Leveraging Social Media in the Pharmaceutical Industry - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 472

Physicians also utilize social media and social network to connect to patients.
They frequently use Facebook, Twitter, and blogs to share medical advice, success
stories, and patients' testimonies, and to explain medical procedures to their patients.
Patients are also increasingly using online information and social media to manage
their health conditions. The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project
estimates that 61 % of all adults (80 % of internet users) looked online for information
about health topics such as a specific disease or treatment. One in every four adult
Internet users looks up social media's online reviews of drugs or treatments
(PewInternet 2010 ). In 2008, the Internet surpassed doctors as the top source of health
information (Manhattan Research 2008 ). A survey of more than 22,000 Americans
reports that one in five Americans use social media sites as a source of healthcare
information. Of those, 94 % said Facebook was their preferred source, followed by
YouTube with 32 % and Twitter with 18 % (National Research Corporation 2011 ).
Health condition-specific Facebook pages are popular among patients. For example,
the unbranded Breast Cancer Site has more than 2.8 million “likes” on its Facebook
page while the branded Weight Watcher Facebook page has 880,953 “likes.”
Patients are also active contributors to various online communities. They share
opinions about the benefits and adverse effects of drugs and also listen to fellow
patients regarding their experiences. For example, PatientsLikeMe.com is a social
network site with 104,277 patients across over 500 conditions ( www.patientslikeme.
com ). This site invites patients to find others with similar disease and health condi-
tions by sharing their own conditions, symptoms, or treatments. The more the
patients share information about themselves, the easier they can find “matches” to
their situations. Other patient networks include HealthChapter, IMedfix, Inspire,
Disaboom, and DiabeticConnect. Some of these are general, whereas others are
disease-specific.

16.2.3 Challenges of Social Media for Pharmaceutical Firms

The surging presence of physicians and patients on the social network calls pharma-
ceutical firms to rethink how to harness social media and leverage the momentum
created and carried by social media while planning the strategic allocation of their
marketing resources (Shankar 2008 ). However, some external and internal hurdles
hinder the usage of social media by pharmaceutical firms. Traditionally, drug com-
panies have heavily relied on sales force teams to promote drugs to physicians and
on conventional media agencies to execute direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising
campaigns. Social media are completely new vehicles that drug companies have had
little exposure to or experience with. Social media pose several questions: How to
engage in social media within the regulatory framework? How to integrate social
media into traditional marketing strategy? How and where to start a social media
campaign? What are the ROI of social media efforts? Pharmaceutical firms need
answers to these questions so that they can get their stakeholders aligned to support
social media marketing initiatives.