Healthcare and Pharma Social Media: It's All About E.V.E.

No, no, not the 1950 classic "All About Eve [1]" starring Bette Davis. I mean "All About *E.V.E*." [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042192/

By Jonathan Richman on Apr 14, 2009

No, no, not the 1950 classic "All About Eve" starring Bette Davis. I mean "All About E.V.E."

New term, new acronym to remember, but I promise this one will be worthwhile.

E.V.E. Expected Visitor Experience.

Some background. As many of you know, with your help I've been compiling the most complete list of pharma and healthcare social media programs out there (in wiki form). If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. It's sure to help you convince your management that you wouldn't be the first to try something in the social media space. I give huge credit to the intrepid few companies that seem to be willing to stick their necks out just a little further in an effort to pioneer this space. However, while all these programs and sites listed in the wiki are technically social media, almost every single one that is sponsored or controlled by a healthcare company lacks one thing. A proper E.V.E.

Briefly, E.V.E., Expected Visitor Experience, is defined as the set of activities and functions that an average user would expect to find and use on a specific digital platform. That is, does it work like they expect it to work? Does it work like they've seen similar sites work?

Let's take a look at a few examples to help me explain what E.V.E. is all about.

Twitter.

Twitter is all about interacting with others. It isn't a medium to simply push out your message while completely ignoring what's going on around you. The corollary would be someone at a cocktail party standing off to the side shouting out random bits of information about themselves. Despite the pleas of everyone else for them to stop and a few earnest invitations to help this person join a conversation, they continue to yell.

All but one (from my experience) of the pharma companies that currently tweet are "that guy." Standing by themselves, happy to have someone listening, but annoying everyone and ignoring how a cocktail party is supposed to work. Two examples are Novartis and AstraZeneca. A quick glance down their tweet stream and you'll notice not a single "@" symbol. This tells me they aren't talking to anyone. Contrast this with Roche, who seems to be interested in at least having some dialogue (check out the wiki for the complete list of pharma Twitterers).

So, if you can't commit to doing at least what Roche is doing on Twitter, forget about it. As a final check read this great article from AdAge with the simple title: "Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn't Tweet." If you come up with a "yes, that's us" to more than two of these, come back next year.

Facebook.

Speaking of sites that have grown like crazy, Facebook now has over 200 million registered users. That's a lot of status updates and a lot of potential customers. A few healthcare companies have established Facebook pages. The largest by far is for Gardisil and their mission: "Take a Stand Against Cervical Cancer." This page has more than 104,ooo fans. By any standard, that's a lot and it's a huge amount on Facebook. Question is, does this mean anything? Gardisil has basically treated their Facebook page as an extension of the product site. It's just information with few common Facebook features. However, their is no "Wall" function or discussion groups. Gardisil disabled these features. There's no sharing of content with Gardisil, so people can't pass along and post information related to cervical cancer or anything else.

So, what's the E.V.E. for Facebook? People expect to interact with others. They share, they chat, they respond to comments and write "LOL." Gardisil has taken this ability away. Once it's gone, it's not Facebook anymore, it's your brand site. There are good regulatory reasons (probably) why Gardisil has disabled key features, but this still misses the point. If you're on Facebook, behave like you are. Let people use the site the way they are used to using it. If you aren't doing this, then I guarantee that people are visiting once and leaving. There's no reason to come back...just like your brand website.

YouTube.

Yes, YouTube is all about the videos. Or is it? Several healthcare companies have started their own YouTube Channels. One of these is SanofiPasteur. It's a decent page with a lot of what you'd expect. Company related, PR-ish videos, but the videos haven't been viewed that often.

There's a reason for this. E.V.E. Yes, she's causing trouble again. I said earlier that YouTube is all about the videos, but it's not. It's also about the comments. It's about the response videos that allow you to post a video in response to the one you just saw. It's about the ratings. You give your two cents and see what other people thought. However, both commenting and ratings have been disabled. It's simple to do when you upload your videos and many companies gladly take advantage of this. However, in doing so, you're again pushing people away. You've likely gone through great trouble to get them to your page. After all, not everyone wants to go to a corporate healthcare YouTube page when there are so many other options. So, you have them there and quickly they see that you aren't following "the rules" of YouTube. If they can't comment or rate your video, you've taken away half the fun and they leave never to return.

Question: did that have a positive or negative effect for your brand? Would opening up comments and ratings (or at least one) quickly change your answer to the last question? I believe it would. Again, there are regulatory reasons why people disable these features. It's the dreaded ADVERSE EVENT. I, of course, think adverse event reporting is somewhat of a myth (read all about it). But, what's the regulatory issue with ratings? You can't report an adverse event by selecting 1 to 5 stars. If you're afraid that your videos aren't good enough to get good ratings, change your videos. Don't try to change YouTube.

