Do you have a strategy to fit into the community?

As has become painstakingly obvious, the standard of communicating in the business world has changed dramatically over the last few decades.  First it was the advent of email and most recently the rise of what we’ll call “the digital communications era”—namely the ability to reach anybody, anytime, on any device.  Text messages, Twitter and Facebook have accelerated this dynamic and fed our appetite for smaller and smaller bits of content.

The ripple effects of this change are widespread.  Of course, the positive perspective is that work output is increased, productivity enhanced and the decision-making process accelerated.  In addition, as we have chronicled here, social media opens up an entire new toolkit for the marketer.  This is particularly true in the world of pharmaceutical marketing where customers are becoming increasingly wary of what they viewed to be nefarious efforts of pharma companies.  They craved a more authentic interaction with companies that would disband the ads that seem to strike fear more than they provide useful information.  Insert social media.  Social media allows pharmaceutical companies to introduce a different dynamic to its marketing programs—one built on trust and transparency.  In that sense, social media and micro content is a boon.  However, it’s not all good.

There is a fundamental disconnect between the types of communication facilitated by social media and strategic marketing plans.  The very nature of social media may be tempting marketers to put strategy on the backburner.  When you boil it down, a person’s interaction on a social network is ad hoc.  It’s not a planned, measured and calculated interaction.  This is a dynamic that many marketers have yet to solve.  How do you conform to the community norms of authenticity and put a strategic plan in place?

Unfortunately, too often marketers have opted for the wrong answer; either throwing strategy to the wind or going too far in the other direction and planning every interaction.  The flaw in both approaches should be obvious.  If a pharma marketer plans every single interaction he intends to have on social media his conversations will no doubt be manufactured.  His very presence will be loaded with ulterior motives.  However, if a marketer surveys the landscape and concludes that strategy and focus are not needed she too will fail.  Strategizing every interaction may not be needed, but having a reason for being there is imperative.  Rather than focusing on tactical plans to the minutest detail, pharma marketers should focus on decision-making frameworks that guide interactions in social media circles.  Empower the faces of your social media presence to act with confidence.

In the old days in business, the standard form of communicating a message to a large group of people was writing a memo.  Those memos were well-crafted, thought-out documents.  They had to be.  You couldn’t afford to be ambiguous in your message or marching orders—the medium did not allow it.  Social media does allow for ambiguity and poorly defined communication.

Perhaps it’s time we took a page out of the 1980 playbook and apply it to social media.

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