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You’re on LinkedIn and notice from your competitor’s business development manager’s profile that he has developed a new expertise area inhouse. Is this a relevant field signal? Indeed, there has much interest in the use of social media for market intelligence (MI). Will digital sharing platforms, social network platforms and wikis etc. become the next big thing in MI?

What are the implications of social media trends for MI

Social media has changed the way people communicate. In general, there is a greater willingness to openly share knowledge in the public domain.

People with similar interests tend to cluster into different online communities for information exchange, and no longer feel like they have to be an expert to express their observations and opinions through blogs and forums. News alerts and images can be sent via smart phones to captive audiences instantaneously.

Field signals that have been captured through social media, as well as the social technology platforms, can be useful as an input to the intelligence process.  The willingness andcapability for sharing market signals has improved.

This directly impacts what I consider to be one of the toughest aspects of the market intelligence process – collecting and sharing information efficiently and rapidly.

It also allows for more collaborative types of information gathering. This is all good for intelligence purposes, provided you can manage the information.

Social media applications will increasingly play a more important role in the analysis part of the intelligence cycle as well.

What are the most useful social media platforms for MI, and what are their pros and cons

Blogs are an excellent source of continuous information on industry issues, customers and competitors. The quality of information however is not always high and there can be many blogs, sometimes hundreds, on any topic. So it is challenging to find the right ones to track.

LinkedIn is a very popular networking site that has made it easier to identify sales leads as well as experts from all over the world. It is sometimes possible to even get an indication of a competitor’s future direction through the projects and work that employees present on their profiles or their latest professional networks.

These days, profiles from LinkedIn can be used to conduct network analysis, such as how the employees for a competitor are linked to specialist research companies, new business partners or even their best customers! It is interesting to note that employees are not always very careful with corporate information that should not actually be in the public domain. LinkedIn communities can inform competitors and be a hassle for employers themselves. As such, companies have started to provide disclosure policies to employees on how they can participate in social media and how to comment on professionally related issues.

We have also seen how companies can pull out material from YouTube in order to increase the knowledge of the competition. One automotive company features competitor commercials taken from YouTube as the opening screen of their intelligence portal. This is to help their staff see what their customers watch in different markets, and encourage them to think about how they can position their brands. This is also a way of making market intelligence more visible to the company, to make it an integrated part of everyday business life.

Wikis can be useful as internal platforms for developing shared knowledge and competitor profiles, as people might be more open to providing their own knowledge in this format. The knowledge management aspect of intelligence hopefully has much to gain here.

Social media applications can also play an important role when it comes to analysis. Crowd forecasting is where using social media for market intelligence gets more advanced. It allows you to balance expert perspectives with that of a wider audience for a more balanced view of where a trend is heading. Crowd forecasting is not the easiest to implement, as people will initially need time to get used to the process, but is helpful to go beyond general information ‘shuffling’ and to reach conclusions in more specific and tested ways. It is also a powerful way to enhance the co-creation intelligence process, meaning that people from around the company combine their intellectual capability to conduct analysis.

Companies with more advanced intelligence programs are integrating these applications at the moment. But I believe that the vast majority of companies are still looking at how social media can improve the information collection process. This is quite a hot topic in the “Intelligence Best Practice Benchmarking Workshops” that I am running with companies today.

What precautions should one take while utilizing social media for MI

First, social media platforms are in general not validated sources. The communications can be based on hype or unqualified rumours. What you read may not always be the truth and could even be information that is intentionally misrepresented. You can be misled to think something is going to be a new trend, a real issue or a hot topic, when it is not.

Also, the volume of information is increasing dramatically and needs to be collected, filtered and summarized. In the future, we will see more applications designed to summarize, rate and link information from social media sources so that the material is digested before it is analyzed by a person. But one must keep in mind that these sources are complementary to, not replacements for, high quality sources such as industry experts, professors and think tanks staffed with PhDs.

At the end of the day, you must also be able to wade through the rumours and disinformation, and decipher what is useful information for market intelligence. This is an area for worry for MI managers.

What new developments do you think will benefit market intelligence

There are tools that help structure, sort, filter and analyze the information from social media. One example is blog rating websites and we expect to see more ‘self-policing’ communities or filtering mechanisms.

