Conversation Guide 50 Questions to Get You Started in Social Media 1 st Edition (June 2011) Authored by: Klick Pharma Digital Strategy. Experience Design. Data & Technology. Online Media klickpharma.com 1 877 885 9957
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Klick Pharma is a full-service digital marketing agency that specializes in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector. With a focus on measurable results, Klick Pharma s talented subject matter experts create and execute data-driven digital strategies that maximize their clients online investments. The team s years of pharma experience have resulted in a unique understanding of proven strategies at all stages of a brand s lifecycle and the know-how to deliver innovative and effective programs within a complex regulatory environment. Klick Pharma offers custom end-to-end digital solutions to meet a variety of client needs, including strategy, experience design, technology, media, and learning solutions. Visit KlickPharma.com to learn more. Jay Goldman Vice President, Strategy Mobile and Social Media expert jgoldman@klickpharma.com twitter.com/jaygoldman 1 877 885 9957 x. 2045 2 Digital Strategy. Experience Design. Data & Technology. Online Media
TABLE OF CONTENTS About the Author...3 Introduction...4 Goals vs. Strategy vs. Tactics... 5 Measuring Success...5 Your Corporate Environment...6 Current Content Invetory...6 Monitoring and Listening...7 Resources...7 Channel Selection and Setup....8 Content Calendar...9 Tracking, Analytics, and Reporting.... 9 DISCLAIMER The Conversation Guide is provided by Klick Pharma as an informational reference and subject to change without notice. Any opinions published here are those of the author(s) and are not meant to be exhaustive guidelines for online marketing compliance. The recommendations cited here have been developed based on Klick Pharma s interpretation of what is currently happening in the marketplace and where the category appears to be going. Every effort has been made to present accurate and reliable information, but Klick Pharma assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in this document. Furthermore, this guide was not reviewed or developed in consultation with the FDA, and therefore all suggested approaches should always be vetted by your internal regulatory/compliance teams and receive appropriate FDA approvals. All brand names used are the trademarks of their respective owners. All of this information is provided as is and Klick Pharma disclaims any express or implied warranty, relating to the use of this information including warranties relating to fitness for a particular purpose, compliance with a specification or standard, merchantability or non infringement. klickpharma.com 1 877 885 9957 3
Introduction Despite a lack of real guidance from our regulatory bodies, the pharmaceutical industry has very much awoken to the possibilities presented by social media. Most of our clients have decided not to wait for the FDA to present guidelines, working on the assumption that anything that might eventually be published will be at the highest possible level and essentially amount to new tools, old rules. We are frequently asked to help our clients forge ahead in this brave new world, charting a course that meets their medical, regulatory, and legal requirements while taking full advantage of the bounty it has to offer. Should you find yourself on the cusp of this great adventure, this document provides a guide to the questions we typically begin with. Although fifty questions may seem overwhelming, you don t need to answer all of them and you likely already know the answer to many. We hope that you find it useful and that it provokes some great discussions within your team and agency partners. This Guide is divided into sections representing a rough chronology of the order in which you should ask yourself the questions. We recommend that you start with the Defining Success section and progress through the document until you have a complete plan for moving forward. It would be our pleasure to help you tackle any of the questions that presents obstacles to your success. Please feel free to contact Jay directly you ll find his complete contact information in the About the Author section of this document. 4 Digital Strategy. Experience Design. Data & Technology. Online Media
Goals vs. Strategy vs. Tactics It s very easy to confuse lower level tactics for higher level strategy. Understanding the difference between the two is understanding the forest for the trees: your goals define your strategy which defines your tactics. Despite frequent references to social media strategies, it really belongs at the tactic level along with other digital tools. Think of goals as the 30,000 ft. level (e.g. Grow our business by 20% ), strategies as ideas to move you down to lower (the 10,000 ft. level: Diversify our product offerings ), and tactics as the direct actions you can take at the 5 ft. level ( Build a Facebook page for our new offering ). 1. Goals: what does success look like to you? What does it look like to your boss? 2. Goals: what is your ultimate goal for this campaign, expressed in 140 characters or less? 3. Strategies: what are your top three ideas to move from current state to your goals? 