Back in 2009, Ken Burbary and I were discussing how listening data moved throughout the organization. Our hypothesis, and one that I think is still valid today, was that companies were underutilizing listening data. The visual we created, called the social analytics lifecycle, argued that listening data had applications in strategic planning, product development, customer care, sales and many other parts of the organization. Some were more strategic applications and others involved using the listening data for tactical implementation.

What we were talking about back then is still valid, but adoption within companies has been much slower than we anticipated. Why? The easy answer is that scaling ANYTHING at a large company is very difficult. The other part of that answer is that most companies don’t have a strategic approach to listening. What does that look like?

• Goal setting – What are you actually trying to achieve by listening to consumer conversations? You’ll likely get varying answers depending on the part of the organization you ask, and that’s OK. But far too often we’re launching blindly without an idea of what we’re trying to achieve.
• Internal resources – Listening isn’t something that just magically happens. Resources internally need to be identified. In an ideal world, listening is an extension of your market research activities so the function lives within that group. If it’s not market research initially, that’s OK. All that you really need to get the ball rolling is someone who understands the goals, tools and can successfully turn data into insights to champion the value across the organization.
• Picking a tool – There are literally hundreds of tools on the market, and picking one tends to be an arduous process. However, if you’re goal is to eventually scale listening beyond PR and marketing that limits the number of tools you can effectively use. One final public service announcement on picking a tool – DON’T BE THE COMPANY THAT PICKS A TOOL WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING YOUR GOAL OR HAVING RESOURCES IDENTIFIED
• Developing a response matrix – You’ve all seen those flow charts for positive, negative and neutral comments, right? Before you start using listening data for engagement, you’ll need to develop one. If you need an example, check out this one from the Air Force.
• How other business units come on board – Most listening programs start in PR or marketing, but eventually others will want to be invited to the party. At the outset, decide how those other business units will come ‘online.’
• Develop your reporting approach – This includes not only how often you’ll be reporting, but also what will go in the reports themselves. Best practice reports attempt to identify who is talking, what are they saying, when are they saying it, where they are talking and, to some degree, why they are talking. Think about it as the five W’s of social media listening.

Those are some really simple steps to begin the scaling process, but ultimately it’s a cultural shift within companies. You have to want to listen to what your customers are saying. Or, if you’re in human resources for example, listening to current and prospective employers.

I’ll be discussing this topic in more depth at next week’s Social Fresh conference in Tampa, Florida. If you’re planning to be there, please come up and

What made January extraordinary for drugmakers was not merely the speed with which the FDA acted (at least two were approved well ahead of the agency’s deadlines), but the fact that the highest-profile of the major approvals came in so-called orphan diseases, which affect less than 200,000 patients and can afford developers additional market exclusivity.

The trend of serving smaller patient populations with more targeted drugs is almost certainly going to increase, thanks to better technology and an better-understood business model for serving smaller groups. The best evidence for this the number of drugs for which orphan designation was granted. For years, this number hovered in the double-digits. Then, in 2004, 133 drugs were given orphan status. Last year, 199 made the cut. If the trend holds, we’ll top 200 in 2012. (See chart.)

And this is a leading indicator: many of these drugs are years from getting an FDA nod. But the number of approvals is rising, too. A record number of orphan indications — 26 — got FDA approval last year, and it’s not a stretch to think that that number will rise, too.

The race to explore orphan indications marks a fundamental shift in the way breakthrough therapies are introduced. The number of drugs that are aimed at populations of millions and millions are shrinking. And while we won’t see the end of primary-care-driven blockbusters, they will certainly become more rare. That’s going to mean a move for those in communication to get closer to the smaller patient and provider populations: less flashy celebs, fewer DTC ads, more emphasis on trade publications and narrow online communities.

It’s always dangerous to make large conclusions out of a few data points. Regression to the mean means that it will get cold again. And the FDA isn’t likely to have many weeks where they sign off on three new drugs. But the surging number of orphan designations means that — over the long term — the orphan drug climate is likely to stay hot, no matter what the groundhog says.

In today’s highly charged and demanding business world, organizations can often get up in the wrong things. That is, in an effort to just keep pace leaders and communicators tend to act before they think. This can lead to spending time and resources on chasing symptoms instead of causes.

Imagine for a moment a professor who did not prepare a proper course module nor enforced specific rule in terms of attendance. The result of which meant students came and went during the lecture and did not pay attention during class?

What if this same professor then offered each student $20 to attend and stay in class for the full term but did not upgrade the module or lay down rules?

Or, if a physician, instead of recommending exercise and a sound diet, said, “Just take some vitamins and let’s not bother designing a healthy regimen until you’re overweight and have sky-high cholesterol.”

Both examples are an extreme way of highlighting when the focus is on the symptom and not the cause. Yet, all-too-many communications professionals essentially offer that type of advice in precisely that manner! And leaders too often (unwittingly) encourage it.

In a business environment in which the anticipation, diagnosis, and preemption of challenges is of paramount importance, many communicators remain content to stand idly by until, in medical parlance, the patient is being wheeled into the operating room for emergency surgery. Then they spring into action! With luck, the patient can still be saved.

Alas, despite everything we’ve learned about strategic communications over the past two decades or more, many corporations remain analogous to stubborn patients who refuse to see their doctors despite knowing better. What’s worse in this case is that the communications counselor is too often complicit, willing to continue focusing on the latest technology while the organization’s very viability comes under threat from factors ranging from competitive pressures to globalization.

