Earlier this month, The Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases announced the launch of its END7 campaign, which focuses on eliminating seven Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) by 2020. Working in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The World Health Organisation (WHO) and 13 pharmaceutical companies from the United States, United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates, the campaign aims to eliminate lymphatic filariasis, trachoma, and infections caused by three soil-transmitted helminths, schistosomiasis and onchocerciasis.

To aid the initiative, pharma companies have donated pills to treat these NTDs. Novartis in particular has made headlines in the news by extending its commitment to help achieve the elimination of leprosy in partnership with the WHO.

The campaign has been promoted primarily through Facebook and the Global Network website.  The Facebook page has gained an impressive 800 fans in less than two months and features success stories, photographs and campaign videos as well as a real-time donation counter.



The welcome page also features an animated video entitles ‘Our Mission in a Minute’, which you can view below.

Are you looking to launch a condition awareness campaign? Nitro Digital can help you! Call us on 0844 450 5545 or email us at info@nitro-digital.co.uk. To find out more about our work, check out our pharma marketing services.

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The GWH -NHS Foundation Trust has become more social media savvy and has begun to use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with visitors, general public members and hospital patients regarding queries, concerns, fundraising and  public events.

The chance to be able to communicate with GWH with a mouse click is appreciated by patients and the general public alike, as evidenced by the positive comments posted on their Facebook wall.

Currently, local folks are invited to become part of the popular social-network sites to keep up on the latest Great Western Hospital news. One spokesman from GWH says that they are always searching for new methods of communication with their members, patients and the public and Twitter makes this easy.

In addition, those who want to become employed by GWH are invited to be a part of the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the trust. The new developments and latest news of the trust are regularly updated on Facebook and Twitter. These are two additional ways that people can remain informed about useful information regarding health, hospital events and new developments.

You can follow The Great Western Hospital @GWH_NHS.

Want to increase your hospital’s online presence? At Nitro Digital, we have over a decade of experience delivering social media projects for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry. Get in touch by calling 0844 450 5545 or email info@nitro-digital.co.uk.

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Roche and Pfizer’s swift response to developments in social media is truly admirable considering that the pharmaceutical industry is notorious for being rather ‘sluggish’ when it comes to adopting new digital marketing methods. However, while having a Google+ page is at present considered to be ‘novel’, without a long-term strategy brands will fail to maximise the real potential the channel holds. So, following on from my previous post on ‘Why Pharma Brands Should Use Google+’, this article looks at how Roche and Pfizer (and other pharma brands) could work Google+ to their advantage.

1. Set clear goals and targets

The first step is to establish the reasons why you want a Google+ page in the first place. Is it to connect to consumers, engage with healthcare professionals (HCPs), nurture relationships with key opinion leaders (KOLs) in the industry, or maybe all of the above? Then, think about what constitutes ‘success’ on the channel and how best to go about achieving it.

Given that Google+ is still a relatively ‘underused’ social network, compared to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, it is a good starting point to consider what it is that you can do on Google+ that you can’t do on other social networks. For instance, Google+ is mainly used by social media enthusiasts at present, which creates huge opportunities to engage KOLs within your industry who generally speaking tend to be particularly active within the social sphere.

For this reason, Roche and Pfizer could aim to reach out to KOLs through Google+ and build up a relationship with them by creating a separate circle for advocates for a specific condition area and organise regular hangouts -group video chat- that allows them to connect to brand representatives. The same could be done for journalists, where media professionals could get unique insight on topical issues from brand representatives. In this case ‘success’ could be measured by the level of engagement between the brand and its circles i.e.: the number of people participating in the hangout.

2. Make the most of Google+’s unique features

One unique feature to Google+ is its famous ‘circles’, which allows pharma brands to exercise a certain degree of control over what information is being shared with whom. For instance, you can create different circles for ‘patients’, ‘HCPs’, ‘journalists’, ‘researchers’, ‘students’ etc.

