Boehringer Ingelheim and Bayer ‘taking the lead’ in social media
pharmafile | April 22, 2015 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, J&J and Merck, Novartis, Ogilvy Healthworld
Pharma may be finally embracing social media as a vehicle for engaging with doctors and patients, after posting more than 500% more tweets in 2014 than 2013.
Stats compiled by Ogilvy Healthworld UK from the social media profiles of 14 pharma companies show that as a whole, pharma’s activity in social media is on the up. In 2013 the industry tweeted an average of 75 times a week, but in 2014 that figure increased to 475 – a 533% boost.
“While there is still some evidence of ‘social anxiety; across the global pharma industry, many organisations are getting involved in the online conversation,” the report finds.
It includes an audit of the companies’ social media activity across 10 of the most popular social media networks, reviewing one week of social posts a month for three months. This was used to create a score across six categories: social presence, connectivity between social networks, community size, activity, engagement and ‘virality’.
The top performer Boehringer Ingelheim, ‘took a strong lead’, which the report showed meant that “it’s not always the largest companies who… create the biggest rapport with their social communities”.
Bayer, Novartis, J&J and Merck also performed well, “with Bayer in particular really raising their game since 2013 by adopting a fresher strategic approach”.
The companies that are the most active also have the most engaged audiences, the report notes. Those “that have risen to the top are the ones who have managed to provide useful content that not only meets their business objectives but taps into the needs of their many audiences”, it adds.
Others with work still to do to improve their social media strategies were GSK, Novo Nordisk and Roche. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lilly, Sanofi, AstraZeneca and Pfizer’s social communities earned the lowest scores, although their followings have grown since 2013.
“Regulatory boundaries and compliance constraints mean that the rules of pharma don’t always go hand in hand with the norms of social media,” the report concludes.
“Social media has the potential to revolutionise the way big pharma interacts with physicians, allowing doctors to obtain the facts they require without the many issues often associated with rep visits or advertising to clinicians.”
While Dr Alistair Lindsay, cardiologist and social media editor for the journal Heart, says: “Social media is giving power back to physicians. I can learn at my own pace, and nobody can accuse me of bias; pharma didn’t influence me to do that, you put the information out there.
“This is a very strong platform to break down many of the things that pharma has traditionally been criticised for – especially a lack of transparency.”
Lilian Anekwe
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