Now, more than ever, corporations and the communicators who advise them must once and for all break out of the old, limiting models of behavior and recognize that communications only makes a real difference when it’s consultative and initiatory – not tactical and reactive.
We must offer solutions that attack the disease, so to speak, that goes right at the cause, not merely provide a bunch of activities meant to address only the symptoms. It means moving beyond the message right into the types of actions or decisions necessary to convey the right position.

Aspirin or Penicillin?

It is incumbent upon today’s communications professional to aspire to more than just getting things done. Communications is uniquely qualified to help corporate managements operate in an environment in which constituent dialogue, crisis prevention and mitigation, and product and service differentiation are of utmost importance.

This means a change of behavior is needed among both communicators and corporate managements.

Communicators need to “step up” by staying current on industry issues and competitive challenges, and by viewing the world through a prism of business growth and reputation management (rather than procedural excellence alone), will communicators prove that their functional expertise is of true consequence.

Corporate managements, on the other hand, need to stop viewing public relations and communications as a “function” that is separate and distinct from the management model. Doing so marginalizes the value of communications, and undercuts the company’s ability to achieve meaningful goals pertaining to reputation, growth and transformation.

Reverting back to medical analogies, many corporations continue to consider communications the equivalent of aspirin; a resource of greatest value after an event (whether it’s a jolt to company reputation, a major crisis, or a competitive blow). In the communications-as-aspirin model, communications is limited to treating organizational symptoms, rather than their root causes.

The expectations all around should be higher. Managements should instead demand that communications serve as “penicillin,” able to tackle the root causes of management, strategy, internal or external relationships, issues or problems. Like penicillin, a confident communications professional’s input might be initially hard to swallow or even distasteful. Yet, just as often, it’s absolutely imperative to improving organizational health, or even preventing negative symptoms from festering to begin with.

Real world examples
Consider the following “ripped from the headline” examples, and whether communications was likely playing the role of “penicillin” or “aspirin”:

• RIM, the maker of Blackberry, which has lost its market leadership if not its very purpose by misreading consumer tastes and failing to leverage its first mover positioning in the Corporate world.
• Sears’ slide into oblivion having more to do with a leadership led “apathy” that resulted in second-tier stores, cheap merchandise, little or no standards, and weak employee service.
• GM’s decision to drastically change how it managed its brands and its production becoming more market focused thus reducing the need for costly and destructive incentives.
• McDonald’s reality check of its own brand resulting in efforts to enhance its menu with more nutritional fare, a welcome approach back to basics for consistent hot food, clean restaurants, and quick service, and novel programs such introducing “built-in” restaurant gyms for youth.

Certainly, no one would be sufficiently naïve to suggest that the Communications function alone could have prevented the first two incidences, or that Communications alone was influential in allowing the last two organizations to refocus its business on causes not symptoms. .

But, recalibrating Communications to be strategic and integrated into the decision-making apparatus can result in a much clearer understanding of organizational choices. The same choices that GM and McDonald’s saw while RIM and Sears did not!

Heal thyself
So, as communicators, how do we see ourselves? Can we examine your own approaches and to determine if we are dispensing disease-attacking penicillin or symptom-abating aspirin:

• When does Communications get involved in strategic planning and decision making: before or after decisions are made?
• Do communicators focus more on tactical outputs (blogs, newsletters, news releases, events) or strategic inputs (advice, positioning, reputation analysis, competitive intelligence)?
• In terms of sophistication, is communications on par with legal and HR counsel?
• Do we gauge communications results by business growth, sales, productivity or traditional measures?” By industry reputation or by activity reports? By employee engagement (retention, development, productivity) or the number of teams formed, or memos distributed?

Finally…consider the fact that if you suddenly become ill, your doctor is likely your first call. If something goes wrong in our client organizations or with our clients – when does Communications including outside firms get called?

When the call ultimately does get made, what will we offer: Penicillin or Aspirin?

Each iteration of Facebook is met with user protests and a slew of privacy concerns. The latest version of Facebook features the most blatant disregard for user privacy, having changed default settings that make information that was previously private, public. In fact, the new Facebook seems to make some information – such as new friendships – public even if users explicitly state that they did not want that information public.

But now, it’s Zuckerberg that is being forced to open up as Facebook prepares for its initial public offering. Ironically, reports have noted that Zuckerberg seems “reluctant” to put a portion of Facebook up for sale to public investors. The decision was not in his hands. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires companies with more than 500 shareholders to begin filing reports with the SEC. These reports include audited financial information. Facebook’s shareholders increased right along with their users and they’re now nearly over that 500 investor threshold. Once they hit that mark, they have 4 months to disclose a laundry list of confidential business facts and figures.

Facebook is rumored to be offering about $10 billion of their $75-$100 billion valuation up for trade. Depending on the percentage of the company which will be offered, Facebook is looking at $5B – $10 billion in shareholder dollars. That’s a nice little consolation prize for giving up a privacy setting.

Of course, the IPO isn’t the end of the privacy saga. One of Facebook’s biggest assets as a public company will be its enormous stockpile of personal information, which is at the heart of Facebook’s revenue model. Will users need to stay vigilant about privacy concerns and who gets to see what with all of that personal information?

Additionally, with that large of an amount of spare change, will Facebook begin acquiring other platforms such as Instagram? Will they go mobile? With additional, public, shareholder pressure, will Facebook begin beefing up its ad platform? If so, this will affect the simplistic interface that drew so many users to Facebook in the first place.

