February 15, 2012
Top Social Networking Sites in Canada and the United States
When it comes to online social networking sites, Canadians and Americans are not that different. According to Hitwise, for the week ending January 28 2012, the majority of the visits from both countries went to FaceBook, and then YouTube. The rest of the sites all got less than 2% of the visits, and that includes Twitter. So if you are a small firm marketing to both countries, this is good news, because you can focus on the same top sites to get traffic from your target audience from both countries. Here is a side-by-side comparison of both charts:
February 15, 2011
The Canadian Pharmacy Chain who is most “Social” Online is …
A few days ago, I visited the websites of all the Canadian drugstore chains that were listed in Wikipedia. I looked for their Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube and any other social media and mobile app logos. I only looked at channels and profiles set up by the corporate head offices of Canadian pharmacy chains. Online drugstores which do not dispense Rx prescription drugs were omitted from the analysis. During my search, I saw many independent pharmacies and even individual chain stores who were active on various social networks, but I did not include these as part of this post. Here are some statistics as of February 14 2011, based on an overview of the drugstore chains’ websites . It is possible that some drugstores have social profiles that are not listed on their corporate site homepage, therefore are not noted in this report. If you know of any that should be added to the list, just let me know in the comments section:
- 7 drugstore chains have at least 1 social media component listed
- 16 drugstore chains have no social media component
- Neither of the 2 online drugstore chains have a social media component
- 5 drugstore chains have a FaceBook page
- 4 drugstore chains have a Twitter account (5 if you include PharmaPrix)
- 1 drugstore chain has a YouTube channel
- 2 drugstore chains have a blog
- 2 drugstore chains have an app
- Shoppers Drug Mart FaceBook page has a strong lead in number of ‘likes’ and a moderate lead in number of followers on Twitter.
- London Drugs is the most ‘listed’ Canadian drugstore chain on Twitter
- London Drugs has the highest Klout rating on Twitter (The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. The Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.)
- Pharmaprix was the 1st to join Twitter, but their account is inactive … so in my opinion, this does not count. Therefore, the runner-up, London Drugs, was the 1st Canadian drugstore chain to join Twitter and to be active on this network.
| Association | FaceBook # of Likes* | Twitter Stats* | YouTube Stats* | Blog | App |
| Canadian Pharmacists Association | Yes 221 | Yes 99 followers Listed 8 times 24 updates Klout: N/A Joined Mar 11 2010 Last post Aug 30 2010 | |||
| Canada Drugs | Yes 3,629 (a huge jump from just 2 weeks ago, where they had 2,813 community members) | Yes 324 followers Listed 2 times 37 updates Klout: 26 Joined Aug 19 2009 | Yes | ||
| Familiprix | Yes 581 | ||||
| Jean Coutu | Yes Prescription refill for entire family | ||||
| London Drugs | Yes 1,751 | Yes 2,535 followers Listed 197 times 6690 updates Klout: 55 Joined Jan 2 2009 | Yes 37 subscribers 72,035 upload views Joined Jan 2 2009 | Yes | |
| Pharmaprix (the Quebec equivalent of Shoppers Drug Mart) | Yes, sort of 25 followers Listed 1 time No updates Joined Oct 30 2008 The site is completely inactive. It lists the actual Pharmaprix.ca website as its URL, but other than that, it seems completely unofficial. | ||||
| Shoppers Drug Mart | Yes 18,326 | Yes 3,282 followers Listed 171 times 756 updates Klout: 42 Joined Apr 25 2009 | Yes Weekly flyers, points tool, prescription refill, promotions and offers, store locator | ||
| Uniprix | Yes 2,184 | Yes 577 followers Listed 32 times 331 updates Klout: 29 Joined Oct 20 2009 |
Creative Commons license, Flickr[/caption]
So which Canadian Pharmacy Chain is the most "social" online? It is a tight race between London Drugs and Shoppers Drug Mart. Both are very active and engaged, with large followings and innovative campaigns. We could argue that both organizations are head to head in this social media race. But if I had to choose just one, then I would suggest that London Drugs has a slight lead for the following reasons:
- Both organizations are engaged with their followers and are responding to posts by others, but London Drugs is doing so at an incredible rate on Twitter. In fact, London Drugs has posted on Twitter almost 9x as often as Shoppers Drug Mart.
- But who cares if London Drugs tweet a lot. Volume does not mean quality. But in this case, London Drugs have proven the level of quality of their engagement on Twitter with their higher Klout rating. This needs to be taken with a grain of salt though, as this figure can fluctuate quickly depending on engagement activity within a certain period of time.
- London Drugs has a successful YouTube channel. This is not only strategically clever from an 'online search' perspective, but it is also a great way to showcase your products.
