If you've got nothing to say... pretend

I'm sitting here in front of my keyboard, because I've been telling myself, "It's Monday... CREATE CONTENT!!!"

Yeah, that's not working.

Which emphasises for me a couple of important things I've seen as stumbling blocks in so many social campaigns.

One is the simple task of keeping your content fresh. Too many people I've seen treat their social campaign as though it was a Relationship Marketing campaign. Which to me means, broadcast, impersonal, and something that bangs on me too often. As a case in point, I signed up to hear about opportunities to see presentations about a disease state I have an interest in. I get anywhere from 3 to 6 pieces of mail a week from this program. I don't get any invitations to change the rate, or type of information I'm getting. And the content is the same thing... just with a different date.

If I'm seeing a social campaign, you can at least get my name in there. You can give me a chance to do some customisation, or maybe some refining. I can choose to get things delivered to me in bulk, or my social platform may bucket some things together for me. If you're sending me the same thing again and again, with no chance for me to help you understand me... don't bother. Think about this from a social platform perspective, and you'll see that I can refine what feeds I want to follow, how I can consolidate them, how often, what format...

Okay, a live example. Pinterest.

If you have an account, log in and check out my account. You'll see that you can follow everything I do... which only the most masochistic of you will do... or a specific board. So, maybe you don't want to see my LOLz, you just want the Infographics. You can choose. That's customisation, and allowing the provider to keep the content fresh, and the user to get the fresh content that person is looking for.

Another one? You've got to create content that's compelling.

Not just to you, your agency, your legal team, or your regulatory team. You've got to create content that users want. And sometimes that content may feel like it's out in left field.

Sure, my content may seem like it's me dumping my brain on a page... which it is. Some of you will find this somewhat valuable because we get to learn something about each other. Others of you will say, "I've had enough of this self-absorbed narcissist, I'm outta here." And that's a risk I take.

Proctor & Gamble took that risk, too. They created something that was potentially going to seem a bit self-obsessed. An app for the iPhone called "Sit or Squat". It's an app that helps you find a clean toilet. It's socially driven, so that you hope that the toilet near you has been recently reviewed. But, think about it. Here's an app about toilets. It's sponsored by Charmin, so there's a tangential product tie-in. But, it's intended to meet a compelling need that may or may not result in somebody becoming a product user. Sometimes, the content your audience wants or needs is not always that which your brand thinks your users do. So, when you're brainstorming that compelling content, use the old axiom that "there is no spoon".

Okay. That's today's brain dump. I may refine this one... there's a thread in here I think has value, and a topic I discussed with a colleague of mine about how I keep up with the things I do.

Stay safe, everybody.

What does somebody who thinks about Pharmaceutical Social Media Marketing do for fun?

It's Friday, and that means I need to think about fun things. Besides, it's only two more days to Monday.

I like games. I like acquiring things. I am a sucker for those claw games, or games at carnivals, or the little giveaways you get at conferences. My problem is that I have too many of them already, and I've got no desire to clutter my space with more things. I'm very selective about how I fill my real world space... now...

My virtual space, however, is a lot more cluttered. I've got over 5,500 photos in Flickr, more than 300 eBooks, a LOT of MP3s, virtual cameras... a lot of stuff. I also have a carry bag filled by a shark with a laser on his head, a dinosaur skeleton, a caveman, an uncharted galaxy, a ferris wheel, some roses, and a gadget watch. Cool, but virtual.

That virtual pouch, with virtual items is from one of my favourite apps, Wallabee. Like I said, I'm a sucker for tchotchkes, and I used to use Gowalla in conjunction with Foursquare just to get little objects. So, I'm already the target audience for something like Wallabee. The app so far does the following (according to me):

I forage, like checking in, I find virtual currency or items, I can keep the item, maybe mix it up with something else to make a new cool thing, I can use the things I find to check off the themed Wallabee scavenger hunt lists, and I can buy things in a store using the virtual currency.

The app allows you to upgrade so you can carry more things, or buy some virtual currency to not have to wait so long to acquire some of those things on your lists.

The algorithm of what you can buy, what you have to find, where and when you can do either makes this a game I can enjoy playing. There's enough random reinforcement that it's a good game to come back to.

The thrill of finding a low numbered item before somebody else, figuring out what mixes with what, or completing a set before anyone else makes this fun for me.

Of course, I've got my marketing hat on at the same time.