Another element that makes Google+ special is it’s ‘hangouts’ feature, which has been mentioned earlier. To learn more about Google+ hangouts, watch the video below.

3. Integration with other social media channels

It cannot be emphasised enough that all social media activities must be coordinated effectively in order to maximise the outcome of your marketing efforts. First of all, do not forget to link your website – or whatever platform you use as the hub of your marketing activity – to your Google+ brand page. Secondly, if you are planning on holding hangouts for instance, make sure you are advertising it on other social media channels like Twitter and Facebook.

Google+ also allows you to design a funky profile image (see Coca Cola for example), so make sure that yours stands out from the crowd and effectively reflects your brand’s image.

Using Google+? Add Nitro Digital to your circles! Or, if you want to learn more about Nitro Digital and the services we offer, visit our pharmaceutical marketing page or call us on 0845 450 5545.

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As of Tuesday, Google+ has launched branded pages. Given that they appear to be very similar to the ones on Facebook, numerous bloggers have criticised the new feature for being unoriginal. Nevertheless, a number of companies (including Nitro!) have decided to see for themselves how they could utilise this new social media channel. After using the page for a couple of days, we have spotted a number of advantages that Google+ has over Facebook that pharma brands can really embrace.

While it is unlikely that Google+ will eventually become a serious rival of Facebook, for pharma, Google+ can be of real value for a number of reasons:

1)      Privacy: A key difference between Facebook and Google+ is Google’s so called ‘Circles’. This feature addresses some key privacy concerns that Facebook has so far failed to tackle. These Circles allow brands to exercise control over what content is being shared with whom. What this means for pharma brands is that they can now reach out to specific interest groups by having separate patient/HCP circles for instance and thereby, they can easily block people from seeing certain pieces of content.

2)      ‘No Promotion – No Problem’: At present, Google+ does not allow promotions on pages. The content policy for Google+ Pages states that “you may not run contests, sweepstakers, offers, coupons or other such promotions directly on your Google+ page”. For many industries, this is devastating news, but for obvious reasons, pharma is not affected by this policy and does not have to worry about having their pages labelled as ‘uninteresting’ compared to other brands.

3)      Hangouts: A ‘Hangout’ is essentially a group video chat, which is a truly unique feature to Google+. A company could host a ‘Hangout’ with their customers where they get to ask questions about products and services. Pharma could utilise this feature to keep key opinion leaders up to date on industry developments or use it as Q&A sessions for healthcare professionals.

4)    SEO benefits: While this benefit is not unique to pharma brands, it is nevertheless worth mentioning. Google+ pages are factored into Google search results and there is also a recently launched ‘direct connect’ search feature where by typing “+” ahead of a search, visitors can go directly to your page.

5)      A potentially more reliable alternative to Facebook?: In August, Facebook’s new ‘no comment’ regulation has caused quite a stir in the pharma industry. By banning pages that do not allow comments from visitors, a number of pharma brands decided to quit Facebook altogether. Facebook has thereby proved to be a rather unpredictable platform and many pharma marketing professionals have come to hope that Google+ will offer a reliable alternative.

Will Google+ become the social platform of choice for pharma brands or is it going to become just another unexplored territory? Let us know what you think by commenting below.

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This new “people are talking about this” number is pulled from a variety of interactions that occur on Facebook over the past seven-day period.

The different interactions that make up the “people are talking about this” metric are any pieces of content that users share in their timeline. This includes:

- liking a page

- posting to a page’s wall

- linking, commenting or sharing content on the page

- answering a question posted

- RSVPing to an event

- mentioning the page in a post

- photo-tagging a page

- liking or sharing a check in deal

checking in at a place

What does this mean for users?

From users’ perspective, the metric provides value by showing whether the page is active and engaging. It shows how much interaction is generated by a page each week and how strong a fan community it has. The higher the value, the more likely it is to generate interest as users would want to find out what the buzz is all about.

What does it mean for page owners?

