While the webinar was targeted at people that were mainly interested in health topics, none of the “power tools” were specific to the health space, so it could really apply to anyone who is simply interested in getting more out of their current Twitter presence and moving beyond the basic Twitter web interface.

Here’s a breakdown of the topics covered:

1. Basic and Advanced Search:
   - Summize/Search.Twitter.com, TweetGrid, Spezify
2. Hashtags:
   - Hashtags.org, Healthcare Communications & Social Media (@HealthSocMed)
3. Twitter Trends:
   - TwitScoop, TweetMeme, Twendz
4. Finding & Following People:
   - Twellow, WeFollow, Twibes, Tweepler
5. Various Twitter Tools:
   - TinyURL, Bit.ly, Ow.ly, TwitPic, TwtVite, TwtPoll, CoverItLive
6. Twitter Management Tools & Apps:
   - TweetDeck (Resource @ 1WebDesigner.com), HootSuite
7. Mobile Twitter Apps:
   - iPhone: TweetDeck for iPhone, Tweetie, Twitterific
   - Blackberry: TwitterBerry, TinyTwitter

There are, of course, a HUGE number of Twitter apps available (I’m sure I missed quite a few really good ones) and the list also continues to grow every day. So, here are some additional resources for finding more useful apps:

• Twitdom - The Twitter Applications Database
• The Ultimate Guide for Everything Twitter
• 99 Essential Twitter Tools And Applications
  
• The 100 Most Popular Twitter Applications
• 47 Awesome Twitter Tools You Should be Using
• 100 Twitter Tools to Help You Achieve All Your Goals

“. Not that I don’t have anything to blog about; in fact, quite the opposite — I’ve have tons of things that I want to blog about — but somehow, I’m just not finding the time and concentration needed to really craft a proper blog post lately, so please forgive the slow down and delayed updates. Sorry !

GSK Launched “More Than Medicine” (Corporate Blog)

Firstly, GSK launched a corporate blog called “American Health: More Than Medicine“. Below the main header, a small tagline (in small print) reads “This is an official GSK blog and is intended for US residents only” — I bet someone in legal made them add that sub-text to the banner

While I think it’s really cool that they’ve chosen an interesting and catchy name for the blog, I do think they could have done a much better job with the domain name, which is currently: http://www.morethanmedicine.us.gsk.com/blog. Doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue nor is it easy to remember! But hey, at least they’ve got an active blog!

To my knowledge, this is only the third corporate pharma blog online; the other two being JNJBTW and CNTO411, with the latter being defunct since Octoer 2008. Despite this achievement, there has been some push back because the authors of the blog have not been “fully transparent”, as they have only identified themselves as Michael F. and Michael M. from “GSK Communications” — read the comments on this by Mike Huckman and Ed Silverman (both great guys, btw) and then read GSK’s very valid response “Content is King Here, Not the One Who Posts It“.

Personally, I think the fact that they actually have a blog is a big achievement and the authors not revealing their full identities (at least not yet) should not cloud the fact that they are blogging regularly, with lots of good content. Furthermore, their response to these comments, shows that they are not just “preaching”, but also listening to feedback and responding as necessary.

Overall, I really liked their first public blog post (the blog had been running internally for a while before going “live” to the public), which really puts into perspective why they are blogging and what their intentions are for the blog. To me, it also showed that they really “get” the nature of social media and have adopted the right attitude towards it. I’ll leave you with a quote from the blog:

But More Than Medicine is expressly uninterested in promoting GSK brands.  As stated in our credo, our intent is to express a point of view and create a dialogue on health and healthcare issues you can’t find anywhere else–not to serve as another product marketing vehicle.

Still, there will be times when you might expect us to address product-related issues or news that clearly relates to the purpose of this blog and, by extension, our company’s reputation.  We will endeavor to do so responsibly and ethically, and within the existing legal and regulatory boundaries.

Sanofi-Aventis Launched “Sanofi-Aventis TV” (Corporate Video Channel)

During the same week as the GSK blog launch, Sanofi-Aventis also launched Sanofi-Aventis.TV — an online video repository for publishing a variety of Sanofi-Aventis produced videos. The video channels include: Our Expertise, Around the World, Your Health, Solidarity, and Working for People. I find this approach very interesting, as they haven’t just focused on a single topic, such as patient testimonials, brand promotion, corporate announcements/interviews, recruiting videos, etc. But instead, they chose to associate their overall corporate brand with all of these types of information.