Unfortunately, Zuckerberg remains as secretive as ever when it comes to the privacy settings on his innovation plans (More mobile? International dominance? Acquisitions?). These questions are unanswered now. But – as the IPO process begins – they may not be private much longer.

image via http://bit.ly/A2B9Yg

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“Twitter is like a cocktail party … you don’t just want to talk about medical things all the time.”

- Dr. Jennifer Dyer

Dr. Jennifer Dyer loves working with kids – and she maintains a childlike curiosity and passion for learning in everything she does.  All it takes is one look at her twitter profile – @endogoddess – to know that she’s no stuffed-shirt, dull clinician.  At any given time, you might see tweets about fashion, food, New York – or yes, health and medicine.  Trained as a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Texas – San Antonio, she always just found the kids to be more “fun and funny” to be around.  She has always been motivated by getting to know her patients well, and building a truly personal relationship with them.  And she’s found that maintaining a basis of fun, funny and factual is the key to good health information and healthy practices.

After medical school, Jen moved to Columbus, Ohio to take a combined clinical and research role with the Ohio State University (she says it more like, “THE Ohio State University”).  While at OSU, she had a chance to work on a Masters program in Public Health, and it was a revelation to her.  She found that she was able to understand the healthcare system from a completely different perspective – and realized how important it was for doctors to be able to understand the context that wraps around every doctor-patient relationship.  She also found that she was able to exercise her creativity in ways that she hadn’t been able to do in a traditional clinical/research setting.

It was also during her MPH coursework that she began to dive deep into the concept of health literacy, and to understand how critical it was to develop deeper health literacy in the US.  Jen, like many other doctors, was beginning to realize that her patients wanted and needed more access to quality information.  They were willing to search and conduct their own (primarily online) research, but it was hard to find information that was really trustworthy.

In the course of conducting a study on health literacy in early 2009, Jen went to a conference in Santa Fe, NM – a conference that was focused on healthcare communications, and the then-new phenomenon of social media.  At that conference, she ran into an old Texas acquaintance, Dr. Bryan Vartabedian.  He was talking about the ways that physicians could use twitter to connect more effectively with each other and with their patients.  As a born explorer, Jen signed up on the spot.  She was able to grasp its potential immediately – but also feared that using it effectively could be a significant time drain.  In order to stay motivated, she’d need for her twitter account to be about more than just clinical medicine.  And thus, @endogoddess was born.  Her twitter account, even three years later, is a perfect mix of her personal and professional interests – though rarely if ever a vehicle to convey personal/private information.

“My mission is to provide patients with evidence-based, medical facts.  That’s what people ask of me and expect from me – and it’s something that every doctor can provide.”

Dr. Jennifer Dyer

 

The more connected Jen became, the more she felt she was able to help her patients.  She became incredibly tuned-in to health-related programs in Columbus, and was able to use her presence in social media (in addition to her practice) to share that information with the people who’d benefit from it.  She’s found twitter to be a great place to communicate with that broader health audience – people who are interested, broadly speaking in learning more about diabetes, pediatrics and endocrinology.  Like most doctors, she’s regularly pinged by her friends and family about medical questions – the kind of data, information and insights they were having trouble finding on their own.  Armed with that solid understanding of her audience’s needs, she’s been able to provide content online that links her audience with the information they need.  Twitter allows her to do that with an audience that includes – but extends well beyond – that core group of family and friends.  And she has a rule – whenever she’s asked a question on twitter, she responds.  That response often points people either to an existing online resource, or encourages a dialog with their physician (it never strays into sharing private information or medical advice per se) – but the point is that she always responds.

She was quick to point out that, if she met someone in the supermarket who asked whether they should be taking aspirin or tylenol, she couldn’t possibly answer that question.  She doesn’t know them, their medical history or their needs.  But she can often help that person to ask the right questions of their personal physician so they can find the answer to their question.  And twitter works in pretty much the same way.

The last year has been marked by some pretty radical changes in Jen’s professional life.  Through the course of another study at OSU, Jen was really interested in how she might be able to use digital and social media to stay connected with patients – particularly diabetes patients for whom treatment adherence has especially important consequences – between appointments.  Her study was beautifully simple.  She created an SMS-based communication protocol with her patients.  Over a three-month period, she would text-message a group of patients on a weekly basis.  The nature of the communication was as follows:

- standard greeting

- personal question based on their individual relationship (e.g., an icebreaker that re-establishes Jen as someone whom they know and trust)

- a quick question or two about their proactive diabetes management and their results. “How are your sugars?”  “How often are you testing?”

This simple approach resulted in measurable improvements in patient outcomes – and led to her drawing significant attention both locally and nationally. She started getting regular media coverage and speaking at conferences.  And she’s now decided to take her findings and to use them to help more diabetes patients – to scale her approach exponentially.  Jen has now started a business – Duet Health – with a local Columbus developer, and is in the business of developing mobile health applications.  Her first, the EndoGoddess app, made it into the iTunes store this past fall, and is doing well.  It stands out from other diabetes apps (which tend to be limited to journaling) by embedding the motivational model developed by Stanford professor and researcher BJ Fogg.  The EndoGoddess app, targeted for younger diabetics, also includes a rewards-and-incentives program that is really interesting.  By complying with their treatment, patients are awarded points that can be redeemed for iTunes credit … and that credit is funded by their families, friends, or anyone who has a vested interest in their adherence to treatment.  Through Duet Health, she has also started to create content modules for hospitals that are designed to be “prescribed” (literally – the modules are listed on prescription pads) by doctors as patients are released from the hospital.

