Pharma and twitter - who is doing it and why?

Thank you Brad and I could not agree more with your comment.

Legal restrictions are to be taken very seriously, but in the mean time pharma can already add value by providing content where it is most needed to those who can use it best (like some of the bloggers in my blog roll for example

I also believe that a lot of legal issues are more organizational unpreparedness issues… hmm you give me an idea for another post…

Hi,
great comment. You bring up a very important and interesting point about the impact on the physician/patient relationship. Some physicians in the US already have successfully taken on this challenge: Check out “patient 2.0, meet doctor 2.0“ (http://www.scribemedia.org/2008/03/07/1442/)
Most physicians, however have not as much warmed up to the concept and I believe pharma can play a role in bringing about the necessary “change management, by training physicians on the use of these new technologies and providing them with insights into patient needs and feedback from the online community.

Thanks Silja for mentioning biogeekblog!
It’s interesting to see Pharma laying hands on twitter accounts… and actually not using them, for all the reasons discussed in the previous comments.
But the companies doing this are right I think.
It kinda reminds me the early days of the web, when domain names were bought by people who tried to sell them back to companies afterward.
Every pharma/healthcare company should set up an account today, IMHO !

I think that companies can really tap into what their market is thinking/doing/desiring by following members of their target market on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. To that same end, consumers (patients) can be kept up-to-date on developments from companies they trust their care to.

The more Pharma can learn about its patients, the better off their company will be.

- Kerri Sparling (@sixuntilme)
http://www.sixuntilme.com

[...] having looked at pharma’s use of twitter, I decided to also get a feel for how pharma is engaging with facebook so far. Three main uses [...]

STAR (Pharma Recruitment Company) are on both Facebook and Twitter! Me and my colleague Rich are on Twitter, and we invite our candidates to follow us in order to get updates on our latest vacancies live as they come in! Our Facebook group is slightly more established, and similar to other pharma groups out there (i.e. giving latest industry news, and opportunities to discuss current pharma events), but we also advertise our latest vacancies on there, giving our candidates more ways to find out about what vacancies we have.

One more potential use of Pharma on twitter: Accelerating recruitment of patients for trials (and supporting disease / product awareness at the same time).
Check this out: http://tinyurl.com/dczxn8

[...] Boehringer, Novartis, JNJComm, Roche and AstraZenecaUS. As I pointed out in my previous post: Pharma and twitter these companies have dared to take the jump into this new microblogging thing fairly recently - so [...]

I worry a little bit about the Pew data; the 11% number they quote could include Facebook, which is an entirely different animal (and much easier place for pharma to be, for a variety of reasons). Twitter still has some fairly serious “stickiness” issues, but it’s low cost of entry tends to compensate for that.

From a strategic perspective (and boy, do pharma clients need strat right now; they’re bombarded with random social tactics) I’d ultimately include both, but FB first.

Silja,

That absolutely speaks to my point on strategy. Has to be strategy first–who are we connecting with and for what purpose. That will then tell us the various modes and channels that make sense (and let’s not forget to integrate with the rest of our marketing efforts) both for our clients and their audiences.

More broadly, I do tend to wonder if Twitter is a bit of a tempest in a teacup. Not a fad per se, but its surface numbers tend to contradict its real “usefulness.” For example, compare the average time on site, frequency of use for Twitter against Facebook and the shine rubs off of Twitter pretty quickly. And rather than using it as a social tool, most commercial uses of Twitter are as another broadcast channel.

While I’m a fan of Pew, I worry that they may be emphasizing “Twitter” to get more traction/eyeballs. It’s hot, all of us marketers are a bit agog about it, and our pharma clients are either fascinated or terrified by it. Maybe both. But note Pew’s words: “…a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others.” As a poster on another thread put it, that’s like saying 90% of Americans get to work by bus or another type of motorized vehicle.

Overall, what I love about the social space is that it is constantly changing. Just a few years ago Xanga was all the rage. I’d bet that this post is the first time that many readers have heard of it. SecondLife has peaked and fallen into the background, and MySpace is in decline. Facebook at some point will lose popularity as well. One of the biggest values we can bring to our clients is to be continuously watching, listening, and anticipating the community migrations.

Cheers,

Bart

[...] asks Pharma and twitter – who is doing it and why? It appears that big Pharma has jumped onto the Twitter Bandwagon. The chart on the left is a small [...]