Although the selection of videos per channel is somewhat meager at the moment, at least they have a platform up and running for any future videos that they published. Many of their videos have a very professional/corporate feel to them, but perhaps some or most have been repurposed from previous initiatives, which makes a whole lot of sense. It will be interesting to see how often they will update the site with new videos and how the content will grow.

Having heard the Sanofi-Aventis regulatory folks and their US-CEO speak at conferences recently, I would expect more and more social media intiatives to come forth from them. I think SA.TV is a way for the public to get a better understanding of what Sanofi-Aventis is all about and the wide array of activities that drug companies — like Sanofi — are involved with. It’s like a “behind the scenes” documentary that provides a different perspective to what is being portrayed and perceived publicly. I look forward to seeing what else is in store.

Next week will be my first time attending the BIO international Conference — “The Global Event for Biotechnology“. It looks like a great event with plenty of interesting talks/presentations, networking events, and yes… even parties (us geeks need to have some fun too!).

CONFERENCE COVERAGE
I know they have a great team of twitterers/bloggers covering the event (I’ll try to live-tweet some sessions), so look out for all the live tweeting activity using the hashtags #BIO09 and #BIOconvention, as well as their other BIO-related content on various social platforms, including: LinkedIn, Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube.

NEW MEDIA PANEL
On TUES (5/19), I also have the honor of participating on a panel entitled “Spreading the Word: New Technologies Mean Everyone Is a Journalist” which will runs from 4.00 to 5.30pm at Room B316 in the Convention Center. The panel will be moderated by @BrianReid and the panelists include @jensmccabe (Jen McCabe Gorman), @pharmalot (Ed Silverman), and myself…though I just recently heard that @ChristianeTrue (Christiane Truelove from Pharma Blog Review) might also be joining us. Here are the key objectives for our session:

1. Understand the tools and technologies surrounding the use of new media in healthcare
2. Give attendees enough information to directly participate in online conversations
3. Provide an overview of how this new paradigm has already changed the dissemination of scientific information

SOCIALS
If you are attending the conference, do come to the session and say hi! Also, you might want to join in the fun at the following socials which I’ll be at…

#BIOtweetup on TUES (5/19) - Meet at the Georgia Pavillion (#2817) in the exhibition hall. There’ll be free food and drinks from 5.00-6.30pm and then we can all head out after 6.30pm for dinner somewhere nearby.RSVP below:


Hope to see y’all there!

Anyway, I really wish I could have cloned myself during #HCBos + #SocPharm, so that I could have been in two places at once, but since I was responsible for organizing/running Social Pharmer, I was unable to attend #HCBos, but you can find additional info about the event at the HealthCamp Boston website, as well as an archive of the “live tweet stream” for #HCBos here (via CoverItLive).

PARTICIPANTS
Overall, the combined event attracted around 140 registrants, of which there were approximately 40-50 people at the #SocPharm portion at any one time, which was about the capacity of the room anyway. The mix of #SocPharm attendees included people from: biotech/pharma, ad agencies, internet health portals/stratups, healthcare professionals, publishers, conference organizers, etc… And among them, professional specialties varied from: marketing, sales, and PR/comms to legal, regulatory, medical, IS/IT, and more… Furthermore, lets not forget that this event was held in conjunction with #HCBos, so there was also a mix of Health 2.0 “empowered patients/advocates” in the mix as well (if they could get into the room).

So, while the majority of participants were made up of marketing and agency folks, there was a definite mix of opinions and viewpoints that made for lively multi-faceted discussions, which — in my mind — was a big part of the what made this unconference such a success.

PRESENTATIONS
One of the key elements of an “unconference” is the high level of interaction/discussion between/among the presenters and participants, and I must say that I was definitely not dissapointed in this respect. In fact, IMHO, I would even go so far as to say that there was an impressive amount of discussion and contribution by ANY standard; even compared to tech/web unconferences.

I don’t plan on going into any detail of the presentations that took place during Social Pharmer, but I will be publishing (most of) the recordings from the event in the next week or two. However, if you’re looking for a great summary of the themes that were discussed, then you should definitely check out the article written by Amber Benson (Group Strategy Director, IMC2) in the April issue of Pharma Marketing News (see Pg. 27-32). You can find pictures from the event here  and also be sure to check out the following blog posts for more reflections on the event:

1. Steve Woodruff: Social Pharmer Un-conference: A re-cap (sort of)
   
2. Fard Johnmar: Final Social Pharmer Thoughts: Coming Back To Transparency
3. Stuart Foster: SocialPharmer Unconference
   

Here are some quotes from the various write-ups…

Fard Johnmar:
We had a very lively discussion focusing on the following transparency related questions:

- What does it mean for a pharmaceutical company to be transparent?
- Is it possible for a pharmaceutical company to be transparent?
- What does it mean for a drug firm to be transparent in a social media context?

