You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.”  Let’s NOT call the whole thing off!

Last Friday’s #HCSMEU conversation brought up differences regarding healthcare and pharma marketing social conversations in Europe and the U.S, both in style and function.  I have participated in all the healthcare Twitter Chats for over a year now and wanted to share some differences that may be helpful to those communicating across the pond. This is not an attempt to make any way right or wrong, as that would defeat the purpose of this post, which is to enhance the global conversation!

For a summary and listing of all the healthcare and pharma chats, please see our Resource Hub for Healthcare Communications and Social Media Professionals.

Andrew Spong, co-founder and moderator of the European discussion #HCSMEU with Silja Chouquet, will tell you that #HCSMEU is democratic and belongs to the community.  What does this mean?  Everyone has an equal voice from students to senior leadership in some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. My impression from participation in the #HCSMEU chat is that the value of an idea is greater than a title.

This leads to a difference in the way various chats are initiated.  In #HCSMEU, it had not been typical for people to introduce themselves, beyond a friendly greeting.  In #HCSM, on Sunday nights, participants are asked to give their name, title and affiliation before the chat gets going.  This is very much part and parcel of American culture. Think about when you meet someone in the States and one of the first questions asked is “What do you do?”  When Dana Lewis, moderator of #HCSM visited Andrew Spong in Europe, they discussed #HCSMEU adopting the #HCSM approach and #HCSMEU now also asks participants to introduce themselves.  However, the trend seems to have gravitated back to the original way for most #HCSMEU folks. Why? It would be great to hear thoughts from both the EU and American perspective!

I also recently wrote about the importance of saying “thank you” in social media which brings up another difference.  I have noticed many European followers will provide very personal thank you notes privately in a DM (Direct Message) on Twitter, where most American followers will do so publicly in the stream.  Therefore, more European followers follow directly, and not via lists.  (If someone does not follow you directly on Twitter, you cannot send them a private Direct Message. A clue is to look at follower-following ratios, but that is another post!)

#SOCPHARM weekly on Wednesday nights at 8 pm EST also has a once a month early morning chat at 8 am to be inclusive of European participation, so you will find a mix.

The way topics are generated also differs across the chats.  #HCSMEU has an open google doc wiki where three questions can be added on a first-come, first-served basis.  #HCSM and #SOCPHARM ask that questions be submitted in advance to the moderator who will then choose among the submissions.

The biggest difference that came up in last week’s #HCSMEU chat is the fact that in Europe, DTC advertising is not allowed, so “promotional” is not part of the conversation. The culture clash that ensued in last Friday’s #HCSMEU chat was because a question posed by an American participant in the #HCSMEU chat was found to be too “promotional” by one of the European participants.  The democratic system of the chat allowed the question, which then caused the participants to question the way questions are managed.  Would the question have been approved for discussion in #HCSM or #SOCPHARM or would it have been considered “promotional”?

I think it is incredible that today we can even exchange ideas like this globally in real time all because of Twitter.  In a few years, the global conversation will continue to evolve and this post may be antiquated. In the meantime, let’s acknowledge, appreciate and learn from our differences. Adopt to the culture of the conversation, there is so much to learn!

The above video is from a series of videos by Aurora Health PR, @aurorahealthpr, entitled, “We Hate Social Media,” which is based on British humor! This video also raised some cultural differences within the EU; if you don’t get it, it is meant to be sarcastic ironic! Neil Crump explains his series to pharma here,  “We Hate Social Media.”

Mom told you to share, but she also said to say “please” and “thank you.”

With all the buzz about “influence’ in social media, people are forgetting real social media clout is built on “trust.”  How trustworthy are you?

At TWTRCON last month, Laura Fitton, aka @pistachio, stated that “Influence is serving others.” I would add it is also attained by appreciating others.  By responding and showing genuine appreciation to all of your followers, you build trust.

With the advent of Klout and other measures of social influence, a disturbing pattern is surfacing. Some folks, including social media experts, only curry favor and are inclusive of those they may deem influential.  Don’t be guilty of taking for granted anyone who retweets your tweet or spreads your thought leadership in Facebook or in a blog. Do you comment back or express that you “like” that someone mentioned you?  Those in social media know the value this provides. If you are advocating best practices in social media, don’t forget, a simple “thank you” goes a long way– and that is being social!  (Graphic by the|G|™)

PHARMA AND TRUST

Pharma especially needs to focus on building trust.  This entire issue of Siren Interactive’s “Adventures in eMarketing” is about pharma and trust, and is worth your read. The following graphic in the newsletter is a Research Insight about Epsilon, A Prescription for Customer Engagement, March 2010, which explores the issue of online trust and the pharmaceutical industry.  As you can see, at 13%, there is a lot of room for improvement. How would you recommend pharma could build more trust?