Blogs.

Blogs are still up and coming a bit and very few healthcare companies have one. Notably, J&J has a vibrant corporate level blog. Centocor used to have one, but it's since been stopped. These are potentially really strong PR tools and it's a wonder more companies don't have them. People actually want to hear from you. Consider this from a recent Manhattan Research study, More than three-quarters of ePharma Consumers report that they expect online customer service from a pharmaceutical company. You can start your customer service by communicating with a pretty basic blog.

Here's the rub. You're going to need to allow comments. If there's no way to comment, then it ain't a blog. Comments are an integral and expected part of any blog. People aren't just reading to hear your opinion, they want to share theirs and hear the opinions of others who also read the same post. It's expected. It's E.V.E. It's fine if you want to spell out your comment policy, as Centocor did. It's a lengthy set of rules, but at least they are transparent and pretty reasonable in my opinion. The high points directly quoted from their comment policy:

  • We generally wont post comments about products that are sold by Centocor. For product-related questions, you may call our Medical Affairs Information Line.
  • Opinions that are outside mainstream science or could be misleading or confusing will not be posted.
  • Comments disguised as sales pitches for products or services will not be permitted.
  • Comments that dont directly relate to Centocor or to topics covered on the blog will not be posted.
  • Comments that pertain to ongoing legal matters or regulatory issues are unlikely to be posted.

Fair enough. No product discussions. No crazies. No legal questions. Got it. Frankly, every blog has a policy like this, but it may not be written out. I don't post every comment that comes into this blog. The ones about "enhancement" products that don't get caught by the spam filter don't get approved. But if it's from an actual person about the topic at hand, I post it. That's me though. Make a rule and stick by it. Remember, comments should ALWAYS be moderated simply to ensure you aren't posting a bunch of spam. Moderating means you get to approve it before it goes up. It doesn't mean that you take out all the negative comments that otherwise adhere to your commenting policies. Publish the negative comments. E.V.E. tells us that if someone posts a reasonable comment, they expect to see it on the blog at some point. If it never appears, neither will they again. And the authenticity of the blog goes with them.

Online Communities

When I say "online community," what do you think? I bet you're thinking about a back and forth interaction with others, maybe an interaction back and forth with the brand. That's the E.V.E. when it comes to the concepts of online communities. Recently, John Mack wrote about Crohn's & Me, which its creator called a "Faux Community." In fact, John said, "What CementWorks did was to create an unbranded disease awareness campaign called Crohn's and Me. Its digital agency partner Heatbeat Digital created a website that it calls a "faux community," which "gives visitors a feeling of community without the risks of open-ended social networking" (I'm quoting from an article in the March 2009 issue of MedAdNews)."

So, the creators of the community, know that this isn't a real community as their visitors might define it. You can't talk with others. You can't talk with the brand. Again, I'm sure the company cites regulatory rules when they decided on this approach. But what's the real value? Is this really helping anyone? The content is good, as there are a lot of nice videos about patients, so why not just say that? Is it that important to lure people in with the term "community?" John put it this way,"The sense of "community" is heightened by using the phrase "community" as often as possible and inviting site visitors to "join the community" rather than saying "register." And you MUST join in order to view most of the videos of "community" members who tell their stories." I don't have a problem with the fact that people can't really engage with one another (I do, but not compared to other issues), but I do have a problem when you imply that they can. That's what the term "community" means online. That's the E.V.E.

It's also a little misleading to make people register in order to view your basic content. I know the value getting people to register for future communications, but is it worth it when people don't get what they expected in exchange for their personal information? I talked about this in a recent post about how to increase enrollments for your CRM program. People reluctantly give you their personal information when they sign up for your programs and they expect that you give them something of equal value in return. If they give you their information in exchange for a community, then you'd better give them a community. Far from getting them closer to using your product, you'll only push them further away.

When it comes to selling a "community" online, better to underpromise and overdeliver versus the opposite.

So now you know that it's All About E.V.E. Expected Visitor Experience. Take a look at what you have in the market today or what you're planning. Does it deliver the appropriate E.V.E.? If not, it might be time to reevaluate. I understand regulations, but it might be better to do nothing at all then to not deliver what people are expecting. Consider that before your next foray into social media.

Jonathan is Director of Business Development for Bridge Worldwide, a leading digital and relationship marketing agency, and regularly writes about pharma marketing on his blog Dose of Digital. Feel free to send him a tweet to @jonmrich.