How Pharma Should Be Using Social Media (Or Using It Better)

By Ed Miseta, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader

Global public relations firm Weber Shandwick recently conducted research into the use of social media by pharma companies, releasing the results in a report titled Digital Health: Building Social Confidence In Pharma. The company had two main reasons for conducting the research. The first is that 72% of online U.S. adults have used the Internet to search for health information in the past year. This obviously represents a large and growing opportunity for pharmaceutical companies. Weber Shandwick also wanted to follow-up on a previous global quantitative survey it conducted with Forbes Insights, Socializing Your Brand: A Brand’s Guide To Sociability, which suggested social media obstacles facing the pharma sector may be more constrained by internal, rather than external factors.

“We noticed that although pharma and biotech companies are embracing social media more than in the past, there is still a sizable gap between that industry sector and others such as consumer products and technology,” says Laura Schoen, president, Global Healthcare, for Weber Shandwick. “Our purpose here was to create benchmarks. Our clients have an interest in knowing what other companies, especially competitors, are doing. Unfortunately, because of confidentiality agreements, we can't share that information. This survey gave us an opportunity to draw a picture of what is happening with pharma and social media, and then share that information with them.”