The Role of Social Media in Healthcare PR

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Tuesday September 7, 2010 | No Comments

By: Rosemary Valenta

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Despite the confused chatter around social media in all business sectors, what digital communications boils down to is simply another way to express brands to consumer and business audiences.

After all, what does a solid communications program look like?

• Discussion of brand through third party experts, such as media and other trusted sources (celebrity spokespeople, key opinion leaders, experts in the field, nonprofit entities, etc.)

• Audiences that include professional media and consumers; purchasers and end-users

• Build sand sustain brand awareness

• Drives interest in brand, ultimately resulting in noticeable (if not measurable) differences in target behaviors, such as enhanced name recognition, positive response to brand and perhaps even increased sales

With that in mind, let’s look at social media.  How could we use digital communications to support the program pillars above?  To list just a few:

• Leverage KOL program to include KOLs discussing their use and experience with the product

• Offer surgical videos, live-Tweet procedures and before/after photos

• When working with KOLs, incorporate opportunities to blog for professional media sites as another way to manage visibility

• Offer KOLs to highly trafficked niche consumer blogs for regular Q&A feature series or other editorial benefiting the blog’s readership

• Launch a unique brand blog and link through to other topical sites to enhance authority and SEO

• Work with trusted channels to incorporate brand news into their content

• Provide links back to regulated and controlled content

As with all avenues of public discussion, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Respect the capabilities and limitations of each digital channel – just as public relations is not advertising, so are Facebook and Twitter completely different channels.  Don’t create a Facebook group or page and sit back, expecting it to magically do well on Twitter, which requires frequent, targeted content updates.  Twitter takes lots of care and feeding, but smart administrators can leverage single posts as Facebook updates as well, through platforms such as Ping.fm (for connecting to both personal Facebook pages as well as groups and/or pages) or the trusty TweetDeck (which cross-populates across popular social media forums but doesn’t-yet-support Facebook pages or groups).

Relinquish control (a little) – yes, healthcare and pharmaceutical industries are heavily regulated, and no one is promoting irresponsible marketing.  But it’s important to note the difference between meeting regulatory guidelines and attempting to manage every online conversation to corporate messaging.  Just like reviews at Amazon, online conversations are largely comprised of open feedback and comment.  Companies willing to hear and respond to feedback from the marketplace generally win more trust than those that do not.  Look at the recent example of JetBlue, which responded to the headline-making story about one of its employees through a single, eloquent Twitter post.

Be a Boy Scout – However, while participating in open communication forums is a “do,” being unprepared is a definite “don’t.”  Wise companies – and PR firms – will have a crisis communications plan in place before turning on any large-scale digital communications effort.

Listen up – At the end of the day Twitter and Facebook are just two more tools in the PR arsenal.  Use them wisely, listen to your audiences (that strange new professional-consumer-interested bystander-media-hybrid) and be creative.  Paying attention to the direction and content of online discussions may also make the brand more authentic and responsive to critical audiences, so don’t turn your back once these efforts are launched.  Listen in.  Speak up. Repeat (often) for digital communication success.

Other Articles to Consider:
Social Media in Health Care: Barriers and Future Trends via iHealthBeat
Digitas SVP: Pharma Marketers Must Listen Before Joining Social Media Party via eMarketer
FDA Warns Pharmaceutical Firm Over Advertising on Social Media via iHealthBeat
5 Examples of Social Media in Healthcare Marketing via TopRank

by PascaleCom

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