I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Cleveland Clinic Farmers’ Market in Cleveland, Ohio, and speaking with Elizabeth Fiordalis, Director of Community Outreach, about how the Cleveland Clinic is bringing the message and action for healthy living to its community.

America has a problem with obesity and the problem can be directly attributed to the lack of knowledge about healthy food and its preparation, according to Chef Jamie Oliver in his award-winning TED talk and anti-obesity project.  In this shocking video, American schoolchildren are unable to identify basic fruits and vegetables.  One child identified a tomato as a potato; many others were hard-pressed to recognize cauliflower.

Fiordalis echoes Oliver’s sentiments and stresses the importance of educating the community, “It’s one thing to say ‘eat fresh fruits and vegetables.’ It’s so much better if you can take them to the market, teach them how to shop, to choose healthy and nutritious fruits and vegetables and then go home and prepare them.”

The Cleveland Clinic main campus farmers’ market attracts hundreds of visitors every week on Wednesdays from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and dozens of school groups will learn about healthy eating throughout the summer.  You can view a video tour of the Cleveland Clinic Farmers’ Market, and, if you visit in person, the Clinic will even provide free parking for an hour.

Fiordalis says getting the message out to the community and neighborhoods is very important for its healthcare communications and extends beyond traditional media to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, “We’re finding that social media and getting into our community are very intertwined.” This is the third season for the main campus market and the great response has prompted the Cleveland Clinic to host farmers’ markets at other regional hospitals and health centers with more to come.  What a delicious idea!

The Cleveland Clinic Farmers’ Market is part of several North Union Farmers’ Markets in Northeast Ohio founded on the vision of Donita Anderson.  The first market opened in Shaker Square in 1995.

Melissa Davies’ (Return on Focus) slide deck “Understanding the Impact of Social Media, Why This Matters to Healthcare Marketers” presented at CBI Social Media Conference.

Although a lot of experts weighed in at the #FDASM hearings on how pharma can engage in social media, the biggest mistake pharma can make is to lose focus on the passion that drove the development of the pharmaceuticals it is marketing in the first place.

In a recent post from Seth Godin entitled, “A sad truth about most traditional b2b marketing,” Seth comments:

“I was at a conference recently where the senior executives spent the entire day talking about profits, market share and growth… they never once mentioned that the pharmaceuticals they were selling were saving lives, or that changes in the product or its pricing could reduce side effects or the load on the patient and her doctor.”

The above 3-minute video, “Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy,” demonstrates how a passionate individual successfully engages the all important first and second followers that ultimately start a movement, “The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader.” The second follower is a turning point.

If you want to start a movement and build a community through social media, it is important to treat your first followers as equals and remember why you started dancing in the first place.

I first met the charming Andreas Wilkens, Co-Founder of MediaFunnel (formerly TweetFunnel) last year at TWTRCON in SanFrancisco and was immediately impressed with the content curation feature of his tool. MediaFunnel is a Twitter and Facebook management tool that has been consistently evolving over the past year, adding more interesting features and functionality. MediaFunnel allows businesses to better coordinate and manage their social media presence on Twitter and Facebook. It enables greater collaboration with teams throughout an enterprise, provides brand monitoring as part of the dashboard, and even allows outside guests or fans to contribute via SMS.

Media Funnel was at TWTRCON in New York City, June 14th, showing off their new ROI calculator set to debut in the next two weeks. View a video demonstration of MediaFunnel’s new ROI functionality. As part of the ROI tool, MediaFunnel will be integrating Klout True Reach measurement.

The most interesting thing about MediaFunnel is that it allows anyone across an enterprise to contribute content that can be reviewed, edited and then disseminated to your community via Twitter or Facebook. MediaFunnel moves content curation beyond the social media team and extends reach to everyone within your organization and even outside your organization with their new guest posting feature. Contributors are assigned varying degrees of editorial control including “contributors,” “publishers” and “administrators.” Contributors do NOT even need to be on Twitter or Facebook, they can email or text a suggested tweet or status update for your team’s publisher to review! Imagine a tool something like Yammer and Twitter with Social Mention and SMS.

