I’m talking about a situation where a pharma brand might want their own social network on a branded or unbranded site (not sure I think they do, but hypothetically). In this case, there’d be 1 in 500 posts that would require some action. Automated tools could scan for keywords and make the workload a lot less by triaging posts suspected of containing an AE report. In this case, there’s only one board to manage.

As far SEO goes, I’m not sure I understand your question and example. No one has hijacked “viagra.” When you search for it in Google, the first listing is Viagra.com. I’m not so much worried about the brand name either. I believe that if someone is searching for your brand name, it might be too late to influence them anyway. Clearly, they have a solution in mind. I’m more concerned about cases where people are seeking a solution to a problem. Here’s my full post on this issue: http://bit.ly/osTBG. However, in short, there’s no reason why Lipitor should be the 63rd search result for “high cholesterol” or not even rank for “heart health.” “Heart health” is one of their site meta keywords, so they must think it’s important if they bothered coding it and yet it doesn’t show up in the first 500 listings on Google. Plavix.com is the 122nd result for “clots.” Advair.com is the 198th listing for “asthma.” I could go on and on. These sites might not every make it to the number one listing, but the front page isn’t asking too much. Many of these companies aren’t using basic SEO best practices. So before concentrating in other areas, let’s fix what’s fixable and proven effective.

What advice would you offer pharma about SEO they are competing against internet pharmacies and others who are looking to hijack the brand name? For example, here’s a quick spider simulation of the home page of Viagra.com, which is well optimized.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17237223/Spider-Simulation-Viagra

Great article. You make some excellent points regarding my post. I hadn’t thought of doing the math on how many reportable adverse events a given site might generate. I’m not sure I totally agree with the staffing requirements. Keep in mind that the boards in your examples have been around for at least a few years meaning that, in the first case, it’s 880 hours spread out over 5 years (ADHD forum started in 2004). That’s 176 hours per year or about 3-4 hours a week…far from a full-time job.

You’re totally right about the recommendations and which SHOULD carry more weight. People do put a lot of stock in reviews of discretionary product (there are many studies about this), but I don’t know of any data that suggests the same level of trust in medical reviews (or lack of trust). They clearly aren’t the same: a computer accessory and your health.

Having said that, look at any healthcare message boards and find a message where someone is asking for advice. Follow the thread all the way through and you might be surprised to see how willing people are to accept advice from a stranger. That might be a board on a site like WebMD. However, when you go to a site like Patients Like Me where there is far more transparency to the point that people use their real names, pictures, and complete medical history in many cases. When someone is willing to provide this to you, I would almost guarantee that people would be very open to their advice. This is why Patients Like Me, in my opinion, is the best in class model of how patient communities should work. Everything else is still just a glorified user group going back to the birth of the Internet.

PS: I totally agree with you on the Twitter issue. Let’s forget about Twitter for branded pharma marketing at this point. There are far more important e-marketing channels we need to get right before going to Twitter. And for the record, I’m getting a little tired of all the talk of social media and how it’s a perfect channel for pharma. It’s the hot thing to talk about, but there’s a lot of other areas pharma needs to get right before trying to spend money in social media. How about getting their search marketing right so that pharma brand sites actually show up in the first 1000 (much less top three) results for important keywords. That would have a much bigger short and long term impact compared to social media and you can do it today. No regulatory issues, no FDA guidelines required.

Thanks and keep up the good work.

Jonathan