4. Strategies: which successful strategies have other marketers used to achieve similar goals? 5. Tactics: what are your top three tactical actions that will make each of those into reality? 6. Tactics: which ones of those can be implemented on social media? Measuring success The most successful campaigns begin by considering the end: what does success look like? Establishing how you will be measured and which Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you need to focus on helps to establish early guardrails that make defining strategy and tactics much easier. 7. What metrics will you be measured by? 8. How do your social media efforts fit into larger campaigns or initiatives? 9. What do you define success as? 10. Which KPIs are you mandated to measure and report on? 11. Have you selected KPIs that move beyond volume measurements (e.g. number of Facebook Likes or Twitter followers) to focus on engagement metrics (e.g. number of active Page visitors per month, number of retweets)? klickpharma.com 1 877 885 9957 5
Your Corporate Environment Understanding your company s approach and attitude toward social media is critical in defining the sandbox you can play in. 12. Does your organization have a social media SOP or set of guidelines in place at a corporate level? 13. Does your group have a social media SOP or set of guidelines in place? 14. Are you covered by any SOPs that would be applicable (whether they are specifically about social media or not)? 15. If you have any of the above in place, does it dictate your ability to use platforms that permit comments/responses/open text fields? Does it dictate a process for responding? 16. Does your organization have any form of social media steering committee that you will need to seek approval form? 17. Which groups (and individuals) will you need to seek approvals from (e.g. medical, regulatory, legal, compliance, ethics, IT, etc.)? 18. Has your organization approved social media campaigns that you can reference? 19. Social media requires rapid responses in channels that encourage conversation. Will your reviewers be equipped to pre-approve responses, convene on-demand to assess new situations, or provide a blank approval for specific channels and situations? 20. Would concept reviews help you to define guardrails for your social efforts in advance of spending a considerable investment in getting to the official review stage? 21. Are there SOPs in place that define the process for registering new domain names (e.g. when you re launching a new brand)? Can you have them modified to include registration of usernames on your core channels to cover future expansion of your social efforts? Current Content Inventory Everyone s plate is always too full to consider adding on a major content creation initiative. Social media is an excellent forum for re-use and re-purposing existing content, provided that it crucially provides value to your target audience. This is an excellent way to make the approval process much faster while still delivering in a manner that will encourage engagement. 22. How much publicly consumable video content do you currently have available and approved? How often do you produce new videos? 6 Digital Strategy. Experience Design. Data & Technology. Online Media
23. How many publicly consumable photographs do you current have available and approved? How often do you produce new photos? 24. How many press releases do you currently issue? How often do you issue them? 25. How many publicly consumable slideshows do you currently have available and approved? How often do you produce new ones? 26. How much publicly consumable text content do you currently produce that isn t press releases (e.g. disease state awareness, corporate social responsibility info, community involvement content, etc.)? How often do you produce new content? 27. How many events do you participate in that you can publicly announce? How often do those events occur? 28. If your social media efforts are at a corporate (rather than brand) level, can you include highly shareable content like job postings and clinical trial recruiting? Monitoring and Listening Social media is a conversation. It is our strong recommendation that everyone begin their social media journey by monitoring and listening existing conversation before they jump in themselves. Think of this the social landscape as a cocktail party that you ve just joined. The room is filled with groups engaged in conversations. You would never barge right into the middle of a group and hijack their discussion in person, and so you should follow the same approach online. 29. Has your organization engaged in any social media monitoring or listening previously? 30. Do you engage in any equivalent activities in non-social spaces (e.g. corporate communications monitors traditional media for company mentions)? 31. The biggest roadblock to getting approval for monitoring and listening is a concern about the number of Adverse Events (AEs) and Product Complaints (PCs) that might be exposed. The actual number is generally considerably lower than everyone fears and much more in line with non-social media. Is this a concern for your campaign? 32. Will your pharmacovigilance group want to review all AEs regardless of whether they meet the FDA s four reporting criteria? Resources Committing to social media means committing to maintaining communities and posting fresh content on a regular basis. You should ensure that you have the right resources in place before making that klickpharma.com 1 877 885 9957 7
