novo Nordisk 23

4 Pfizer 20

5 Novartis 18

6 Boehringer Ingelheim 18

7 Bayer 16

8 Merck & Co 13

9 AstraZeneca 10

10 UCB 9

Among its recommendations for pharmaceutical companies are that they be less risk-averse and follow the patient, applying the knowledge of their medical departments to help customers and improve health outcomes. Employees should be trained to use social media so they are compliant with the FDA. They also need to speed response times when problems arise from days to hours.

It points out that companies will inevitably make mistakes and should simply have a game plan in advance that guides their response.  

They should also brace for negative comments online, whether or not a social media strategy exists. “The patient is empowered and wants to be involved.”

Social media can be used to provide qualitative insights to other market measures, provided technical support can master the use of big data.

If it’s done the right way, social media can generate valuable insights from customers and potentially new patient communities. It can also help these companies gauge attitudes toward their companies and get a measure of market realities, for relatively little money aside from the expense of having a third party or in-house staff to carry out this work.

The report outlined several technical challenges for these companies to produce effective social media strategies including:

1. The use of the “big data” generated from social interactions
2. Integrating social media into the communications and marketing system
3. The physical demands of replying to online interactions
4. Whether or not to outsource the management of an online presence

The third point is a particularly big challenge for pharmaceutical companies. The work involved in responding to an online interaction can have a significant impact on their attitudes toward this medium, or at least make them rethink their strategy. But this needn’t be a bad thing.

“A Facebook comment that’s damaging can turn viral in a matter of days, even hours, and a conventional customer relations approach to the digital landscape is unlikely to be able to keep up. Unfortunately, wading through identifiable online issues is likely to create a labor, legal and regulatory burden. This means that to cope, pharmaceutical companies must reform their internal structures to limit exposure and maximize the benefits of direct interactions. outsourcing and elements of automation may be required to tackle these challenges.”

The FDA’s draft guidance on pharma’s use of social media last week was limited to interactive promotional media but it at least offered up a few examples of what the pharmaceutical industry needs to do to stay compliant.

A firm provides on its product website an online forum that gives users the opportunity to post comments about the use of its product. In this case, the firm is responsible for submitting to the FDA the product website to meet the postmarketing submission requirements because the firm created, owns, or operates the website.

If a firm provides only financial support (e.g., through an unrestricted educational grant) and has no other control or influence on that site, then the firm is not responsible for information on a third-party site, and has no obligation to submit the content to FDA.

 

[Photo Credit: BioJobBlog.com]