Healthcare PR Blog

Social Media in Healthcare Communications: to Tweet, or Not to Tweet, That is the Question

The following scene is no doubt taking place in the boardrooms of pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical technology companies all over the world:

Members of your marketing team are hearing a pitch from (insert any large multinational PR agency name here). After a seemingly endless capabilities presentation, the fresh faced 22 year-old Assistant Account Executive – who by the way will be running your account once the agency VPs win your business –then presents an all-singing, all-dancing social media blitz campaign for the national launch of your late-stage new product.

Some members of your team are mesmerized. They simply must have this thing that is being presented. Others are luke warm, and a few are just scratching their heads wondering how this is going to generate more sales.

I believe in the power of social media. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this blog right now. But the fact is that a number of healthcare PR firms are doing exactly what they’ve always done—flogging the latest edition of the “communications revolution” in order to maximize their revenues—often at the expense of the clients paying them for their “best strategic thinking.”

Social media technologies, including blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are, in some ways, transformational. Are they going to change the media landscape to an extent? Absolutely. Are they going completely replace traditional media channels? I don’t think so.

I believe that social media is a tool that can, and in many cases should, be part of the marketing mix.

I also believe that if your healthcare communications agency is telling you that you need to employ social media as part of your overall strategy, you should ask them to demonstrate exactly how the use of these tools helps achieve your objectives for the product. And if this question isn’t answered to your satisfaction, my advice is to spend your money elsewhere.

The basics of strategic thinking still apply. What is the objective? What strategies are going to help you meet your objective? What are the most effective tactics to support your strategy and achieve your objective?

Remember the “dotcom boom?” In some cases, banks and venture capital firms where throwing money at business start-ups that, in retrospect, now  seem utterly ridiculous. The dotcoms that had ideas that really made sense and sold things that people really wanted to buy are still with us today. The others are consigned to the scrapheap of history.

We live in a very exciting era from a communications perspective. In just the past 10 years, an explosion in new technologies has created massive changes in how we gather, access, consume and exchange information.

But the basic laws of healthcare marketing still apply. So does common sense, and DDMAC regs. Healthcare communications counselors have a responsibility to help their clients fully understand the strategic value of social media and how it can be used to benefit their business. Anything less is irresponsible.

--David Avitabile