commitment in a very public forum. 33. Will you perform monitoring and listening interally (after being trained on the right tools) or will you outsource to a specialized vendor? 34. Will you perform moderation of open channels internally or will you outsource to a specialized vendor? 35. Do you have the right software licenses for any applications requiring licensing (e.g. Radian6 or Sysomos for monitoring, HootSuite for posting to Twitter and Facebook, etc.)? 36. Cameras, microphones, editing software, and lighting rigs aren t expensive but the cost can add up quickly. Do you have the right equipment in place to produce the content types you are investing in? 37. Workflows can take care of much of the challenge of keeping the content publication machine moving foward but even the best workflows can t create the ideas and original content that starts the process. Do you have sufficient internal resource to regularly produce new content for publication? Channel Selection and Setup Most of the social media channels are designed for quick setup and easy, intuitive usage by consumers and content publishers. Each channel has a different policy about how much control you have on people commenting and responding to your content. True social media means involving yourself in those conversations instead of forcing the media back into a monologue or content broadcast, but some of the regulatory constraints on pharma might force you into that mold. 38. Has your IT department approved your username registration process, password retention policy, security and logging processes, etc.? 39. Registering a new Twitter account is very different from setting up a new Facebook Fan Page. Are you familiar with the intricacies of registerting an account on each of your target channels? 40. Have you evaluated the control you have over comments and responses in each channel and ensured that it meets your corporate requirements? 41. Based on the types of content you have available and the frequency with which you create new content, have you selected channels that are good matches in terms of time to update (Twitter is fast, video is slow), relevance to your audience and key influencers (as defined in your monitoring and listening), and context of use (Twitter is great for sharing links and driving traffic, Facebook is ideal for shareable social objects like photos)? 42. Have you reviewed the terms of use and privacy policy for each channel to ensure that they are not in violation of your company s own policies? 8 Digital Strategy. Experience Design. Data & Technology. Online Media
43. Have you retained your agency or internal resources to create the graphics and copy that will appear in the channel profiles? 44. Have you included time in your launch schedule for training your team on the relevant applications? Content Calendar The need to continuously publish new content into your social channels and to coordinate posting between team members means successful marketers and communicators will need to define a shared content calendar. 45. Have you identified all of the events, product launches, marketing campaigns, etc. that will impact your social media channels? 46. Can you plan and sequence the production schedules of your existing content types (e.g. press releases, videos, photos, etc.) so that they are spread out and are regularly producing new content? 47. Have you identified who will be responsible for the production of each type of content and verified that they have enough bandwidth to procude it on schedule? Tracking, Anayltics, and Reporting At this point you should have a plan for how you ll have content regularly flowing into your channels and how you will monitor and moderate them. The final piece is to come full circle to the first section of questions and make sure that you have the right procedures in place to track engagement with your content, analyze and visulalize it, and produce reports. 48. Sharing a single login between different team members can make it difficult to tell who posted what. Have you designed your posting process so that any tracking and logging requirements imposed by your SOPs are met? 49. Some channels provide built-in analytics tools (e.g. Facebook Insights) but most don t. Have you evaluated and selected analytics tools for each channel (e.g. Google Analytics on your blog, Bit. ly URL shortener, Twitter Counter, etc.)? 50. Tracking engagement across channels can be very difficult. Have you standardized your processes to make sure that all links between channels are properly encoded with tracking code? Have you implemented custom tracking on all of the analytics platforms that support it to capture as much rich usage data as possible? klickpharma.com 1 877 885 9957 9