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Social Media:  It’s All In the Plan

by Jim Dayton

Successfully engaging customers is hard. That is an understatement. As marketers, we are constantly trying to find every person’s “sweet spot,” where our business objectives and creative leave an indelible impact on someone’s heart and mind. That single connection can make a brand irreplaceable. And that is what we seek, an irreplaceable spot in our customers’ minds.

In traditional marketing, the bull’s eye of success depends on two factors. We find success where the business objectives and marketing initiatives, or creative concepts, meet. In interactive marketing, that model changes slightly, making the bull’s eye just that much smaller. Two additional factors come into play, technology and user experience. With Pharma interactive marketing, that model changes once again. We must add another layer of medical, legal and regulatory, making that success-target just that much harder to hit.

Yes, this makes Pharma interactive marketing challenging. But it also makes us all better marketers. We are driven to go that extra mile to find new ways to engage our customers, not by working around the rules but by working harder to find solutions that follow the rules. Using social media is no different. It is a new medium that needs focused professionals that understand Pharma’s limitations and use them to their advantage. It also requires a lot of careful planning. Below are our first three steps to successful social media planning.

1. Create the Rule Book

As Pharma marketers, we have become quite accustomed to rules. They are a part of everything we do, and that will not change for social media. The only difference is that social media guidelines must be developed by the brands. Pharma marketers have been handed the keys to the social media car with the fatherly warning to drive defensively. So, where do we start?

• First, get an idea of who knows what about social media within your organization. Most companies have already identified subject matter experts or partners that can help them identify the appropriate team of people to start building a social media task force. Make sure the team is diverse and includes brand managers, public relations representatives, sales staff, legal, medical, regulatory and agency partners.
• Second, start thinking about how your company will utilize social media. You may already have blogging guidelines as part of your employee handbook, but do you have social networking, wiki or micro-blogging policies? Most companies don’t. Thinking about how your employees can use these tools makes it much easier to develop guidelines for how you will engage your customers in this arena.
• Third, create and share your rule book. Establish clear guidelines and strategies to utilize social media and then educate your partners internally and externally. The time has come when none of us can claim ignorance regarding customer engagement via these new channels. We must take what we know and apply it.

2. Listen, the Customer Will Tell You

At Intouch, we believe a strong social media engagement strategy starts with listening. In most cases, the conversation about your brand is already underway and customers are reviewing your services and openly discussing how to improve them. “Lurking” (as it is called by many message board and social network users) is an effective way to find out what your customers are saying about your brand, their general sentiment toward your company, what services they would like you to provide and if you are welcome in their conversations.

However, this is not market research. And using social media to conduct market research is ill-advised. People engaged in social media are generally very savvy and will call-out brands trying to do quick and dirty market research instantaneously. Unless users are answering your questions organically, and you are in the right place at the right time, research like this rarely pans out. Also, it goes against the main tenet of social media, be genuine.

3. Don’t Start from Scratch, Start Sharing

You may already have projects on the drawing board that lend themselves well to social media. Identify opportunities where you can provide relevant content via blogs, social networks, video and photo sharing sites, RSS feeds, podcasts and social bookmarks, and start sharing.

• Do you post timely articles from your HCP advisory board on your website?  “Share” buttons, like share»send»save allow users to add that content to their pages and share that content with their network.
• Do you have video or audio clips to explain how to use your product? Create a YouTube channel or develop a podcast.

All of these tactics can be done safely once you have a rule book and ensure that your content is relevant to your customers. You may even want to take small steps and disable the more “social” functions of social media. But by identifying tactics that can utilize social media to achieve a common objective, you are taking a giant step toward using social media as it is intended.

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