From page owners’ perspective, this new metric should really enhance page analytics by not only showing posts (or stories) with the most reach, but also those that share and interact. This new metric is likely to encourage page owners to publish more interesting and engaging content so we can expect a rise in the use of polls, questions and Facebook competitions.

Does it matter to you if a page has a low “People are talking about this” metric? Let us know by commenting below.

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There are the obvious indicators such as the number of fans or followers, frequency of posts/comments etc. however, there are also more complicated factors to take into account. When investing time and funds into social media marketing you have to determine how much a fan/follower is worth. How many conversions are you hoping to attain over a given time frame? And how are you planning on tracking conversions?

Of course there is an element of added value that is difficult to accurately measure. Launching an innovative high-profile Facebook competition may increase brand awareness amongst your target audience who may not actually convert into leads or sales, but they can potentially tell their friends about you or buy your products or services in the future.

One final point to bear in mind is to make sure to integrate your social media strategy you’re your existing marketing activities. The different channels you use must complement one another and have a consistent look and feel to them.

At Nitro, we make our campaigns measurable and we work hard to meet and exceed our clients’ aims and objectives. If you want to know more about how we can help you develop an integrated multi-channel marketing strategy get in touch by calling 0844 450 5545.

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Tweet Grader

Developed by HubSpot and part of the family of grader.com tools, Tweet Grader is one of the most popular Twitter analysis tools out there. It allows you to review the ‘power’ of your Twitter profile compared to millions of other users that have been graded. The way it works is simple. You just enter your Twitter user name and it scores your profile out of 100 based on a number of metrics. These include your number of followers, tweets, mentions, retweets, follower/following ratio, the number of followers your followers have etc.

The only issue is that this score usually fails to differentiate between real big users. It appears that it is relatively easy to reach the score of 90, so a user that has 500 followers and one that has 2000 followers (with all other metrics kept constant) will have very similar scores. Nevertheless, the tool gives you a good indicator of your profile’s influence when your grade and rank are taken together.

Tweeter Karma

Tweeter Karma provides you a followers/following list that lets you manage your network based on most/least active users and track who is following you back. You can also sort the list alphabetically or select friends or only followers, all friends or followers, and mutual friends. This way, you can easily unfollow tweeters that are inactive or ones that do not follow you back.

Whilst not the most sophisticated tool out there, I have found Tweeter Karma extremely useful when managing Nitro’s Twitter account. It is extremely easy to use – you just need to connect to your account and hit their ‘Whack!” button. You can then easily manage your network and follow and unfollow people there and then.

Twitter Counter

As the #1 Twitter statistics site, Twitter Counter gives you accurate and up-to-date Twitter analysis where you can monitor your activity and progress over time. It even looks at the velocity of your profile’s growth and predicts how long it will take you to reach a certain number of followers.

The site also features a number of Top 100 lists so you can keep track of the most popular celebrity tweeters, most influential tweeters by industry, best news sources etc.

At Nitro, we are always on the lookout to try out new and exciting social media monitoring tools so let us know if there are any ones in particular that you find useful!

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The healthcare and pharma industry is known to be rather cautious when it comes to embracing social media channels fearing that ‘adverse events’ would paint their products and their brand in a negative light. It is therefore not surprising that a number of companies have been dreading this day and as a result, chose to remove their pages from Facebook.

It is quite plausible however that the removal of the ‘no comment’ option, in the long-term, is more likely to benefit than to harm pharma/healthcare companies, as it will hopefully make them realise the real value behind using social media. By preventing healthcare brands from disallowing fans’ comments on their pages, Facebook has clearly indicated that these brands are missing the point of Facebook as they fail to engage with their audience, which is the whole point of social media!

Removing pages from Facebook may seem like the ‘easiest’ option for many healthcare brands, but it is important to highlight that in the long-term it is not a viable option. Those brands that choose to remove their profiles are effectively signalling that they are turning a blind eye to what their customers are saying about them. Social media is not only a marketing tool but also a source of valuable information on how consumers are seeing a brand and/or a product. Companies therefore need to listen to their consumers so they can react to complaints and remedy them. If they fail to do so, it will undoubtedly reflect in the company’s sales figures in the long run. One pharma brand that has got the right frame of mind is AstraZeneca, who has recently announced that it will be staying on Facebook as it helps the company “to listen to and participate in important conversations about healthcare”.