If Wallabee can create sets, when will a company be able to create a code to let you get access to a branded set? When will somebody only be able to find the thing they need by foraging at your store site? When will the completion of a set be tied to a brand offer, a discount card, or a premium website, a download, or information? Can I create a patient journey set that will take somebody through all the elements of an educational program by getting them to various sites? Can I force an order of item acquisition, you won't know what item 2 is until you get item 1? Can I tie a forage to a QR code or an image recognition tool?

You see, that's what my brain does when I play. It goes free a little bit. I get to be curious, comtemplative, and some other word that sounds really cool and begins with a "c". It's Friday, cut me some slack.

So, I'd recommend you get out there and try Wallabee. Have fun with it. Let me know what you think about.

Please use the comments below to let me know what you do for fun, too.

FDA Guidance that may... or may not... have anything to do with me

I'm busy reading two new pieces of draft guidance from the FDA. Really catchy titles these things come with. The first is titled, "Guidance: Classifying Significant Postmarketing Drug Safety Issues" and the second is "Guidance: Drug Safety Information - FDA's Communication to the Public".

Let's start with the first. The classification of significant postmarketing drug safety issues was not the most intriguing thing I've read. But I was left with a couple of questions, that I hope will become clearer as the Social Media world discusses the new guidance. Section IV.A discusses "The Hazard Assessment". I was struck as I reviewed the section that the summary paragraph was the most important:

When CDER (Center for Drug Evaluation and Research) staff identify a new safety issue, unless the information is derived from a clinical trial or pharmacoepidemiology study, precise and reliable information may be lacking about the frequency of the adverse event or the increase in risk posed to patients exposed to the drug. If such information is lacking, staff will use the existing information on seriousness, and size of the population at risk, and then the modulating factors to classify the TSI (tracked safety issue)

Why the heck is that important? Well, what struck me here is this whole 11 page document does not discuss where the information arises from. Is this solely based on reports from physicians? clinical trial outcomes? reports from patients via MedWatch? media outlets? Or... as I'm thinking... does this include trawling Social Media? You see, patients will discuss their experiences on a drug, and those experiences may include unnecessary positive claims, or adverse events. While an actually trackable adverse event is generally few and far between - I've seen 4 in the last 5 years - there may be information being culled from closed platforms, or by integrating other data sources that CDER may have at its disposal. For me, this is another wakeup call that we need to expand our listening beyond PR-style KPIs such as "We got mentioned 1000 times." into much more in-depth sentiment or human language analytics.

The second guidance document gave me a little food for thought as well. The FDA document discusses the ways in which the body will send out updates about important safety information notices. Section 3, l 197 points out that "At times, decisions to communication about important drug safety issues are affected by information the public has received from sources other than FDA". They highlight media as a source. It's my opinion that this media includes the social type. The concern here, as stated by the FDA, is that the information may be "incorrect, incomplete, or misleading". The communication with the public then, could be justified solely to deal with that type of information.

Okay. I'm not trying to leap too quickly into the breach here. This reads like an invitation. Those who have the authority to correct "incorrect, incomplete, or misleading" information should do so. The rest of this document reads, as much of FDA guidance does, a vague tiptoeing around that how to do so. But, the FDA refers to their mandate as justifiable cause to participate in this correction. An interesting sentence regarding their mandate is found in the Background section, l 51, "FDA believes that timely communication of important drug safety information will give health care professionals, patients, consumers, and other interested persons access to the most current information concerning the potential risks and benefits of a marketed drug, helping them to make more informed individual treatment choices."

My point in highlighting that particular sentence is that the FDA has access to massive quantities of data and safety information. Well, I'm not sure if everybody's noticed, but as Jamie Heywood pointed out at SXSW 2011, Big Pharma has spent large sums to further research and data gathering. Big Pharma has one of the most comprehensive data sets regarding safety for all of their marketed molecules.

What is stopping Big Pharma from correcting "incorrect, incomplete, or misleading" information?

The answers to that question are legion.

Perhaps a better question would be, what benefit can Big Pharma derive from correcting "incorrect, incomplete, or misleading" information?

And the answers to that question move us into the realm of things like trusted partner in providing quality healthcare, acting in the best interest of our business partners, or behaving in a socially responsible manner.

As you all know, that's my drum. Big Pharma has very highly worded mission statements. I believe that those mission statements are achievable. I believe that achieving those mission statements is an ROI all to itself. There are a lot of other relatable KPIs that we could tie to this, like the value of a happy customer, influence of eCOLs or eKOLs, rating high in SEO rankings in the areas of our expertise. These are soft measures, for sure, but I'm sure that our ROI calculations involve lots of tangential soft measures like these.