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I recently had a conversation with a friend about what good looks like in social media, driven by a positive article about Allergan’s US Restasis Facebook page. The article talks about the Restasis brand’s foray into social media through this page and what great results it drove.
Naturally I went to have a look at the page but must admit that I do not agree with the article’s rosy glow. Yes it may have had good results at the time but closer inspection reveals some serious flaws in the brand strategy regarding their approach to social media.
The most glaring issue is that this is not a page but a campaign. Looking at activity on the page it is clearly time framed around six months. Since January this year there has been next to no activity. The brand has gone from posting regular content, driving traffic to their savings programme or other relevant material, to posting only three posts since January 2017. The content on the page is very clearly targeted and clearly driven by customer need, i.e. issues around how to pay for treatment, and for the most part drives to the brand website. Within the six month period the team have done a good job at responding to and answering questions, which gets a big thumbs up and demonstrates the understanding that this is a two way engagement channel.
However the strong campaign focus coupled with the lack of recent content really flags this as a lost opportunity to me. Rather than build a whole page, with a key purpose to apparently drive patients to the Restasis brand website, my recommendation would have been to focus activity and investment in promotion. By this I mean the focus should just have been on placing targeted adverts, including on Facebook, to drive that traffic. Building up a whole page simply for a six month campaign, rather than a concerted effort at driving long term engagement and value, is a wasted effort. It also brings with it additional risk and work due to the need to monitor 24 / 7.
Another recommendation I would have would be to focus on building up and improving the corporate Facebook presence, which is currently lacking and confusing. As a first step I would close the unofficial Facebook page which seems to be more of an employee forum but includes people replying to patient questions and issues. Now I have no idea of those people replying are authorised to do so but I would not be surprised is they are not. This is of course a huge risk to organisation but could be turned into an opportunity. There are clearly people passionate about the organisation prepared to engage on behalf of the organisation – these people could be trained and used to support the official activities.
For that to happen though there needs to be official activities! There is no official, professional corporate Facebook page, just some brand pages, and in this day and age I find this somewhat dated. By having a strong corporate Facebook page it would also provide the opportunity for brands, like Restasis, to have somewhere to post content (which can be geo-targeted to handle regulatory issues). It would also formalise and help control the discussions that are already happening – by not having a presence it does not mean that people are not talking to and about you.
To me this Restasis Facebook page, and Allergan’s approach to Facebook, is suboptimal and the sort of activity I would have expected from Pharma a few years back. Today however the approach to social media really needs to be more strategic, serious and based on a solid understanding on the value, uses and impact of the various platforms to both customers and the business. Today social media is a mainstream channel that can provide high value to both customers and the business and needs to be handled as such, and not as an “experiment” or “foray”. Embrace it, optimise it and reap the benefits.
