Contrary to popular belief, launching a Facebook page, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry, requires a lot of upfront work.  A healthcare brand manager doesn’t wake up on Monday and dream up the idea of a Facebook page and see it through to fruition by Wednesday.  Decisions like what language needs to be on the landing page, what the design layout will be and what level of discussion to allow needs to be considered before jumping in.  And all of this content needs to go through the regulatory/compliance department for approval.  It’s no small feat to get a Facebook page launched.

Because of this rigorous process, there is often a tendency to view the launch of a Facebook page as the finish line.  But I have some news most brand managers probably don’t want to hear—the launch is only the starting line.

The problem with this approach is that it leads to the dreaded “follow and forget.”  Of course, the goal is not to rack up likes on Facebook from people that never again visit your page.  I’d venture to guess that part of the follow and forget problem stems from this idea that reaching the launch phase means you’ve done your job.  As a result, engaging content begins to wane, attention from brand managers decreases and page visits plummet.  Why should your Facebook followers come back to your page if you don’t give them a reason to do so?  They shouldn’t and they won’t.

Instead of allowing your Facebook page to fall into obscurity, plan for the months following launch and continually measure against established benchmarks.  Create a content calendar that outlines when content will post, who owns the creation of that content and what purpose it will serve.  While creating that content, be sure to vary the format.  Rather than simply posting short messages, think about sharing interesting news articles, recording podcasts, posting videos and running a poll.  People view Facebook as a destination for interaction not as just a news portal—treat it as such.

The follow and forget syndrome is one of the biggest problems pharmaceutical companies face when diving into social media.  To avoid it: adjust expectations on what engaging on Facebook means.  Put the right team in place to manage the content creation burden and continually measure the impact of your efforts.  As I said above, the public launch of a Faceoook page is the start line, not the finish line.  In fact, if done properly, there is no finish line.

According to research from Hubspot, pharmaceutical companies are among a group of the least liked industries on Facebook.  Hubspot has evaluated a dataset of 500,000 Facebook groups and come up with an average fan base of 624.  The pharmaceutical portion of that dataset looks to have (the exact number is not provided) an average fan base of 550-575—slightly below average.

These numbers are all well and good but my question is this: should we be judging social media success purely on the ability to amass a large following?

For the record, Hubspot makes no such implications in the post outlining the data, and instead merely presents the empirical data it has found.  But much of the chatter I’ve seen thus far in the dreaded pharma social media echo chamber uses this data to bemoan the lack of success pharmaceutical companies have had on Facebook.  Blindly interpreting data as a benchmark for success is a futile exercise.

For starters, did anyone actually expect the pharmaceutical industry to be higher than average when it comes to the fan base it has accumulated?  We are talking about an industry that is fighting long-held distrust, strict regulations and sensitive topics.  The hill is a bit steeper for healthcare companies than it is for the movie industry (the most liked industry according to a separate post).  Frankly, I’m a bit surprised that the pharma industry is that close to average.

The more important issue at hand is the idea that Facebook fans is an accurate measure of success in social media—particularly pharma social media.  I don’t buy that.  It should be part of the equation but it provides only a small glimpse into the success of your social media strategy.  In the pharmaceutical industry, we should be taking a closer look at the level of engagement of your established fan base, whether it is trending up or down and how active and vocal that community is.  These are all a blend of objective and subjective measures but provide a far more accurate picture of social media success.

The empirical data presented by Hubspot is useful in that it provides a top-level sense of the interest in pharmaceutical social media engagement.  What it does not evaluate is how long the group has been established, what purpose it intends to serve, what benchmark for success has been determined and how active the group itself is.  These are all critical factors in evaluating success in pharma social media.