- The #1 reason why I am naming London Drugs as the most social Canadian Pharmacy chain vs. Shoppers Drug Mart, is because London Drugs serves the Western portion of Canada only, whereas Shoppers Drug Mart serves the entire nation. So what? If you look at the amount of social media effort put in on a 'per potential client' basis, London Drugs is by far the leader. However, one might argue that their ROI may be weakened as a result.
Screenshot taken Feb 15 2011[/caption]
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Screenshot taken Feb 15 2011[/caption]
What about the Canadian Pharmacists Association? Are they leading the way for their members?
Well, I would not say that they are "leading" the way, but they are at least involved. As you saw in the table above, the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) is experimenting with social media. They have a CPhA page on FaceBook called "CPhA New Practitioners" and, as the name suggests, is targeted to new pharmacists. There is even a clear description of their target market on the page, under the "Info" tab: "A new practitioner is an active member of CPhA who has held a pharmacist license in Canada not greater than five years."
The CPhA FaceBook strategy to focus on new pharmacists is emphasized by their group description: "As a new pharmacy graduate, your position in the workforce is unique. This group is for new practitioners to discuss the successes and challenges you face as you bridge the gap between education and career." The wall posts on the CPhA FaceBook page seem to be written by community members themselves.
CPhA is also on Twitter . Their strategy on Twitter seems more broadly focused on supporting Canadian pharmacists in general. Their bio reads as follows: "The Canadian Pharmacists Association advocates for pharmacists and supports its members to advance the profession and enhance patient outcomes."
Based on their level of activity and engagement, it appears as though the CPhA is still in the experimentation stage with social media. That is a good starting point, but as Canadian pharmacists and drugstores increase their activity with social media, the CPhA should consider elevating their involvement as well in order to share and engage with their target market. I look forward to seeing how the CPhA social media activities evolve in 2011 and in future years.
Which Canadian pharmacy chain would you have chosen as the "social media" winner? Let us know who and why in the comments section below.November 16, 2010
Telus social media case study: "Like to Give" campaign
Every once in a while, an organization stands out from the rest as a good corporate citizen. For the past couple of years, I have been watching the good deeds by Telus which are positively influencing healthcare in Canada. In fact, they are a sponsor of one of my favorite children non-profit organizations, Upopolis. Here is a statement that is found on the Info tab of their FaceBook page:
We give where we live. TELUS supports local communities and charities across the country.This week, I saw the following sponsored ad on my personal FaceBook profile:
When you click on the "Telus" link, you are brought to the "Like to give" tab on the Telus FaceBook page.
Update November 26 2010: Pic with all 12 charities that were included in "Like to Give" Telus campaign
Telus allows comments to be added to their FaceBook posts, but they do not allow wall posts to be initiated by others. I sent them a note on Twitter asking why this was the case, but 24+ hours later, I still had not heard anything from them. My personal guess is that they do not allow others to initiate posts because they want to avoid negative dicussions being initiated by consumers on their page. This seems to be an issue on the Telus YouTube channel. Based on my research, Telus appears to get their fair share of negative comments on social networks by consumers, so if they want to avoid similar issues that Nestle had with their FaceBook page, they probably made the right choice by not allowing others to iniative wall posts. Keep in mind though that the biggest issue with the Nestle case was the way that they handled the situation. However, Telus is allowing consumers to have a voice as as those who 'like' the Telus FaceBook page can add comments to posts initiated by Telus themselves.
Because of the high level of negative comments, I think it is wise that Telus' Twitter strategy is to have a Twitter profile that is focused on marketing messages (@Telus) and one that focuses on providing consumers with support on Telus services (@TelusSupport). This allows @Telus to remain focused on their positive marketing messages, whereas the @TelusSupport deals with all the questions and complaints. However, I do find that the general @Telus account engages too little with the audience. I did a quick monitoring check and noticed that several people have posted about Telus' 'Like to give' campaign with a mention of @Telus. This means that Telus does not even have to monitor to be aware of the mention - these public mentions can be found right there in their Twitter profile. However, I have yet to see a 'thanks' sent out to any of those people, including myself. This is not the end of the world, but it would be a courteous act which would humanize the organization in the eyes of consumers.
I would like to wish Telus and their chosen non-profit organizations the best of luck in reaching their goals with the 'Like to give' campaign. I am not a client of Telus, but their acts of generosity certainly catch my attention. If ever I am in the market to switch, Telus will at least be top of mind as part of my research.
What else would you like to see Telus do to promote their 'Like to give' campaign on social networks?
Stay in touch,
Natalie
Connect with me on the following networks:
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