Why Pharma Needs Twitter
I am assuming from the fact you are reading this, you are either aware of Twitter or want to learn more about how it can be useful in the pharma arena.
By on Mar 30, 2009I am assuming from the fact you are reading this, you are either aware of Twitter or want to learn more about how it can be useful in the pharma arena.
The question might already seem redundant if you are already a Twitteree and keep up to date with bloggers such as Shwen Gwee, Lead Business Analyst- Health Informatics and New Media at Vertex and Sally Church of PharmaStrategyblog, but there still seems to be a debate going on out there.
This is probably for a number of reasons, but the main ones which hit you again and again are a) people dont really understand it and b) it seems like another social media fad, especially with celebrity endorsement trivializing the platform (for instance, apparently Jennifer Aniston dumped her boyfriend because of his excessive twittering!) Furthermore, as with any new craze, there is the inevitable public bashing, which might make the more sceptical of you even less likely to engage with the medium. Then, we have negative opinion leaders putting their thoughts into the space such as psychologist Dr. Oliver James, who maintains that Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity. For me, that is like saying nobody would converse with other human beings if they had a strong sense of identity - but perhaps thats just me... Anyway, this is all on the downside.
The upside
On the upside, it can bring together groups of like-minded people and help businesses communicate with relevant audiences in an efficient way. Furthermore, and what many naysayers seem to disregard or simply not know, is that Twitter can be a gateway to a goldmine of information. www.twitter.com is just the tip of the iceberg, and if you delve beneath the surface you can start to truly understand the power of the medium. This is why pharma needs to get involved and why, if using an application such as www.twellow.com, a search for pharmaceuticals already reveals 16 pages of related members.
So, what are the benefits of becoming involved with those members and others? In a Guardian article last year, Jemina Kiss wrote that Web 3.0 will be about recommendation. "If web 2.0 could be summarized as interaction, web 3.0 must be about recommendation and personalization," she wrote. Many people write off Twitter as another social media fad, basically just another form of interaction, and actually a rather poor one if compared to something like Facebook. I personally think that Twitter is on the cutting edge of what web 3.0 is all about, and hence has many advantages for the average pharma company.
Keeping abreast
Lets look at a basic example, such as how I conduct research in my role as editorial manager of eyeforpharma. I have to keep abreast of the key issues that are happening in the industry to ensure that our writers are talking about them on our site. Plus, we are building a social community, so I am always looking for opinionated, constructive people to blog and create dialogue. Before Twitter, my key research tools were RSS feeds from relevant sites such as PharmaTimes, Pharma Marketing, pharma aspects of The Times, Reuters, and so on. If I wanted to know more about certain people or topics, I might conduct web searches and then a lengthy process of trawling through search results to find what I am looking for.
Now using Twitter, because I have carefully selected followings and followers in the key areas that are pertinent to me, often from looking at the day's updates, I will find what I am looking
for or at least some guidance on how to get there. In effect, due to the people, sites and organizations we keep an eye on, we receive recommendations and personalized content and often a perspective that we had not even considered materializes.
For instance, I saw a tweet from Shwen Gwee about the Cover It Live technology which he had used to live tweet from a pharma event. We had planned to 'live tweet' from our SFE Europe conference but had not heard of this technology. The result was a phone call with the ever-helpful Shwen, and the introduction of a new technology at our conferences. Furthermore, it established a relationship with Shwen, which we look forward to developing in the future.
I understand that if you look at Twitter purely as a 140 character micro-blog, it might seem a bit pointless, but if you look into what those 140 characters can direct you to, it becomes an altogether more fruitful experience.
Just from the above example, you can see the following benefits:
- Personalized content
- Faster research
- Interacting with peer group
- Pro-active assistance
- Building relationships
- Branding
- Understanding more about the market
- Learning from those more knowledgeable than yourself
I doubt anyone out there underestimates the sheer volume of information available on the internet, and yes, I expect that through hours of surfing I could stumble across an individual or an article which might help in whatever my current objective is. The great thing about Twitter is by effectively filtering your follower base, these pieces of information come to you - and rather than being the end point of your search, they are often the start point leading to a much richer solution.