Social media techniques will be used more and more for internal corporate processes. For example, wikis will be used to communicate and share information as an internal application within the organization or a network of partner companies.

In the future, there will be more interconnections between internal systems. Corporate intelligence portals could be integrated with customer relationship management systems, so you can track customers who change jobs or companies that recruit employees to manage a completely new application area. This might be indicative of business opportunities for your organization.

In many ways, social media has made market intelligence more accessible, if you know where to look and how to integrate it into your own intelligence process.

This article and others from GIA’s World Class Market Intelligence practice can be found at www.globalintelligence.com/insights-analysis/bulletins/568//

Increasing number of web users’ world wide (1.8 billion), development and popularity of web based community sites (Twitter, Facebook), tools and information centers (branded & unbranded sponsored communities) are changing approach towards Pharma and healthcare marketing and information sharing. In pharma industry social media has emerged as an effective tool for marketing, consumer engagement, monitoring & analyzing user generated content and building & changing brand perception. Social media is emerging as a strategic shift in organizations communication and operation model. Top pharmaceutical market players have started integrating social media in to their marketing mix. The effective social media marketing strategies that can help generate business exposure, market research data, relationship building and thus can prove as an important initiative to boom sales and overall business in the long term.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
1.1. Key Take Away
1.2. Report Description
1.3. Stakeholders
1.4. Research Methodology
2. Summary
3. Market Overview
3.1. Emerging Role of Internet in healthcare
3.1.1. Web 1 tools to Web 2 tools
3.1.2. Social Media Evolution
3.1.3. Conventional Media vs. Social Media
3.2. Social Media and New Technologies
3.3. Social media as a strategic shift in communication choices
3.4. ROI Analysis of using Social Media
4. Key Social Media (SM) Tools
4.1. Types of social media platforms
4.1.1. Twitter
4.1.2. Facebook
4.1.3. You tube
4.1.4. Blogs
4.1.5. Brand sponsored communities
4.1.6. Forums
4.1.7. Podcasts
4.1.8. Others
4.2. Comparative study
5. Effective Social Media Strategies / Tactics
5.1. Determine the right social media mix
5.1.1. Identify the social platform based on the target audience and goals
5.1.2. Use multiple tools
5.2. Enlarge the targeted segment
5.2.1. Reach the right people both in small and large social platforms
5.2.2. Generate more traffic to social platform
5.2.3. Trigger the conversation to analyze the business opportunity
5.3. Integrate the consumer in to business
5.3.1. Involvement in product testing
5.3.2. Effective Listening and  Monitoring of Online Social Media
5.3.3. Respond to consumers needs and preferences
5.4. Building & Engaging Consumer Communities
5.4.1. Create the collaborative tools such as forums, online surveys for the consumers
5.4.2. Disclose the identity to gain trust
5.4.3. Responding quickly to criticism and answer the comments
5.5. Build and Change brand perception when required
5.5.1. Replay offline campaigns on the social platforms
5.5.2. Announce the upcoming events and trigger the conversations
5.5.3. Engage users to buzz
5.5.4. Online Video distribution related to the product description
5.5.5. Build trust with consumers before providing influential information
5.6. Polices related to communication on social platform
5.6.1. Determine the speakers communicating on the social platforms on the behalf of product and service provider
5.6.2. Post the relevant content at the right time
5.6.3. Balance engaging communication vs. advertising communication
6. Benefits and Risk Analysis of Social Media in Healthcare Industry
6.1. Benefit Analysis
6.1.1. Marketing and Sales
6.1.1.1. SEO/SEMC vs. Social Media
6.1.1.2. Conventional Marketing vs. Social Media
6.1.1.3. Business exposure and generation
6.1.2. Consumer Relationship Management
6.1.2.1. Consumer Communication
6.1.2.2. Public Relations
6.1.2.3. Consumer feedback and satisfaction
6.1.3. Recruitment
6.1.4. Clinical Trials
6.1.5. Treatment and Rx Decisions
6.1.6. Enhancing Health Awareness
6.2. Risk Analysis
6.2.1. Intellectual Property Concerns
6.2.2. Privacy and Security Issues
6.2.3. Accountability
6.2.4. Content Validation
6.2.5. Regulatory and legal risk management
6.2.6. Criticism Management
7. Impact Analysis of Social Media on Healthcare Stakeholders
7.1. Stakeholder analysis
7.1.1. Pharmaceutical Companies
7.1.2. Biotech Companies
7.1.3. Life Sciences Companies
7.1.4. Health Insurance Providers
7.1.5. Health related Government bodies
7.1.6. Hospitals
7.1.7. Health professionals
7.1.8. Patients/Consumers/Consumers
7.2. Effective strategies for different stakeholders
8. Geographical Analysis of use Social Media in Healthcare Industry
8.1. US
8.1.1. Total Internet Connections and users
8.1.2. Social Platform traffic
8.1.3. Infrastructure development
8.1.4. Regulatory environment
8.2. Europe
8.2.1. Total Internet Connections and users
8.2.2. Social Platform traffic
8.2.3. Infrastructure development
8.2.4. Regulatory environment
8.3. Asia
8.3.1. Total Internet Connections and users
8.3.2. Social Platform traffic
8.3.3. Infrastructure development
8.3.4. Regulatory environment
9. Future Impact of Social media on healthcare/pharmaceutical industry
9.1. Increase in social engagement of healthcare professionals and companies with the consumers
9.2. Consumer engagement in business development
9.3. Reinvention of  marketing and sales strategies
9.4. Innovation in products and services
9.5. Dwindling sales force
9.6. Enhance business operational efficiencies