Today those modules cover topics such as physical therapy, orthopedics, and pregnancy, although there are over 20 modules either in production or on the roadmap. The hospital and its staff of health care professionals are thrilled … for the first time, they feel as though they’re able to have a more lasting impact with their patients by creating a mechanism for interaction (through trusted content) between appointments.  And it’s dead simple for the docs and nurses.  There are no instruction manuals required; just a simple, pre-written “prescription” for content in the patient’s release packet.

The future is looking bright for Duet Health, which has effectively tapped into the wealth of  young talent gathered around OSU.  They’re now working on more sophisticated apps that are designed to be a portal with properties similar to personal health records, but with embedded social media functionality and focused on helping users to connect with other users who are in a similar stage of their patient journey.  And it’s her feeling that in October, when hospitals start to be penalized for readmissions, there is going to be a significant uptick in the need for the work that she and her colleagues are doing.

Jen has spoken at the mHealth summit for the past three years. In her words, the mHealth space has evolved tremendously during that time – from “Is this going to work?” to “This is going to work – but what’s the business model?”  For my money, Dr. Dyer is well on her way to nailing that one.

How to connect with Dr. Dyer:

Her Company: Duet Health

Her blog: http://endogoddess.blogspot.com/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/endogoddess

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/EndoGoddess

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifershinedyer

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/drjenshinedyer/videos

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Jennifer Dyer’s Recommended Network of “MDigitals”:

Dr. Mike Sevilla: https://twitter.com/#!/drmikesevilla

Dr. Bryan Vartabedian: https://twitter.com/#!/doctor_v

Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson: https://twitter.com/#!/seattlemamadoc

Dr. Kevin Pho: https://twitter.com/#!/kevinmd

In total, he spent 44 words discussing perhaps the most far-reaching legislation passed during his tenure, health care reform. The initial reaction was that the president was backing away from his signature achievement. But examining one number from one speech doesn’t tell the whole story. Here are a few more numbers that put the 44th president’s 44 words into context:

• 7: The number of words dedicated to health care in the Republican response, delivered by Mitch Daniels. If Obama was avoiding the topic out of fear of political fallout, the Republicans didn’t call him on it.
• 15: The number of words George Bush used to discuss health information technology in his 2004 State of the Union address. That was enough to launch a multi-billion dollar federal effort, complete with its own “czar.”
• 48. The sum total of Lyndon Johnson’s references to Medicare in his 1967 State of the Union speech, two years after the Social Security Act of 1965 created Medicare. The brevity certainly didn’t dampen the impact of the law.
• 270. The amount of Richard Nixon’s 1974 State of the Union address dedicated to his plan for comprehensive health care coverage. That bests Obama’s total for the last two years, combined. And we all know how much traction Nixoncare generated.
• 34,053: The word count from the administration’s brief to the Supreme Court on the legal challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. With three days of oral arguments before the Court in March and a decision around mid-year, there will be plenty said about health reform, even if it was absent from this year’s speech.

It’s clear that there is no obvious distinction between time spent on a topic and the attention it gets from policymakers, which explains why we don’t have hydrogen cars (116 words in 2003). Millions of words will be spilled on the topic of health reform as the legal argument (and decision) come and go this year. And millions more will be spilled during an election season in which all of the leading candidates have put stakes in the ground about health reform.

That’s not to say that paltry attention to health care in the State of the Union doesn’t matter. But — like so much else in life — the really important stuff can often go unsaid.

I thought of this list recently as I was trying to describe the concept of a Twitter chat to a family member who witnessed my participation in a series of them in December. Each Thursday night, I was glued to my computer tweeting about cookies and holiday baking, on behalf of a client, to a community on Twitter. While my family members thought the idea of the chat was funny, they hopefully realized that Twitter chats represent an opportunity for brands to use a social network to engage with other people who are passionate about a certain topic area – ultimately giving a brand the opportunity to build relationships and awareness online with their followers, and even better, with potential new fans and customers, in a direct, casual manner.

Typically, chats are structured to provide clear direction and guidance around a certain topic of discussion but are flexible enough to allow one-off related conversations to grow between participants. Chats usually follow a question and answer format with either the brand or partner organization tweeting a question every few minutes while participants respond with their answers.

As your team prepares for or considers if chats are right for the brand, consider the following items:

#1 Get Familiar

Want to consider a chat for a brand but don’t personally know much about them? Jump in. The best way to learn is to join one. Like most things in social media, you can’t effectively bring a brand into the discussion if you aren’t there as an individual first – understanding the mechanics of the platform, learning the lingo and knowing when to weigh in and when to observe.  Find a chat that you are personally interested in and join it  – tweet a little, RT others, use the hashtag, or just sit back and watch – but really get the whole experience before you put forth a recommendation for your brand. If you search “twitter chats” on Google, you can find this Google document that is a good reference for chats on Twitter listed by topic area. A few good ones to start with:

• Girls Night Out – rotating topics on a variety of fun lifestyle themes, held Tuesday nights (#GNO)
• Travelers’ Night In – great travel based chat, held Thursday nights (#TNI)
• Community Manager Chat – for community managers, on Wednesday afternoons (#CMGRchat)
• JournChat – for PR professionals, bloggers and journalists, on Monday evenings (#journchat) 

Example Twitter Chat Stream: #GNO

 

#2 Is Your Brand Well-Known Enough to Start Its Own Chat? 