These are tough questions, with few easy answers.  I know as much as anyone that one cannot tell the world everything.  After all, we all have business secrets, proprietary technologies and competitive advantage to protect. However, despite these restrictions, is it possible for drug companies to be more forthcoming about other issues?  And, even if they want to, will regulators and lawyers (internal and external) let them?

Steve Woodruff
I’m sensing change in the air. There has been a quiet flood of pharma-connected people into Twitter of late (not due to Oprah!), and there is a restlessness with the baby steps that companies have taken thus far. The major challenge will be to harness and channel this creative energy into productive efforts – developing sound and sensible frameworks for new initiatives, outlining strategic roadmaps, and avoiding the regulatory backlash that would inevitably result from short-sighted abuse of social networking by misguided marketers.

We have a chance to do this right. Social networking, rightly utilized, can help pharma recover its declining reputation by providing an avenue for doing good and adding value. If you just want to “use” social media to grab a few short-term tenths of market share, please put on the brakes – now.

Stuart Foster
I think you have to balance a few things in order to start poking around at a successful pharmaceutical strategy for using social media. First, recognize that social media doesn’t end. It isn’t about a specific campaign, you can campaign within the model of social media channels but the firehose always needs to be open. The risk here is that you now need to constantly monitor it because the news cycle is lightning fast and can change dependent on the way in which the information comes out…

That being said, a number of interesting questions and ideas were raised today that definitely need to be investigated further. The will to create industry guidelines is definitely there: it just needs to be spearheaded by a group of like minded people. I’m guessing @Shwen, @pharmachameleon, @fardj, @jbernoff and @healthyjack are going to figure this out in the next six months if not sooner.

I did decide to boil down the day into a few quick points that I view as being essential for Social Pharmer to develop further. (All of these were touched on today.)

Key steps for Social Pharmer success:

- Expansion of Social Pharmer Ning group
- Creation of Social Pharmer Wiki
- Regular moderated conversations on Twitter #pharmchat?
- Try and build a model before regulators enforce one you

THEMES AND TAKEAWAYS
As you can see from these excerpts, a couple of the key themes raised were the need for some kind of industry guidelines and the need for change overall.

REFLECTIONS AND REACTIONS
During the “townhall discussion” at the end of the day, we talked about “next steps” and how we can actively convert these discussions points beyond words and into actions…

On my part, I also revived the Social Pharmer Ning network that I had started in OCT 2008 as a follow up to a similar discussion with a small group at the Digital Pharma confernece. While there was limited activity the last time, I’m committing to really pushing this through and getting as many Social Pharmers involved, so that we have a common platform to discuss these issues and to start using these tools to drive our own movment, rather than just work seprarately and only talk about them at conferences. If you haven’t already signed up, please do so at http://www.socialpharmer.com — you’ll see that quite a few people have already joined in that conversation.

FINAL THOUGHTS
At the end of the day, however, what wasn’t mentioned as much, but is of utmost importances when we consider all this, is that as agents of a pharmaceutical company, we all share the responsibility for acting in the best interest of our customers and related consituents, and NOT those our share prices. To this end, I leave you with my favorite quote by George W. Merck (founder of Merck)…

We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been.

If you are attending either event, please do say hi when we are there. And if you can’t make the event, but are in the neighborhood, feel free to join us after for a HealthCamp, Social Pharmer, and Health 2.0 tweetup at the Cambirdge Brewing Company starting around 6pm– please RSVP here: http://twtvite.com/si0sf9 .

Here’s the line up of great presentations for Social Pharmer:

• 9:30am Fard Johnmar
  >> Achieving Openess - Transparency and Authenticity in Pharma.
• 10:20am Michael Parks
  >> Developing a Framework for Blogging and Social Media in Pharma.
• 11:10am John Murray
  >> Exploring The Realities Of FDA Regulation And Creative Opportunities In The Here and Now.
• 12:00pm Lunch break
• 1:00pm Steve Woodruff
  >> Key Business Needs That Can Be Addressed NOW with Social Media.
• 2:00pm Josh Bernoff
  >> How To Do Social Applications At A Pharma company Without Getting Fired.
• 3:00pm Jack Barrette & Julie Wittes Schlack
  >> The Patient Perspective — What Do Patients Want from Pharma Engagement?
• 4:00pm Townhall Discussion
  >> How Can We Collaborate to Break Down Barriers to Social Media and Save Pharma’s Battered Rep?

And here’s the live stream from Social Pharmer…