10. Case Studies
10.1. J&J
10.2. GSK
10.3. Bayer
10.4. Sanofi-Aventis
10.5. Novartis
10.6. Astra-Zeneca US
10.7. BMS
10.8. Roche
10.9. Pfizer
10.10. Boehringer Ingelheim
10.11. Merck
10.12. UCB
10.13. Novo Nordisk
10.14. Life Technologies
10.15. R&D Systems
10.16. FDA
10.17. CDC
10.18. Kaiser Permanente
11. Company profiles of key market players in social media
11.1. Siren Interactive
11.2. Saatchi and Saatchi Wellness
11.3. Transmission Content + Creative
11.4. Intouch Solutions Inc.
11.5. Fleishman-Hillard Digital
11.6. Others

The biggest question that businesses of all size has to deal with today is finding ways to market their company in a field that no longer reaches people as it once did. Gone are the days when a company could take out an ad in the paper to let customers know about a particularly great sale on their products or services. Today, the Internet has made it possible for a customer to check out your products or services and compare the prices against your competition without the customer having to move one foot in any direction. The comparisons can be directly on the media phones that have grown in popularity across the globe. Instead of being forced to spend too much money on an item, the customer can find it cheaper in a few moments when searching online.

Using the Internet to market your company will require the rethinking of many of the current marketing strategies in place. With the introduction of the popular social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, people are no longer shopping or looking for information in the same manner as a few years ago. If a company wants to keep up with these changes, it may have to offer some form of incentive to customers to visit their webpage. A new global society is currently coming together and people from every part of the globe are sharing personal and private information through web pages they often build in just a few minutes.

The Internet provides a number of social media tips on websites that each deal with different aspects of the new social networks. If the time has come for you to increase your company’s exposure to the world, many of the social media tips can certainly help you accomplish this task or goal. By adding links to many of these social networks to your current website, you provide potential customers with a method to keep up with what your company is currently doing. Some companies even provide free products or services to people who sign up to receive the updates being provided. This will allow you to track how effective your current social media strategies are working.

Providing a message in one voice is often an important factor of marketing. However, because of the number of possible social media tips currently available it may be necessary to consider a number of other choices. However, remember to use just one resource when it comes time to getting an important and consistent message across to people. Confusion over what you are trying to promote could prove to be just one of many possible disastrous social media strategies being used by the company.

Make sure your company is enjoying the best that social media strategies can provide for your company. Social media tips are just one area that should be carefully examined before being employed. Social media tips, advice, articles, and blogs can help you to do exactly what you set out to do. Social media strategies have to be carefully implemented to get the most out of the possible strategy. Use the Internet to combat the Internet. Social media strategies can be a valuable tool if you learn how to use them correctly.

