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In the past few days I have been discussing social media with a pharmaceutical company.

The pharma industry is necessarily highly-regulated and risk-averse. It caters very well with the ‘traditional’ use of the internet, i.e. when corporate messages are broadcast from a main website.

These traditional corporate websites issue strictly controlled and watertight messages that have been approved by internal managers and legal experts, such that there is absolutely no possibility of brand damage or, heaven forbid, any litigious patients taking action.

And yet, patients and health care professionals (i.e. the pharmaceutical industry’s customers) are increasingly seeking answers to their health care questions online.

One recent survey by Pew Research Center found that 61 percent of American adults — and 83 percent of internet users — look for their health information online.

Therefore if the traditional corporate pharma website don’t provide the answers, customers can (and do) go elsewhere. e.g. WebMD and NHS Choices

Meanwhile, and rather belatedly, this week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration hosts a public hearing to discuss the use of the internet and social media tools — including blogs, podcasts, and social networks — to share information about the FDA-regulated products, including prescription medicines and medical devices.

Pharma is moving in the right direction. But progress is painstakingly slow, and meanwhile the client’s customer has many other (new) outlets for online information. 

The social media  sales lesson here is… know the customer’s customer. 

When I talk with my pharma client (as with all my clients), it is with their customer in mind.  In the long run it is their customer that calls the shots. So I ensure that I can speak to the stakeholder with some authority about their customer – bringing new insight into their customers as often as possible. Given that customers use of social media is rocketing, this inevitably places social media on the company’s agenda.

Not a day for MacLaren

Maclaren has become the latest victim of social media activism. They have joined a growing list of companies to have suffered at the hands of bloggers and Tweeters [Twitterers?].


I find this story interesting for two reasons:

1. It highlights how social media jumps geographical boundaries.
2. It reminds me how much Social Media experts love to hype these effects.

Maclaren is a UK manufacturer of prams. On Tuesday they announced the recall of 1M baby pushchairs in the US. This was after 15 reports of injuries to children’s fingers. They also offered US customers free repair kits.

However, despite having identical products in both UK and US markets, in the UK, rather than a recall or an offer of repair kits, they simply assured parents not to worry about it.

It didn’t take long for social networks and blogging sites to react. Some created email templates to send to the firm and even David Milliband, UK Foreign Secretary, referenced the debate in a Tweet.

So 3 days on and Maclaren has adopted an identical policy in the UK.


Conclusions
On one hand the social media part of this is a big deal. The Financial Times wrote about it and the company has changed a policy that may have a huge impact on their bottom line. All thanks to social networks spanning the globe.

On the other hand, they moved pretty quickly and the real story here is the recall, not the social media impact. They listened to what was said on blogs and Twitter and before the end of the week had changed their policy. I’d call that good social media monitoring and pretty speedy action for a large company.

And that brings me to my second point: the social media echo-chamber can blow these things out of proportion. It annoys me when I read blogs proclaiming Armageddon after cases like this. Sure, this has been a really critical week for Maclaren. One can only imagine the anguish throughout the business. Yes, there is now one more company where social media has made it to the boardroom. But they did not commit a massive social media faux pas. They reacted with common sense after taking a little time to reflect.

I suspect 90% of customers will probably not be aware of the hesitation that came ahead of the policy change. In a month’s time this will be remembered as just a recall story.

A reasonably bright school kid will build an excellent business case for a car that is 60% more fuel efficient, or a pc that is 50% faster. It’s easy! He can look at reduced running costs (for the car) or improved efficiency (for the pc), and the business case will quickly form.

But selling social media, whether to a client or internally at an organisation, requires more expertise and selling skills, because the benefits are much broader, and often a little obtuse! In my experience, every business or department that buys into a social media solution has a different business case with greatly different benefits. These could range from increasing customer-based innovation, to enticing greater web traffic, to enhanced SEO, to converting more online sales, to building the brand values, and I could list twenty more possibilities…

Therefore, for example, there is no point discussing the value of increased insight from social media, if what is really needed is to increase online sales. These are polar opposite reasons to use social media.

So the first lesson of successful selling in social media is…listen to and understand your client, because there will be a compelling business case for social media and you can help the client to reveal it.

(A note regarding my terminology:- for ‘client’ read ‘department head’ if you are selling social media internally within an organisation)

So, to get to the essence of the business case, there is no better person to understand your client’s business – than your client!

So ask him about it!

But this is where the skill comes in.

1. Do your research beforehand
2. Make the client (or department head) feel comfortable by building empathy
3. What’s in it for him? Establish the right to take his busy time.
4. At the meeting or on the telephone, ask lots of open questions, and finish with clear next steps and follow-up.

There may be some Objection Handling, but let’s discuss that some other time.

Read all our posts on Selling social media here.

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Twitter has quickly become the must-have channel for conference back-chat. Reading what other people tweet during a speech provides an extra dimension as you get a sense of what the audience is thinking. And just like passing notes in class, it’s also a lot more fun than simply sitting and listening. (and empowering – remember that Facebook interview from SXSW’08?)

Twitter is also a great way to attend a conference without actually being there – just follow a conference hashtag (e.g. #smib09 or #figarodigital) and find out all the gossip and the key points from the comfort of your desk.

But watch out Twitter. Google Wave is going to take this digitally-enabled conference back-channel a step further.

At the recent Ecomm conference delegates were provided with Google Wave accounts. What resulted was a fantastic showcase of collaboration and crowd-sourcing. Sprinkeled with a good dose of integrated offline and online real-time social media.   <– way too many social media buzzwords.

Here’s what happened: an audience member would create a Google Wave and others in the audience would edit the wave during the presentation. The result would be a crowd-sourced write-up of the presentation: a transcript of key points and a record of audience comments.
Here’s an example:

1. Audience member starts a Wave

2. Others join and edit the wave as the speaker talks

3. By the end of the talk there are lots of people using the Wave (their photos are along the top) and the Wave became a complete record of the key points plus audience commnets below.

For this conference the organisers created a Wave directory so that you could find what was said in each presentation.

The organisers also added waves so that the audience could give feedabck about the conference in general and ideas for next year.

It’s worth pointing out that Twitter is still an early-adopter phenomenon, and Google Wave even more so. As a result, whilst I am a complete junkie for following conference tweets, I suspect it’s going to take a couple of years before this goes mainstream. But it will. And the impact on conference organisers and speakers is significant.

And just in case you are new to social media, make sure you check out the other excelent social media platform for conference notes: Slideshare. This is always the best place to find presentations from conferences.

Have you tried following conference tweets? Or waves? If so, have you found them useful? and will augmented reality will be the next major influence?

The last post of our guide to Getting Started in Social Media looked at measurements and how brands should be ruthless about ROI. This presentation from Oliver Blanchard is a great introduction to social media ROI and how you should conceive of it and then measure it. It’s also quite amusing in parts and so is Required Reading this week at FreshNetworks

For me the most insightful part of the presentation is the distinction between a non-financial ROI and a financial one. Blanchard’s model is that you get the non-financial ROI before you get measurable financial return. They are part of a continuum – your investment leads to something that will have a non-financial impact first and then a financial one. This is a model that really rings true in our experience of building online communities. Financial ROI can take time to achieve, but good planning and strategy should start to give you non-financial ROI relatively quickly. Brands often need to have this trajectory reinforced – just because you don’t have any hard financial return yet does not mean it isn’t just round the corner. It probably is if you persist with your efforts.