Many times we have to make the decision to either host a chat on our own vs. sponsoring an already established chat by another organization. Typically, we’ll consider if the brand has the social footprint to host and cultivate a chat on their own and if based on that footprint (and the footprints of influencers who could possibly participate as moderators) the brand will get the results they want and expect. For companies with smaller or growing followers, we’d probably recommend they partner with a brand/customer/affiliated partner/spokesperson that has a well established social following or sponsors a Twitter chat with an organization that has an already established community around regular Twitter chats – like many of those listed above.

#3 Nail Down the Details – Making Choices

Pick a Time of Day That is Best For Your Chat

Consider when you want to host the chat and what time/day slots make the most sense for your community. Many established chats happen in the evening, so participants can jump in and join the conversation after work hours but many organizations that host Twitter chats for brands also offer a daytime chat option too. Check with your chat partners to see what responses they get during the day vs. night and make a decision based on what would work best for your brand.

Pick a Theme for Your Chat

Create a theme for the chat and a focus you want participants to follow and discuss but don’t choose something so niche that anyone joining for the first time wouldn’t be able to follow because they don’t know the topic. For example, if you are a CPG brand and you want to promote your product around an upcoming holiday, consider a theme around traditions, recipes or cooking/baking that would be a natural fit for your brand to share and offer content to participants.

Create or Choose a #

Choose a hashtag that you can use to track the conversation. If you are partnering with an organization, they may already have a hashtag in place but usually you can have two tags – one to represent the brand and another to represent the topic or partner organization.  When choosing a hashtag, consider the following items:

• Keep them as short as possible – you don’t want your hashtag to take up too many characters of your tweet
• Check to see if they are already being used, either via consumers or other brands – you don’t want a tag that can’t easily be tracked or identified as special to the chat
• Consider your overall program and if it makes sense to use one hashtag for the entire program vs. a specific one for just the chat

#4 Pre-Chat Prep

Create a List

A week or two before the chat gather all the details above and create a cheat sheet document for your team. This can be formatted as a simple outline or table with the following information:

• Chat theme, date, time
• Official hashtags
• List of commonly referenced bit.ly links that you may need to use
• The list of chat questions and expected timing for each question during the chat (usually every 5-10 minutes depending on the chat)
• List of sample answers for each question in case needed
• An FAQ section for your team in case any sensitive questions come up during the chat and they (or you) need direction on how to respond
• Contact information for team members and client participating – even setting up a conference dial-in ahead of time can be helpful for communicating between various parties during the actual event

The important thing to remember is to strike a balance between being as prepared as possible while remaining flexible. The majority of your tweets should be ad-hoc responses, answers and questions to other participants – but it’s OK to help guide your team in the types of responses they can expect the brand to make and/or use during the chat.

Gather a Team with Specific Chat Responsibilities

If possible, and depending on the size of the chat, have more than one person staffing the handle – each with specific responsibilities. One person can own either asking or retweeting the questions and fielding answers while another can tweet more brand focused content and engage more proactively with the community. We’ve had Twitter chats before where 4-5 team members were involved and needed. Make sure you sit down beforehand and make roles/responsibilities very clear so there is no confusion when it’s time to begin.

Use a Twitter Tool

Use an engagement tool like Tweetdeck to help you manage the Twitter chat stream. If you aren’t already using one, set up your tool a few days before and start practicing. Create search columns for the various chat hashtags so you can see all tweets coming through for your chat.

#5 Reporting & Measurement

This is a critical part of social business and Twitter chats are no different. Consider the following metrics beforehand and make sure you set benchmarks ahead of time to measure progress from before/after a chat: 

• # of Twitter chat participants
• # of tweets with your hashtag
• # of mentions and RT’s of your content
• # of impressions from tweets during this time with your hashtag
• Follower growth from day before till day after chat
• List increases as a result of the chat, new relationships formed
• Clicks on links shared during the chat (can use bit.ly to track by creating custom URLs for chat)
• Impact of chat on your overall share of conversation (SOC) and any coverage received as a result of your chat
• New relationships built as a result of the chat with online influencers
• If doing a coupon promotion, clicks and downloads of coupon as a result of chat

Example TweetReach Report

When reporting results of your Twitter chat to the brand, also consider how you will maintain the momentum from the chat, either via continued engagement, targeted outreach or a series of additional chats in following months. Also consider how you can leverage content from the chat in other mediums, including creating conversation word clouds to use in internal market research reports, or interesting fan comments and funny quotes to share on Facebook and Twitter the next day.  

Additional tips to consider:

• Just because chat hours are over doesn’t mean the conversation has to end – assuming you have the resources to staff, keep it going as long as possible
• Consider the back-up plan should Twitter go down…it happens
• Use the chat hashtag before and after the chat to get your followers familiar and engaged on the topic
• Cross-promote the Twitter chat on other social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn if appropriate, encouraging your community to join you there
• Gather feedback – be open to suggestions from your community on topics they’d like to hear next time or what sort of content/answers they are looking for
• Consider adding a giveaway element to the chat – it can be a good tactic for increasing interest and participation, not to mention sharing the brand love with your community, just make sure it doesn’t override the value of the actual discussion happening
• Keep a running list of chat participants (either via Twitter’s list feature or in Excel) so you can track who participated and continue engaging with them after the chat ends
• Visit WCG’s SlideShare channel to review fellow colleague, Meghan Butler’s, deck on even more Twitter chat best practices and tips to promote your chat

And most importantly, be an active participant and resource for your community. Twitter chats are not a marketing platform for you to push out branded messages. They are most successful when brands use them to listen and engage with a community rather than speak at them.

