Drugmakers must allow visitor comments on Facebook pages
August 29, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
Some pharmaceutical companies shut down Facebook pages, while others monitored and deleted visitor comments, after the social media site on Aug. 15 stopped giving drug companies the option of preventing public comments on their pages.
Facebook had allowed pharmaceutical companies to request that their commenting features be turned off, which many took advantage of because of confusion about whether the Food and Drug Administration would require companies to report adverse drug events disclosed on social media. Physician and hospital Facebook pages have not been allowed to disable comments.
In April, however, Facebook sent letters to pharmaceutical companies indicating that beginning Aug. 15 they no longer would allow the companies to disable the comment features on pages associated with the drugmakers, with the exception of pages for individually branded drugs.
As a result, some companies, including Johnson Johnson and AstraZeneca, which have multiple Facebook pages, shut down some of their pages. Novartis removed all of the content from its Facebook wall and posted a note saying the page is being redesigned “to align with new Facebook policies.” Others, such as Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, now open their sites with a splash page detailing its policy on comments, including why it would delete them.
AstraZeneca U.S. spokesman Tony Jewell said the company will maintain its corporate Facebook page, AstraZeneca US Community Connections. “We strongly believe in using social media to engage with stakeholders. We regularly evaluate the most effective channels available for our use, in keeping with our regulatory responsibilities.”
Johnson Johnson posted a message on its website that said the majority of its more than 60 Facebook pages were not affected by the change because they already allowed comments. But it decided to shut down several unbranded pharmaceutical pages because “the new policy altered functionality in ways that changed the ability to sponsor some pages due to regulatory, legal and other considerations.”
Legal gray area
Social media experts say that with no specific guidance from the FDA on how to handle social media comments about individual drugs, keeping a Facebook presence might be a legally troublesome activity.
Drug companies that continue their presence on Facebook “may be at future risk until the FDA gives an official ruling on whether customer comments on corporate social media pages can be interpreted as ‘medical advice’ or other types of positive or negative medical endorsement,” said William J. Ward, PhD, professor of social media at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in New York state.
Scott Kiekbusch, director of user experience at Digital Influence Group, a digital marketing agency that specializes in social media, agrees that pharmaceutical companies have reason to be cautious. But he thinks if they are on social media, they should be involved in an open dialogue that has set parameters of what is appropriate.
“If an organization is unwilling to have a dialogue with patients, caregivers and health care providers, they should seek alternative marketing channels,” Kiekbusch said.
Shelly Burgess, spokeswoman for the FDA, said developing guidance and policy regarding the promotion of FDA-regulated medical products over the Internet and social media is “among our highest priorities.” But she said providing a time frame on when the FDA will release them is difficult due to the extensive work and review process involved. The agency began meeting with stakeholders on the issue more than two years ago.
FDA guidance from 1997 on disclosing adverse drug events states that for companies to cite an adverse event, the reporter must have an identifiable patient, an identifiable reporter, a specific drug or biologic involved in the event, and an adverse event or fatal outcome.
The FDA guidelines say that an event does not need to be reported if one or more of these elements is still missing “after being actively sought by the applicant, manufacturer or licensed manufacturer.”
Little identifying information
A 2008 report by the Nielsen Co. looked at 500 health care-related messages posted online. Only one contained all four of the reporting requirements, but 56 messages (11%) contained enough identifying information that the companies could have reached out to collect more data for an adverse event report, Nielsen said.
Mark Rogers, founder of Market Sentinel, a British-based online monitoring and analytics firm that has analysts in the United States, said he interprets the guidance to mean pharmaceutical companies are under a legal obligation to report adverse events to the best of their ability, including using Facebook profiles to identify the person making the claim.
He noted that pharmaceutical companies have a broader — but nonlegal — obligation to maintain a reasonable dialogue with stakeholders, including physicians, patients and disease advocacy groups, which is why many created Facebook pages in the first place.
Many pharmaceutical companies on Facebook that allow public comments have disclosures warning users that inappropriate remarks will be deleted. Included in the inappropriate category are reports of adverse effects and events as well as medical advice. Rogers said the company has the right to delete any comments it wants, but after it has met its reporting obligations.
Faith Busch, spokeswoman for Boehringer Ingelheim, which kept all of its Facebook pages active after the new policy went into effect, said the company had its guidelines for Facebook postings established well before the changes were made. She said all online comments found by Boehringer employees that meet the adverse event reporting criteria are reported. This includes those found on other channels.
“The fear of being penalized for consumer comments on social networks goes beyond Facebook,” said Syracuse’s Ward. “Comments on other social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter have similar potential risk for pharma until the FDA provides a definitive ruling on this issue.”
