Tools You Can Use: Planning, Approving and Evaluating a Pharmaceutical Social Media Marketing Initiative

Oct 20th, 2009 by Fard Johnmar

Non-Pharma Marketers Please Note: While this post focuses on pharmaceutical marketing, I strongly believe it workshopcan benefit health marketers outside of drug firms.  The goal of the Path of the Blue Eye project is to expose you to helpful information from other industry segments.  Open yourself to ideas  from outside of your industry silo and you will benefit, today and in the future.

When I first started giving talks focusing on the importance of social media for the healthcare industry, it was enough to focus on social media 101.  In those days, people were skeptical about the benefits and impact of social technologies on their work.  Today, that’s no longer sufficient.  People get that social media is important.  Now, they want information that will help them successfully integrate these technologies into their marketing communications initiatives.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of coordinating a 3-hour social media workshop at Digital Pharma with Jonathan Richman of Bridge Worldwide and author of the Dose of Digital blog.  (Digital Pharma is an annual conference designed to educate pharmaceutical executives on the latest trends in digital marketing.)

Our goal was to satisfy attendees’ craving for actionable information on how to plan, approve and evaluate a pharmaceutical social media marketing initiative.  To meet this objective, we developed a simulation focusing on this topic.  We divided workshop participants into five teams and gave them the job of developing a social media initiative from scratch.  They also had to address the compliance issues associated with their idea.  Compliance is always a difficult topic.  But, it’s become even more important now that FDA is holding a public hearing on this issue.

Rather than being intimidated, workshop participants dove right in, developing some very innovative campaigns in less than an hour.  During the compliance-focused part of the workshop, we had a very intense conversation about whether it is appropriate (or safe) for drug firms to move forward on social media-related initiatives without firm FDA guidance. One person from a major healthcare company that is very active in the social media arena (speaking for herself and not her company) argued strongly that delay is not an option. She believes it is the drug industry’s responsibility to move forward and show the FDA what is possible.  Waiting for guidance that may or may not be satisfactory could be a serious mistake.

Pharma Marketers: If You’re Ready to Move, These Workshop Materials Are For You

Workshop participants completed each task using detailed worksheets I developed focusing on social media marketing planning, compliance and evaluation.  These worksheets are based on my work with drug firms and other health organizations.  I have also provided our full workshop PowerPoint presentation.

  • Click here to download the worksheets
  • Click here to download the PowerPoint presentation

Here’s to your success.

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Read More from Walking the Path:

  1. Off-Label Marketing & Social Media: What’s Big Pharma’s Responsibility?
  2. Why the Social Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing Debate is Far From Academic
  3. Why Non-Pharma Marketers Should Care About the FDA Public Hearing on Drug Promotion & Social Media

Posted in Collaboration, Marketing Strategy, Pharmaceutical Marketing, Social Media

13 Responses to “Tools You Can Use: Planning, Approving and Evaluating a Pharmaceutical Social Media Marketing Initiative”

  1. Tweets that mention Walking the Path » Blog Archive » Tools You Can Use: Planning, Approving and Evaluating a Pharmaceutical Social Media Marketing Initiative -- Topsy.com says:
    October 20, 2009 at 3:55 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jonathan Richman and Shwen Gwee, Jason Ary. Jason Ary said: RT @blueeyepath: Planning, Approving and Evaluating a Pharmaceutical Social Media Marketing Initiative http://twurl.nl/ocp02i #hcmktg [...]

  2. Elisheba Muturi says:
    October 21, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    Thank you so much for sharing these tools – you are absolutely right that they would be useful to any serious social marketer looking for brilliant ideas and a concrete strategy. I am most interested in how you captured those twitter snippets so neatly – I have been wanting to do that and not sure how to proceed. I have tried screen shots but don’t know how to embed them in my blog postings. Thanks so much – Elisheba Muturi

  3. Fard Johnmar says:
    October 21, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    You’re quite welcome! I’m glad you’re finding the worksheet and workshop helpful.

    Regarding embedding Twitter comments, I think you’re referring to your blog. I see that you’re on Wordpress.com, so you might be able to use BackType Connect to embed Tweets about your posts into your blog. Go to to learn more.

  4. I Was There (Digital Pharma 2009) « Impactiviti blog says:
    October 22, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    [...] – The two pre-conference workshops (disclosure: I co-led one of them, with Zoe Elliott and Denise Barrett Quigley) helped set the table by incorporating creative table brainstorming exercises, to move away from the more traditional strictly didactic approach. This was very popular, and there was some Twitter back-channel trash-talking going on between the rooms as to which session was really better (note: ours was, of course! :>} As much as I really like Jon Richman and Fard Johnmar, who were leading that “other” session). [...]

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