Have more tips to share? Drop a comment below and let’s chat on Twitter! Hashtag #chattips.

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When I started using twitter in 2008, I was amazed at how easy it was to connect with other folks who were beginning to think about the intersection of healthcare and social media.  I’m happy to say that I am still in touch with many of those folks – Mark Hawker, John Moore, Bob Coffield, Marty Trussell, Holly Potter and Dana Lewis, to name a few.  One of those twitter pioneers – and one of my first online friends – is a doctor who has inspired thousands with his groundbreaking work – Dr. Bertalan Mesko (more commonly known on the social web as “Berci”).  Every doctor in this program has the opportunity to choose the medium for their interview – and Berci chose a Q&A format.  So without further ado, meet one of the world’s leading thinkers on digital medicine.

Berci graduated from the University of Debrecen, Medical School and Health Science center in 2009 and started PhD in the field of clinical genomics. He is the managing director and founder of Webicina.com LLC, the first free medical social media guidance service for patients and medical professionals. He speaks at prestigious conferences; covers online international events and is a health 2.0 consultant for pharma and medical companies. Healthspottr.com included him in the Future Health Top 100 list.

He is the author of the award-winning medical blog, Scienceroll.com and the educator of the Medicine and Web 2.0 university credit course which is the first of its kind worldwide.

He is often sought out by the media for his expertise, and has been featured in publications as diverse as Nature Medicine, the New York Times, Al Jazeera, British Medical Journal and Wired Science, among others. He is a member of the Kairos Society.

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Greg: When you use social media, who’s your audience and what’s your purpose?

Berci: I have different audiences in different channels. On my blog, Scienceroll.com, my audience consists of medical professionals, students and nurses. On Twitter, I talk to everyone from e-patients to doctors. On Webicina.com, we create curated selections of social media resources focusing on different medical conditions or specialties for patients and professionals as well. Whenever I post something online, I choose the language, wording, links, etc. in order to fit the needs of my audience. Twitter requires fast interaction with pieces of information; Facebook is more about slow interaction, while a blog is like a public CV.

Greg: What’s your most effective method/channel for reaching that audience?

Berci: Even if I make the most contacts and have the more interactions on Twitter these days; I still believe my blog is my major platform. Whenever someone makes a search for my name, they will find my blog in the first place which I’m glad of as I control the information being published about me online. But to properly reach my audience, I need to use several tools such as Friendfeed, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Youtube, Google+, etc. And I have to pay attention to avoiding the overlap of the content I publish in these channels.

Greg: What is the biggest danger facing physicians using social media?

Berci: I always tell my students whatever content they publish online will hunt you down. When I publish as a doctor online, I ask myself a question: Do I mind if this content is seen by millions of people? So to sum it up, the biggest concern is privacy. Doctors must learn how they can interact with their patients online. If I don’t want to share photos from my vacation with my patient at the grocery store, why I would do the same on Facebook by making my photos public? I help medical students know more about these issues in my course at the university which I will make globally public this February.

Bertalan Mesko Medicine 2.0 Promo – Rough from Larry Chu on Vimeo.

Greg: Are there any absolute do’s and don’ts you’d like to share?

Berci: We just published an open access social media guide for and about pharma in which we included a list of suggestions regarding what medical professionals should and should not do in social media.

Greg: What do you want the doctors of the future to know about the future of doctoring?

Berci: Recently, I published 7 features of the new generation of physicians in which I described the main points about these young students and doctors. In a nutshell, they are fast, mobile, technophile, balances, and online.

Greg: What communication devices do you use?

Berci: I have an Android smartphone and a Samsung Galaxy Tab.

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A huge thanks to Berci for his participation.  Make sure to follow his work:

My company: http://www.webicina.com/

My blog: http://scienceroll.com/

My Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Berci

And a sample from his reading list:

With WCG’s experience in the healthcare industry, we work with companies that provide treatments, devices and other products indicated for hundreds of health conditions each year. But it’s still humbling to learn about a condition like SWSD that affects so many people, and yet so few know they suffer from it.

For greater context, individuals suffering from SWSD typically work rotating shifts, the night shift or on irregular schedules (in other words, not 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.), often resulting in excessive sleepiness, difficulty concentrating, headaches and lack of energy. These can develop into more serious conditions such as insomnia or depression, or even result in serious accidents on the job.

To help shine a light on this issue, SharecareNow, powered by WCG published the SharecareNow 10: Shift Work Sleep Disorder, identifying the most prominent online influencers addressing SWSD and other sleep disorders within shift work industries:

1. Dr. Michael J. Breus, TheInsomniaBlog.com
2. Brandon Peters, M.D.,  About.com – Sleep
3. American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Sleep Education Blog
4. Lisa Shives, Sleep Better Blog
5. Cleveland Clinic, ClevelandClinic.org
6. National Sleep Foundation, SleepFoundation.org
7. Deborah Kotz, Boston.com – Daily Dose
8. Anahad O’Connor, New York Times – The Well Blog
9. Dr. Steven Y. Park, DoctorStevenPark.com
10. Dr. Catherine Darley, Naturopathic Sleep Medicine Blog

These experts and organizations expose a shift in how patients are seeking resources and information on how to treat their health conditions. In addition to relying on primary care or specialist physicians, patients are increasingly taking an active role in their treatment, seeking out numerous sources of information. And, in the case of chronic or long-term conditions, they’re following regular sources of relevant content like blogs, forums, news and Q&A platforms, and ultimately becoming a more informed patient.