So, given there are 16 pages of people related to the industry, why would anyone need converting? First, if you look at their profiles, many of them are related to the industry in the sense of being consultants/ press organizations/ conferencing firms/ research companies and a few interested employees, usually under their own name. Guess what? The majority are talking about the pharma industry, its challenges/ successes and what needs to change at the big organizations.
The pharma companies currently on Twitter are not entirely convincing in their commitment to the cause. I took a look at the Novartis Twitter account today and read some interesting developments about their company such as, Novartis and Medicines for Malaria Venture launch Coartem Dispersible, the first ACT* developed for children suffering from malaria. This was music to my ears after watching some harrowing footage of children suffering from malaria last week as part of the UK's Red Nose Day national charity effort. However, I was disappointed to see that despite having 440 followers, Novartis doesnt follow anyone back. For me, this is a real own goal. The company has 440 people out there who are keen to know more about its business, but dont seem interested in knowing about them. It is happy to churn out company press releases to this audience, but unusual for Twitter, does not ask a single question of its following. By interacting in the right way with this following, these could potentially become 440 supporters of Novartis. Plus, any Twitter user knows that once you start following people, your follower base grows rapidly so it would spread their word to more people
AstraZeneca US is better in the sense that it does follow people back, but again there is no interaction with users going on, just a roll call of all the great stuff that Astra Zeneca is doing.
This is why some people think Twitter is useless. If you stumbled across these pages, you would just think it was a PR trip for the company, no different from a corporate website (damn, their PR departments must hate the 140 character limit!) What pharma needs to start doing is listening back and sharing more. There are some great initiatives going on out there in terms of drug reimbursement (Novartis), cheaper drug offerings in developing countries (GSK) and so on. Clearly, pharma is looking to reinvent its model and Twitter could be a great tool to develop and communicate this. Why not start asking its followers, what do you think of our attempts to offer cheaper drugs in developing countries?, how do you think we could combat cynicism more effectively?, or your feedback is important to us, we want to know more. This approach could start to chip away at the negative preconceptions many have about Big Pharma. It creates the perception that companies actually care what their peer group think, which is a breath of fresh air and starts to build trust. Any company which presents itself to the market as an infallible wall with only good news stories is setting itself up for a fall.
Extending this to patient groups will also be a positive step. Yes, there is the possibility of negative feedback, but this should be welcomed as an opportunity rather than feared as a threat. As long as these companies have a clear view on what they are aiming to do, there should always be a constructive answer to people who have experienced problems with a drug and there should always be a success story to share, too.
Boehringer Ingelheim seem to be progressing along the right lines, actually following more people (678) than it is being followed by (667). Updates on @Boehringer ask questions, seem friendly and approachable, and definitely give a good impression of the company. More of this please, we like!
Still Young
Bearing all of this in mind, while probably sounding like a Twitter evangelist, we have to remember that the technology of Twitter is not exactly perfect at the moment. It can be hard to navigate and at first seems rather weird and pointless. My advice is stick with it, and keep talking. If you are unsure what to do, send a tweet out, and I guarantee by the end of the day someone will have enlightened you. Overall, the site has astounded many by growing from less than 1 million unique visitors in Feb 08 to 8 million in Feb 09. As it becomes more broadly adopted by the mainstream, there is a risk that the personalized nature of tweets will get diluted, and major brands could start to infiltrate the site with annoying adver-tweets. Proper filtering is going to become increasingly important, and the addition of metadata could be a good solution. As with any site which experiences exponential growth, there is a lag in supporting technology and this will be the key challenge for the development team going forward.
In the meantime, pharma needs to Twitter because opening up dialogue is key to being evolutionary as a business. If you stay shut off in a bubble you will rapidly become redundant. However, there is no point opening up an account and updating it once in a while with something great your company has done. What we must all remember with this medium is you get out of it what you put in. The more you befriend relevant people, recommend interesting articles, ask opinions and share concerns, the more empathy and solutions will be sent your way.
Twitter is a way of expanding minds and horizons; dont get left behind.