As the year draws to a close it is a great time to review your Social Media Strategy. As with all strategies refinement should happen continuously all year but I also like to do a year-end review:

These are just a few things up for review:

1. Audience – Are you engaging with the right crowd? Are you hitting your qualitative and quantitative targets?

2. Metrics – are you happy with the metrics you are collecting? Have you added new objectives along the way and now need to find a metric that relates to them? Are you getting the most out of your metrics tools- for example Facebook updates their Insights tool regularly but are you across the new components?

3.Listening/Monitoring – we all know we need to do it but are you happy with the data you are collecting? is it meaningful and is it time to review your social media monitoring supplier?

4.Staffing – if you are resourcing social media internally what are your staffing skillset gaps? is it technical? content creation? start a skills matrix so you can start the year fresh knowing what skills you need to buy-in or trainup internally

5.Content – as we know content creation is a vital part of engaging in social media – which pieces of content this year hit the mark? which ones missed and why?

6.Competitors – what did your competitors in the space achieve this year? how will this influence how you refine your strategy for next year.

These are just a few things you can review to ensure you start the new year fresh and on track.

Have a safe, happy and prosperous New Year!

Webicina  (the world’s first and only free service that provides curated medical social media resources in over 80 medical topics) has just launched the Open Access Social Media Guidelines for Pharma.

The document (freely downloadable) is a 14 page summary that was developed in the US because  drug companies, healthcare professionals and e-patients had been waiting too long  for the FDA guidelines on Social Media.

While our Australian industry has some differing regulations many of the guidelines are appropriate and cover basic areas such as Social Media Rules of Engagement but it also covers individual guidelines on each platform such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.

The main editors of the Guidelines were:

Dr. Bertalan Mesko (@Berci) Dr. Felix Jackson (@felixjackson) Silja Chouquet (@whydotpharma) Andrew Spong (@andrewspong) Denise Silber (@health20paris) Rob Halkes (@rohal)

Further Reading

Interested in Social Media and Pharma? you might be interested in these additional sources:

Yesterday along with NET:101 I presented an advanced Social Media course with organisations as diverse as local councils, specialist social media agencies, health ngos and others.

One of the areas that can be difficult to find is local statistics on our own use of Social Media as much of the data produced is US and UK centric.  Via the very lovely @em_skins I came across this data provided by EConsultancy.

It is a great summary of a range of reports by companies such as AIMIA/Sensis, ComScore, ACMA and others

What’s the internet penetration like?

• 94% of the Australian population access the internet, 79% do so every day. [AIMIA / Sensis]
• 60% of Australian internet users go online multiple times a day. [OMP]

Video

• 65% of Australian users have watched an online video clip in the past month [ADMA]
• Online video streaming has grown 550% in less than four years. It’s expected that there will be more than 11bn views of video content by the end of 2011 [Frost & Sullivan]
• More than three quarters of Australian users (77%) watch video content on their computer and just over a quarter (26%) do so via their mobile phone. [Nielsen]

Social media

• 38% of Australian users regularly interact with companies via social networking sites. [Nielsen]
• Impact of social media on purchase behaviour: Actions done as a consequence of viewing online video/listening to online audio vs. reading online consumer comments. [Nielsen]

• The average small business is investing $2,050 into social media marketing on an annual basis. 27% expect this to increase over the next twelve months. [AIMIA / Sensis]
• The average large business is investing $78,750 into social media marketing on an annual basis. 66% expect this to increase over the next twelve months. [AIMIA / Sensis
• Types of incentives provided by businesses through social media [AIMIA / Sensis]

E-commerce

• The most likely Australian age group to shop online are those aged between 35-44 years old (73% of total online consumers) [ACMA]
• Travel goods, tickets and accommodation are the most popular items purchased online, followed by clothes, shoes and personal items. [ACMA]
• 36% of Australians made a purchase after researching products via social media. [AIMIA / Sensis]
• The reasons behind consumers shopping online have changed during the last 18 months: there has been a decline in convenience and an increase in looking to save money. [ACMA]

Search engine marketing

• Search is the biggest online activity, with 89.9% of Australian users doing this on a regular basis. Social networking came a close second. (81.6%) [comScore]
• Australian users make more than four searches, per search visit [comScore]
• Australia leads the APAC region for mobile search, with more than 61% of mobile users doing this activity. The next closest country is Taiwan (29%). [iProspect]
• After making local searches via their devices, nearly half (49%) of Australian smartphone users called a business. [OMP]

Email marketing

• Email is by far and away the method most preferred for (personal) online communication [Nielsen]

• 62% of web users in Australia use email on a regular basis. [comScore]
• 68% of Australian smartphone users have read email on their devices. [OMP]
• 72% of Australian users unsubscribe from emails because the content is irrelevant. [Epsilon]

Mobile

• 26% of Australian smartphone users have made a purchase on their devices. [OMP]
• 75% of Australians using GPS devices are open to viewing targeted deals when visiting bricks and mortar outlets. [Galaxy Research]
• 83% of 18-34 year old Australians find geo-targeted content via mobile when shopping an appealing prospect. [Galaxy Research]