So whether those suffering from SWSD read an article from Anahad O’Connor, or follow Dr. Breus’s blog, or research the condition on ClevelandClinic.org, these influencers have the ability to help patients find the right information, learn how to apply it, and finally receive the support they need.

With the SharecareNow 10 series of influencer lists, the focus is on sharing insights in a way that the average person can benefit and improve their health in a meaningful way. This is how health will be transformed.

Bob Pearson & Adam Pedowitz

Disclaimer: WCG works with a number of pharmaceutical companies, including some that provide treatments for shift work sleep disorder. These clients have not participated in this analysis.

Facebook Timeline Apps

For example, a consumer could use one of the new apps to share that they found the best tiramisu in Austin, Texas at Grove Wine Bar or that they are busy pinning cool products they’d like their husbands to buy them for Valentine’s Day on Pinterest.

Pinterest User Update to Timeline

What This Means for Brands

Brands now have a better chance of appearing in user’s news feeds as these apps will help encourage users to share even more experiences as they are happening in real time. These apps move beyond just where users are to what they are doing, who they are with, what they are interested in and which brands they are interacting with to provide more insight into a user’s story.

To add apps to your Timeline, visit https://www.facebook.com/about/timeline/apps.

Initial list of apps that have been announced:

*List provided by Mashable

The method separated users into two groups: one group got to see what links their friends were sharing on Facebook, the other group didn’t get to see any shared links.

The study is filled with nifty facts. Here are the five coolest:

1. On average, you are more than 7 times more likely to share a link on Facebook if you’ve seen the link from one of your friends. But the absolute chance of anyone re-sharing a specific link is low: 0.191 percent if you’ve seen a friend had shared the link, 0.025 if you didn’t.

2. One out of every 12.5 clicks on a Facebook link leads to a share. That suggests that fewer than 3 percent of all links get clicked, which explains the low sharing behavior on any specific link.

3. The median time it takes someone to share a link they’ve seen a friend post is 6 hours. That means half of all shares take place even more quickly, a measure of how fast the “news cycle” is on Facebook.

4. Not surprisingly, we’re more likely to share content from closer friends. A person who had commented on a friend’s item more than three times over 3 months was 2.86 times more likely to share an item from that friend than a person who had never commented on that friend’s items. This held true — and the effect was even stronger — when people didn’t see their friend’s links: those who were closer friends were far more likely to post the same link than more distant friends, suggesting that close friends tend to have similar information-consuming habits.

5. More than 80 percent of shared linked came from “weak” friends, as measured by the use of the Facebook message system. We tend to have 10 to 20 times more weak ties on Facebook than strong ones. That huge number of more distant acquaintances, mathematically swamps our the fact that we’re more likely to share info from close friends.

Interested in learning more? The author of the study has a post up on Facebook going into a bit more detail.

<Aaron> What is Localpoint?
<Doug> Digby Localpoint is a SaaS mobile technology platform designed to help retailers deliver a best-in-class mobile app experience for their loyal customers, focused on location-based marketing, analytics, and commerce. It has four components: Venue, Outreach, Analytics, and Storefront. A mobile team simply drops our libraries into their existing app and can then deploy geofence-based notification and rich message campaigns through Localpoint Venue and Localpoint Outreach, and derive powerful insight through Localpoint Analytics. If a retailer doesn’t have a mobile team, we can help them build an app using Localpoint Storefront, which comes pre-wired with the other three components of Localpoint.

<Aaron> Tell me more about Localpoint’s four modules.
<Doug> Sure, let’s start with Venue. This is the ability to drop a geofence around a specific store or public venue like a park, airport, or sports stadium and use that geofence to identify and communicate with people who are there. Campaigns can be set up to either be triggered by an event (like a check-in, product scan, store entry, or store exit) or can be set up to launch at specific times to one or more specific locations. We call those messages “announcements.” Think “blue light special” but much more powerful.

<Aaron> Localpoint Venue is essentially the ability to create your own white label location-based app ala foursquare or Shopkick. Why should retailers do this instead of spending with one of those apps, which have pre-built audiences?
<Doug> Ideally they would do both. Network apps like foursquare and Shopkick are paid media opportunities, which allow retailers to potentially access new audiences. However, a retailer’s own app represents an opportunity to get much closer – literally in the pocket – of their best customers. Retailers who invest in this way won’t be disintermediated and won’t face repeat acquisition costs, lowered share of voice, and lack of data ownership. The best mobile strategies will access new audiences through mediums like network apps, mobile SEM, mobile ads, and other paid opportunities, and convert them to app owners.

<Aaron> What does Outreach Do?
<Doug> The idea with Outreach is large-scale or “market size” geofences that allow you to localize a push notification to drive app engagement and store traffic to a local store. This is to activate loyalists, and can be used in a very complementary fashion with Venue. This particular component is especially interesting for local high-frequency retail models like grocery, convenience, and drug stores as well as quick-serve restaurants. But really, every app should have the ability to get your attention with a message that is location-based.

