January 7, 2011
Pfizer helps its employees better understand and use social media
I just read a great post on SmartBlog, "Andy’s Answers: How Pfizer created a practical social media playbook for employees". I enjoyed learning about how Pfizer created their employee social media playbook so I wanted to share it with others as well. In Andy's blog post, he attached a video clip in which Kate Bird (Director, Corporate Internet Communications at Pfizer Inc) talks about how Pfizer is helping its employees better understand and use social media for personal and business purposes. The video is a bit over 27 minutes, but it is well worth the watch. Here is the link to the video: Pfizer: Social Media Playbook: Practical Guidance for Colleagues, presented by Kate Bird from GasPedal on Vimeo. In case you don't have time to watch it, I have pulled a few quotes and highlights from the video. I did not write down all the information that Kate talked about, so if you find the highlights below of interest, you should definitely take a look at the video. Note that the info is not all in chronological order of the talk. I took some of the info from the Q&A session at the end of the talk and added it to the appropriate category:
- "The conversation (at Pfizer) has changed from ‘we can't do social media’ to ‘how do we do social media’ ". At the very end of the video, during the Q&A session, Kate suggests that a large part of this cultural shift may be due to the acquisition of Wyeth.
- What employees do on social media has significant impact on the corporate brand
- "We have clearly a role to play here (in social media channels), and a responsibility … to provide information to patients and customers."
- "Build better relationships that ultimately will influence the corporate brand experience and reputation. ... As people get to know us a little bit more, they like us a little bit more."
- Share what you’ve already done within the organization. It reduces redundancy costs and helps build a more cohesive brand strategy
- Pfizer developed a global template for YouTube
- Truly understand why your program needs its own social media space (ie. FaceBook page). Could you build off something that already exists within the organization?
- It provides tips on how to engage with various key stakeholders on social media (ie. consumers, vs. healthcare professionals, etc…)
- It is designed so that any employee should be able to find guidance on social media activities. The content is applicable to marketing, senior executives, assistants, etc…)
- It contains social media best practices that are specific for various channels; Twitter, FaceBook,YouTube, etc…(what is it, how do you use it, what are the best practices, what to watch out for)
- It shows steps that need to be considered to implement social media within Pfizer (consider legal, talk to regulatory, take a disciplined approach as to how you want to roll out your communication strategy)
- It highlights case studies of best practices within Pfizer and other organizations
- It will help connect people within Pfizer affiliates of various countries so that they can learn from one another
- It could act as a training book
- Printed copies,
- Rolling it out at global communicators’ meeting, quarterly web master meetings (shared with web masters across various countries)
- On the website under 'Company tools and resources' section, alongside other digital and legal guidelines
- Quarterly social media webinars. Pfizer affiliates were asked to provide case studies for discussion at this meeting, where they will look at objective, target and lessons learned from the case studies. One of the case studies that has been submitted is the "Can you feel my pain" from the UK
- Other than the playbook itself, there is some social media training happening in different parts of the organization. For example, some scientists went through formal training and are blogging, and there has been robust training for marketers
Twitter is really … the most used channel for any type of crisis communication within our organization.If crisis management on social media is of interest to you, you might find the Pfizer Canada social media response flowchart valuable. Does your organization have a playbook set up? If so, what are some of your lessons learned? If not, what would you like to see as part of such a resource? Leave your insights in the comments below. Stay in touch, Natalie Connect with me on the following networks: FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn
November 4, 2010
eMarketing Canada – Twitter Transcript
Eye for Pharma organized the 1st eMarketing Canada conference, which was held in Toronto, on November 1-2 2010. The Twitter hashtag used was #efp.
Here is a transcript of the online Twitter posts and discussion which used the #efp hashtagh : Down #efp transcript pdf file.
For those of you keen on stats, here are some data from the tweets that took place on November 1st and 2nd, using the hashtag #efp (via What the Hashtag):
- 673 tweets
- 61 contributors
- 96.1 tweets per day
- 75.6% come from "The Top 10"
- 24.4% are retweets
- 30.6% are mentions
- 2.8% have multiple hashtags
September 30, 2010
Do Canadians talk about healthcare online? Do you want to join the conversation? Check out #hcsmca
If you are on Twitter, you know that hashtags have a powerful way of uniting people with common interests. For months now, I have been following and participating in discussions with the hashtags #hcsm and #hcsmeu. I even subscribe to their paper.li daily e-newsletters here and here. But now, we have our very own Canadian healthcare social media hashtag, #hcsmca, thanks to the initiative by Colleen Young, who is also known as @sharingstrength on Twitter. Colleen manages Sharing Strength, a Canadian online resource and community for women with breast cancer. She describes herself as a "plain language writer and e-patient advocate". Yesterday marked the very first #hcsmca Twitter chat. Although I was only able to attend the first few minutes of the session (such is the life of a work-at-home Mom with a teething baby and active preschooler), I took the time afterwards to review the tweets that were posted as part of this Twitter chat. From what I saw, there was a diverse mix of participants; e-patients, healthcare providers, non-profit organizations, health 2.0 enthusiasts and consultants and others. In fact, there were a total of 75 tweeps who used the hashtag #hcsmca yesterday. That is very impressive for a first time event. You can see the transcript of today's discussion on Twitter here. The discussions included introductions of participants, questions about how to use Twitter more effectively, exchange of ideas of how to manage social media for one's own organization, and more. Here is the link for the daily #hcsmca e-newsletter. This will include articles that people on Twitter have posted along with the #hcsmca hashtag. These posts are not all necessarily related to the #hcsmca Twitter chats, but rather articles that people thought other Canadian healthcare social media enthusiasts might find valuable. Not on Twitter? Well, I would like to convince you to join Twitter because it is such an effective tool for meeting and talking with people with common interests, but that is an entirely separate dicussion (but if you want to ask me questions about why and how to use Twitter, send me a note - I'm a big fan of this network). You can view the discussions happening on Twitter that are related to #hcsmca. Just check out the links I posted above. They are available to anybody who uses the Internet. The only thing is that you won't be able to participate in the discussion, you'll just be a listener. Maybe once you see the quality of some of the discussions, you'll see the benefit of joining Twitter (again, feel free to send me a note and I would be happy to help). It also looks as though Colleen will set up a FaceBook page as well as a LinkedIn group, so you will be able to join in the discussion on those networks if you are a member there. Once I get the links to the new FaceBook page and LinkedIn group, I will share them with you. UPDATE: FaceBook page and LinkedIn group are now live. Join us! Congratulations to Colleen for starting a great initiative which will allow Canadians with an interest in healthcare to connect and exchange ideas on the topic. And who knows, maybe we can help improve Canadian healthcare one tweet at a time. Do you talk about healthcare topics online? If so, what do you get out of these discussions? If not, is there something holding you back? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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