Yesterday, WebMD launched what it has termed Health Exchange—a portal that hosts both WebMD moderated exchanges, as well as member created exchanges on various health topics.  Its purpose and functionality is very similar to Yahoo! Answers except with a narrower focus.

Of course, pharmaceutical social media fanatics immediately started giggling for joy at the introduction of another social media platform to reach patients.  But this got me thinking, what social media platforms are you overlooking in your engagement strategy?  Everyone trots out plans bursting with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter; but what about the underrated or ignored?

In some ways, WebMD falls into that category.  The once-mighty health knowledge portal has been eclipsed (in mindshare) by the likes of Google and Bing Health.  Rarely do social media strategies incorporate the need for communicating on WebMD as an engagement tactic.  The question is: why not?  You have a captive audience of people that are clearly “health information seekers.”  If there ever was a community of people open to receiving information on health topics, WebMD would be that community.

The same holds true for Yahoo! Answers.  Yahoo! Answers is not bantered about as a social media tool of choice.  Why?  It’s not the shiny object (remember; heed my warning on shiny object syndrome, a health risk in its own right). And while it’s not one of the trendy tools when it comes to social media, it can be an effective platform to foster engagement.  That is our goal isn’t it?

Take a look at this recent search for the term Melanoma:

These results are based on a search conducted today that returned well over 100 results from the past 7 days.  Of course, some of these results are not relevant, but there is no denying the number of people interested in learning more about Melanoma.  This presents an opportunity for healthcare companies to share its information on the topic.  It has to be done delicately given the sensitive nature of the topic; but it can be done.  For example, if a pharmaceutical company established a microsite dedicated to educating patients and their families on living with Melanoma, they could offer that up as a resource (with full disclosure as to who they are).  Isn’t this the type of information that the folks scouring Yahoo! Answers would find useful?

In developing social media strategies, we focus our attention on the new tools of the day.  What this really amounts to is diverting our attention from other forms of engagement that are sitting squarely in front of our eyes.  WebMD and Yahoo! Answers are just two such examples—what other social media platforms are we being distracted from due to shiny object syndrome?

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