Last month, FDA issued preliminary guidance on use of social media. Like everyone else, pharma’s already been using online tools for a decade or so. FDA’s guidance, now out there for public comment, clarifies some things, for example, use of Twitter.

Of course, anyone who is anyone is on Twitter or Facebook, even if you’re just a passive user (as I confess I still am).  I’m too verbose for Twitter, and you can’t do the written equivalent of singing an aria in a tweet.

In this month’s cover story, in order to be as modern as possible, we included pharma company Twitter handles and websites, rather than fax numbers, main switchboard numbers and other more old-fashioned methods of contact and communication. 

And we even verified the fact that all of the world’s 25 largest pharma companies are on Twitter. But how are they using it?  FDA’s guidance has made clear that it will not be okay to extol the benefits of a new late-stage compound or product in a Tweet. 
But there’s not much nuance or risk-vs-benefit analysis that can be conveyed in 140 characters. 

That’s the problem that I have with social media in general.  It often leads to very superficial and limited communication.

Consider blogs, that staple of the last decade’s Web 2.0. For anyone running a blog, it has become difficult and extremely time consuming to delete the thousands of almost genuine sounding comments coming in from Spambots. It’s small wonder that Popular Science magazine decided to disable comments from its blog last year.

Encouraged that so many people want to join your LinkedIn site? Have you vetted each of them? Do you even know most of your LinkedIn connections? Do some of those so generously endorsing your skills even know what you’re good at?

And what if your website has 5,000 “likes” on Facebook, or you’re getting a hundred new Twitter followers a week.  Have you ever taken a good look at their individual identities? It can be interesting and revealing, but not always in a positive way.

Despite pharma’s involvement in social media, the industry hasn’t led in developing new formats, or establishing a sense of community online. There are exceptions, of course. But patients have been far more successful in doing that than drug manufacturers.

How can this change, and how can the industry deepen its message, and the value of its social media efforts? 

As researching this month’s Top 25 Pharma and Biopharma companies has shown me, pharma companies have a real challenge establishing clear brand identities in an age marked by mergers and acquisitions, specialization and cost cutting, and focus on key therapeutic areas (that many competitors are also actively involved in). 

This was not the case in the past, when older companies like Merck and Johnson & Johnson had very clear personalities and distinctive mission statements. 

Each company has an identity, of course, but they are starting to blur into one amorphous Mega Bio Pharm descriptor.  “Company X has shed its underperforming divisions and is now focusing on [insert top three business areas here]. It is actively investing in developing markets and in biopharma, cutting costs to increase shareholder value, and collaborating with [insert name (s) of competitor(s) involved in targeted development or marketing alliance here].”

Couldn’t social media be a way to cut through this clutter, convey whatever might still make each company unique, and engage key stakeholder communities?

The first step may be getting more active pharma industry discussion to take place online. 

A small handful of pharma bloggers, such as Ed Silverman in  Pharmalot (which is now back online), Derek Lowe, in In the Pipeline, and Mark Senak in  Eye on FDA, already have built up this sense of community, uniting intersecting communities of industry professionals, consumers, industry analysts and others.

Achieving this level of success is very difficult, but there are ways to make digital media, including tweets, more valuable. 
Scientists and physicians have figured out some of them, and used Twitter in some groundbreaking ways to convey critical information….for instance, new surgical procedures, via video clips.

Perhaps the key is focusing on the information that does not have ties to intellectual property or trade secrets, or direct-to-consumer advertising, but could help shape corporate and brand image. Real information that is interesting and relevant. 

What do you think of FDA’s guidance and pharma social media in general? What is the missing ingredient?  Please write in to ashanley@rodmanmedia.com and share your thoughts.


Agnes Shanley
Editor
ashanley@rodmanmedia.com