Some examples of how MediaFunnel can be used in the healthcare industry include:

• For pharma, the ability to move real-time news, gather internal information and provide feedback, for example, about a drug recall, are extraordinary.
• For hospitals, you can engage a physician about their individual specialty instantly and provide your community with quality, real-time information.
• For healthcare communications or public relations agencies, the ability to gather and manage content on various accounts simultaneously is a super benefit.

Brand monitoring built in to the dashboard of MediaFunnel allows you to see the conversations happening around your brand as well as business intelligence in your industry. You can then immediately provide feedback to your community via Twitter and/or Facebook.

Currently, the best part is Media Funnel has been a free tool that will be evolving into a reasonably priced subscriber model. It is beneficial for a small company as well as a large enterprise, even integrating with salesforce.com. Check it out to fully realize MediaFunnel’s benefits for your own organization and watch the quality of your community engagement grow.

TEDxMaastricht Fueling the next revolution in Medicine & Health from TEDx Maastricht on Vimeo.

More and more healthcare organizations and companies are embracing social media tools and building online communities. Effective community management takes a collaborative team effort to develop strategy, policies, metrics and measurements. But who do you want as the forward-facing personality — the community manager (CM) — fostering, encouraging and facilitating your healthcare community?

To help me articulate the most important qualities of a good CM in healthcare, I teamed up with two colleagues: Christine Stewart, Community Animator at CareToKnow.organd Leah Williams, Community & Social Media Manager at Breast Cancer Care. Here are our thoughts.  

A great CM in health care should

• Listen actively and compassionately

While I’ve stressed the importance of listening in other posts, I want to underline that a CM must be an active listener. Members should know that you are there and that they can reach out to when necessary.

“Friendly and approachable: When people discuss personal healthcare issues, they need to know that the person managing the community will listen to them, has their interests at heart and will try to make the community a safe and supportive place.” LW

“If the community is not interested in the content you are producing as a CM, or if they are not contributing the content you expected them to, you need to thicken your skin. Put aside expectations … and be flexible. It’s about staying motivated to find what works and what will inspire the community to take shape on its own.” CS

• Communicate effectively

When CM join a conversation, it is imperative that they do so in a tone and literacy level suited to the community. They need to write clearly, succinctly and stay focused on the needs of the community.

“Insight and empathy: Managers of healthcare communities need to have some insight into what might be going on in people’s lives so they can respond appropriately, make sensitive moderating decisions and communicate in an appropriate tone.” LW

“Judgment, balance and a keen sense of fairness: Combined with insight and empathy, these are the bedrock of decision-making for CMs in healthcare. They must weigh a number of complex factors and keep in mind the bigger picture of the community whilst balancing the details of the relationships involved. They must also consider the long-term implications of their decisions. One of the key areas where these qualities are required would be knowing when and how to intervene (or participate) in a discussion.” LW

• Make meaningful connections

A CM connects people with people and quality health information. Being able to collaborate and network beyond your community’s membership broadens the community’s knowledge and expands their access to resources.

“Outreach and knowledge brokering skills: You don’t need to be a clinician or healthcare expert… you don’t need to know everything, but you need to know who does!” CS

“Limitless source of humility and perseverance: There’s a lot of heavy lifting required to get a new community going, particularly in healthcare where you are faced with additional challenges regarding privacy, professional or provider boundaries, and creating a space that is safe and welcoming. When it comes to engaging health professionals and researchers, time can be a challenge too.” CS

• Be genuine

People want the person guiding their community to understand them, recognize their needs and to engage with them honestly and free of bias. The CM has to be passionate about the community and facilitate exchanges, allowing the community to flourish.

“A CM must be caring, person-centered, trustworthy and determined. These are actually Breast Cancer Care’s corporate values, but apply particularly to the position of CM.” LW

“Put your heart into it. A good CM knows that you have to invest in getting to know your community members. It’s important to stay in touch and engage them as contributors, not just joiners. Send personal, not automated messages. Welcome each new member to the community. Recognize, and respond to, contributions. Let your own personality come through. The Care to Know Centre is founded on a collaborative approach focused on client engaged and family centered care. This begins with a collaborative approach to understanding and honouring the patient experience at all points of care.” CS

What would you add to the list?

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Christine Stewart is the CM at CareToKnow.org, a social network for two-way health knowledge exchange, support and conversations. Created by Saint Elizabeth Health Care, the community is designed to connect individuals, family caregivers, professionals, researchers, organizations and policy stakeholders across Canada.

Leah Williams is the CM at Breast Cancer Care, a UK charity supporting people affected by breast cancer. As well as printed information, a telephone helpline and web resources, Breast Cancer Care manages an active online forum where people affected by breast cancer share experiences and information and support each other.