At the least, monitoring and deleting comments can create ill feelings for companies that keep a Facebook presence, including a series of comments on GlaxoSmithKline’s page demanding to know why previous comments were erased.
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ReverbNation’s New Promotional System Takes Guesswork Out of Facebook Advertising
August 29, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
In a phone interview this week, TMV’s Laura G Thorne spoke with ReverbNation’s Chief Operating Officer Jed Carlson regarding the launch of their new “Promote It” turnkey advertising system, targeted toward artists, labels venues:
As D2F marketing and social media mature and the technology that drives their development becomes more sophisticated, a rapidly growing array of products are now available to collect, disseminate and inform music marketers of every change in fan sentiment, loyalty and behaviour. This avalanche of information can easily produce a blowback effect resulting in overwhelm and inertia.
“Promote It,” launched on August 24 by ReverbNation, takes Facebook’s existing advertising model to the next level by offering an easy-to-use, quick and low-budget solution for artists, labels and venues. Its simplicity will be an attraction for many – particularly musicians, who wish to get on with (or back to) playing music – while others may be intrigued by the company’s stated ability to “optimise” ad content during a live campaign based upon ad performance.
What the Promote It system focuses on are “outcomes”, not just a mere increase in the number of fans, likes or shares. Promote It’s reporting allows its customers to see how its ads are driving plays, fan interactions (such as email signups, typically offered in exchange for a free download) and friend-to-friend recommendations, as well as impressions and clicks. These outcomes support the artist, label or venue’s objectives, whether increased awareness, engagement or sales.
ReverbNation’s Jed Carlson uses a farming analogy to describe the music marketing process, starting with the need to plant (reach new fans); grow (nurture fans via tools such as email newsletters, tweeting etc) and finally, to harvest, or collect revenue through sales, whether of music, merchandise or tickets. The question then becomes one of strategy, which will vary depending upon the artist, genre and phase of career; a developing band, known by few, will have different goals perhaps to that of an established act with many loyal and motivated fans.
The Promote It system offers advertisers the ability to promote a song, artist, venue or release. In the case of a song, users choose five similar-sounding artists, and the Promote It algorithm then “combines geo and demo data with fans’ likes and interests to target a potential fan”. The advertiser can provide the text, or they can opt to let Promote It generate the copy, which is based upon the success of previous ads shown to fans with similar characteristics (and is continually optimised throughout).
When a Facebook user clicks on the ad, he or she is taken to a customised landing page identical in look and feel to the ad itself. As the campaign progresses, data is provided showing how each of the five artists selected is “performing” in comparison to each other. Finally, advertisers have the ability to contact and connect via Facebook with the new fans acquired as a result of their ads to follow up with a personal message or other activity.
As those who have worked with Facebook ads will know, creating an effective Facebook campaign doesn’t just happen by accident, and a fair amount of planning and knowledge is involved. To some extent, the process is one of trial and error, and requires ongoing attention. It is likely that a significant percentage of musicians who run ads on Facebook will welcome the opportunity to turn over the process to Promote It, and will be relieved that they can cross one more marketing chore off of their already lengthy to-do list.
With an entry-level price of $25 per ad, Promote It is an affordable option for artists who want to put a toe in the water and experiment with paid online promotion. How this compares to the cost of a Facebook ad campaign in terms of cost-per-click or impression may be difficult to measure directly given the number of variables involved; the quality of fan and fan activity generated by a precisely targeted campaign is likely to be higher, and to offer better value in the long run. As Promote It increases its reach in coming months its effectiveness in comparison with Facebook will become easier to determine.
What this means too for ReverbNation in a marketplace serviced by a growing number of artist-oriented promotional tools will be interesting to follow as well. Many of these products – be they Topspin, Buzzdeck, Musicmetric, Next Big Sound, Bandcamp or ReverbNation – have overlapping functions or are now aggregating with each other, so it becomes a bit of an exercise to determine which offers the best fit for your particular situation. In that regard, ReverbNation’s Carlson describes ReverbNation as “a one-stop shop with all the promo tools that an artist needs to take advantage of the internet…we look at every artist as a small business”.
Further, while ReverbNation, Bandcamp and others are still focused on Facebook integration, Google Plus is rapidly gaining traction and is poised to throw another unpredictable element into the mix. ReverbNation is currently evaluating the impact that Google Plus may have on its customer base going forward, stating that no conclusions have yet been drawn.
During the testing phase, Reverb Nation has run “over 18,000 campaigns” on a beta version of the product since April. PROMOTE IT is now available to “all artists, labels, and venues with free accounts on ReverbNation.”
on Aug 28 2011. Filed under featured.
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