UK healthcare marketing agency, Owen Health, has published the first edition of their Pharma Social Media Ranking to rate companies based on their use of Twitter as a platform. Pharma giants GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer tied for the top spot, while generic pharmaceutical company Teva, came in last.
In all, 22 pharmaceutical companies were evaluated based on reach, activity, authority, engagement and influence on Twitter to come up with a final score of how well they’re doing using social media to interact with their patients. Around 5,000 data points were taken into account when ranking the companies, with Owen Health taking a snapshot approach to ranking the companies by analyzing their Twitter accounts in October 2017.
GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer both came in at number one, each scoring 75 out of a possible 100. Both scored highly on measures of influence, based on Klout scores, with GlaxoSmithKline excelling at engagement and Pfizer doing well when it came to reach.
In contrast, Teva came in at the bottom of the ranking with a total Twitter score of 24. Teva and other drugmakers given low rankings – including Merck (MSD) – had poor reach, activity and influence scores and were also penalized because of a lack of Twitter verified accounts.
Seventeen out of the 22 companies included in the ranking were found to have verified Twitter accounts, which can be important when companies are looking to gain the trust of their followers. Novartis led the pack when it came to reach with over 237,000 Twitter followers.
Roche’s account was the most active during the month of October, with 173 tweets posted in this time period. However, companies which ranked lower in other areas – including Merck, Takeda and Teva – actually received top marks when it came to measures of engagement due to a high number of likes, retweets and replies compared to their follower count and number of tweets sent out.
“We believe that pharma companies that have invested in building the size of their communities now need to develop content marketing strategies which engage their communities in order to build a sustainable social platform or run the risk of managing zombie communities,” Dean Mattingley, director at Owen Health, told FiercePharma.
The report also points out that while GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer did well to score 75 points, this is still 25 points short of the possible 100, suggesting even the top-performing drugmakers could improve their use of Twitter.
Join or login to leave a comment
JOIN LOGIN