Pharma brands that are afraid of receiving criticism on social media channels should also bear in mind that only on very rare occasions you see customers going out of their way to damage a company’s image. Those who engage with brands online tend to do so because of a positive motivation. Unhappy consumers usually want nothing to do with the brand and instead what tends to happen is that they form their own independent groups or blog about their experiences (which is why it is so important to frequently monitor social media channels).

Facebook’s new commenting policy is still a relatively new development and it will be interesting to see how pharma brands will be dealing with the change.

Should healthcare brands worry about Facebook’s commenting policy change? Tell us what you think by commenting below.

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Facebook news feed has two settings: ‘Most Recent’, which publishes content in chronological order and ‘Top News’, which filters content based on an algorithm called EdgeRank. Posts with a higher EdgeRank are more likely to appear in your news feed.

Since ‘Top News’ is Facebook’s default setting, having a high EdgeRank can be crucial for businesses who want to maximise fan engagement. No matter how good a piece of content is, or how well managed your Facebook page is, EdgeRank might prevent fans from seeing your posts. It is therefore crucial to consider the following three main factors when posting on Facebook.

1. Affinity

This refers to the relationship between the content creator and the viewer. Friends or fans with whom you regularly interact with receive a higher affinity score. Each time you visit a fan page, click the ‘Like’ button, comment on a user’s status or look at a picture, you increase the affinity score with that user.

2. Level of Interaction

This refers to the number of friends/fans commenting on a posted content likes and comments. Different types of interactions are weighted differently on Facebook. Activities that require higher levels of user engagement get a higher score than those that don’t. For example, leaving a comment on a photo takes more effort on the user’s part than clicking the ‘Like’ button.

3. Timeliness

Newer posts have a better chance of showing up in your news feed than older ones. If you want to increase your chance of showing up in your friends’/fans’ news feed, it is vital that you update your profile frequently with relevant content.

The next step is to translate these ranking factors into actionable recommendations. The key point to take away is to try and produce content that is engaging. This could be in the form of regular competitions and by encouraging user-generated content where fans are encouraged to post on your page. The more fans are posting on your page, the more likes and comments your posts receive, and the more frequent your posts are, the more likely it is that you will be visible in your fans’ news feed.

Are there any other Facebook/social media features that you would like us to blog about? Let us know by commenting below.

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With the dawn of the ‘new digital media’ upon us, social networking has never been so popular. As our primary means of socialising, and in effect, advertising ourselves, any brand would be stupid not to take the opportunity. Most pages are extremely reminiscent of their webpages anyway, like John Lewis’ pastel box format with leads to different options – the only thing missing is the ability to buy, which will soon, predictably, be amended as has been done on others.

Then there is Youtube, also extremely dominant in many Facebook pages like Chanel who have a video page including every recent advertisement and promotional video on the brand. Featuring 33 videos, with feedback averaging 3,000 likes, it’s clear the love of moving image plays a hand in increasing the brand’s, and page’s, circulation. However this does not prevent the brands possessing Youtube channels as another means of access to the mass audience. Youtube is of course a way to connect, inform and inspire others, globally through moving image. When this is enjoyed by one, the sharing and circulating begins and is, in a way, endless. For example the mass spread of Intel’s ‘The Chase’ and Nokia’s ‘Dot. The world’s smallest stop-motion animation character shot on a Nokia N8’ saw the brands with widespread recognition as the short clips went viral.

Overall, it’s obvious that most brands are grabbing the new media marketing storm with both hands, and the ones that aren’t, well, maybe a recognition of the age we live in today is necessary.

Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and surely this blog will be dated pretty soon with more and more options of social media continuously being created. But at the moment the best advice for any brand is probably to step onto the social marketing band-wagon and get liked.

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