There is no denying that the popularity of social media is increasing by the day. For sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (herein known as “The Big Three”), the fastest growing demographic consists of users 35 years and older. Though social media was once considered a fad for kids, it has evolved into a viable marketing opportunity for business.

For the casual user, social media is a way to connect with friends and family. For the business user, social media works by sharing compelling content to capture the attention of your target audience. When you do this well, you can count on generating website traffic, client leads and even media attention.

“The Big Three” revolve around the concept of a status update. When you update your status, everyone in your network can view what you have to say. This is where the real opportunity lies. Instead of updating your status to report what you’re having for dinner or that it’s time to pick up your kids, share interesting content and watch the magic of social media unfold.

Type of Content to Share on Social Media Channels

1. Your new blog posts

2. Someone else’s blog post

3. An article you’ve written

4. An article from somewhere else

5. A video demonstration

6. A funny or controversial video

7. Before and after photos of work you’ve done

8. Humorous or inspiring photos

9. Client success stories/case studies

10. Free ebook

11. Special report

12. White paper

13. Upcoming event announcement

14. Live reports from an event you are currently attending

15. Book reviews/recommendations

16. Recommended products

17. Recommended services

18. Tips for doing something better

19. How-to suggestions

20. A series of related posts

21. Recent media coverage you have received

22. Inspirational advice (preferably your own, motivational quotes are over-used online)

23. Forward someone else’s update (with proper credit attribution)

24. Breaking news alerts

25. Leads for opportunities (media, clients, etc.)

26. Requests for participation (guest posts on your blog, speaker for an event you’re hosting, etc.)

27. Interesting photo from a recent event

28. Teleseminar/Webinar invitation

29. Contest announcements

30. Special sales, offers and discounts (delivered sparingly)

31. Request for audience feedback

32. A compelling question you want answered

33. Anything offered for free

34. Insider tips that people won’t find anywhere else

35. Your opinion on just about anything with target audience appeal

Secrets to Success

1. Content should appeal to your target audience and provide value.

Also, it doesn’t always have to be directly related to what you do. For example, a mortgage broker might share community resources, local event announcements and family-related tips. This type of information would likely be more appealing to the broker’s target audience than current interest rates and articles about mortgage insurance (though you can occasionally include those too). The point is to become a valued resource.

2. Follow the 90/10 rule.

Avoid selling online and you will achieve more sales. That’s right; we’re all tired of being sold to. When you provide value, you build loyalty and trust. It’s fine to include sales offers up to 10% of the time, but make sure you are primarily serving up useful content.

3. Use compelling titles and descriptions.

You only have a limited amount of space to share information which means that a good title can make the difference between a reader who clicks through or completely ignores your post.

4. Track your results.

Pay attention to user response. If you’re receiving comments and your content is being forwarded to others (for example, retweeting on Twitter), that is evidence that your efforts are working. Also, your network should be growing steadily as a result of the value you’re providing.

5. Use links wisely.

When you share compelling content, it provides an opportunity to link back to your website or blog. This is great for building website traffic. However, not every post needs to have a link. Mix up your posts so that some simply offer something short and sweet. You can also shorten links and track the number of click-throughs with a service like bit.ly.

6. Be consistent.

You will get the best results from marketing content through social media by participating on a regular basis. Ideally you should share something every day, even multiple times per day, to stay visible. You can automate some of your updates with services like ping.fm, socialoomph and hootsuite. But don’t automate everything! Keep reading…

7. Engage with your audience.

Social media involves a two-way conversation. It’s not just about shoving data out into your network and waiting to reap the rewards. Reply to people who comment, forward and share useful content from others and make sure you have a human presence in social media land.

8. Build a social media plan.

You can venture into social media haphazardly or you can form a plan that makes sense for your business. A plan should identify your target audience, include a strategy for ongoing content generation, should identify frequency of updates and indicate the amount of time and resources you are going to allocate to managing your social media strategy.

9. Implement a 30-day challenge.

Use the suggestions outlined here and focus your efforts for 30 days. The results should be obvious. If they aren’t, then there is something amiss with your strategy. Ask others for input or solicit the help of a social media expert. There is opportunity for every kind of business to benefit from social media. You simply need to find the strategy that works for you.

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