<Aaron> What about something that is also near and dear to my heart, i.e. analytics?
<Doug> Most mobile analytics out there treat an app like a website and simply track user activity to the app – download, opens, clicks. The true opportunity for mobile analytics is the ability to measure app activity relative to location. Localpoint Analytics allows you to set up geofences that give you web-style analytics for the physical world. Imagine knowing the same things about your retail stores that you do about your website – how many people visited, how long they stayed, what they did on the app while they were there. These are the types of insights that simply aren’t available through any other technology, and will lead to extremely powerful, business-changing insight.

<Aaron> Doesn’t this have the potential to be a little Big Brother-esque?
<Doug> An excellent point and touches on a unique characteristic of Digby’s technology. First, Localpoint Analytics only uses venue-sized geofences for measurement, and our technology only measures the activity of an app installed by an opted-in user in and around those geofences. The rest of the time, the device knows where it is but we don’t. Localpoint simply waits for the device to tell us when it’s close to something we care about. We’ve spent a lot of time and resources investing in patent-pending location detection technology that maximizes accuracy while protecting users by keeping power-draining GPS use at a minimum and ensuring user privacy.

<Aaron> Loaded question here but why do you believe location is such an important part of consumer mobile?
<Doug> We feel that no other single thing you can learn about a mobile user unlocks the unique power of the mobile platform like location. Not only does it help you be contextually relevant, but location also tells you more about a consumer’s intent than anything else. Our goal is simply to help retailers be “where their customers are.” This statement is meant to be taken literally and figuratively.

<Aaron> Tell me more about the Storefront module.
<Doug> Storefront is our most retail-specific Localpoint module, and allows us to quickly bring to life an app that features everything a consumer expects from a retailer: Rich, full-featured product catalog, commerce, and store locator. It is a best-in-class search, browse, and buy experience. And out of the box it is wired to communicate with and leverage the other three Localpoint modules. Many retailers still don’t have apps, and we feel like they might want one when they see what the entire Localpoint platform can allow them to do.

<Aaron> Yes, many retailers still don’t have their own apps. Why should they?
<Doug> I think many business, especially retailers, approach building an app like they are building a website. That is why many retail apps that do exist, even some of the most well-designed ones, look a lot like a miniature version of the full web experience. The fact is that the most important thing that apps can do is something most of them aren’t doing: communicate with the consumer. Communication is still the primary purpose of the phone, and by downloading an app the consumer has already told you they want you to be a part of their daily life. By not taking advantage of that opportunity, businesses are missing out. Our goal is not only to put that opportunity within arms reach, but also do it the right way, with the highly relevant location context that consumers expect.

<Aaron> Doug, Localpoint sounds really interesting, I look forward to seeing a demo soon!
<Doug> My pleasure Aaron. Anyone that’s interested can see more details on our website but I’d be happy to give you a demo soon! And thanks for taking the time to learn more about Localpoint.

Those working in communications, or any business for that matter, have been living in a state of change/evolution for over a decade…but labeling it a state of flux… a state of uncertainty about what should be done preceding the establishment of a new direction of action; “the flux following the death of the emperor”…put the world in which we conduct business/live life in a totally new and enlightening light for me.

This cover story hits the mark (no surprise for Fast Company) comparing the business climate to the weather and that “we’ve entered a next-two-hours era.” Fueled by global adoption of social, mobile and other new technologies — the fundamentals of a business can change overnight and like the weather, we may not always get it right.  Yet “despite recession, currency crises and tremors of financial instability, the pace of disruption is roaring ahead….no long-term picture emerges….” and no long-term careers (” ‘career planning’ is an oxymoron” – The Four-Year Career another strong article reinforcing the birth and rise of Generation Flux in the same edition of Fast Company making Feb 2012 an especially good edition…check out Cheryl Edmonds).

This ability to be fluid and thrive…lies with Gen Flux — “less about a demographic designation (thankfully!) than a psychographic one.” It is a “mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates – and even enjoys – recalibrating careers, business models and assumptions.” The most important ability: ability to acquire new skills and continuously evolve, “need to be open-minded.” And the piece I like best — “future focus.”

The article highlights the professional evolution of several standout individuals and their businesses and notes that businesses and institutions weren’t built to reinvent themselves…especially not big companies with too much structure, processes, order.

Well known futurist Ray Kurzweil, has written that it’s not just advancing but advancing further each year. If you’re comfortable with the rate of change today, then congratulations, you will be uncomfortable tomorrow and not relevant the next day.

All in all, it makes me further value what I already know is in our secret sauce:

- WCG is about the positive future of communications — in this mission we are clear
- For those fortunate enough to be working here, it means thriving in a constant state of flux — as an independent agency, we can go there….and do so regularly
- We’re looking at how we can

• Best align the business to meet client needs faster and better…
• And how we can continue to grow but still be agile
• How we break down silos and integrate with less hierarchy more focus on team

- And as Fast Company points out, it’s about creating the right environment so “the new” can be exhilarating and empowering
- And hiring the right mix of talent to deliver on the new…and enhance the standard.

We ourselves flux, flex, change constantly. Change/flux may not be easy, but it certainly keeps it interesting. And nearly two years in, it is why it still feels so new and exciting. WCG Generation Flux is ready. 2012, bring it on!

“Humans are innately social, health is social; healthcare is not social”

- Howard Luks

I won’t bore you with the statistics about people using social media to connect with each other, work in community and collaborate.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock (in which case you can’t read this anyway), you know ‘em all.  So suffice to say that Dr. Luks didn’t come online to talk about medicine – he came to connect.  But it didn’t take him long to connect the dots and recognize that he could use some of these same social tools to talk to his patients.  And so began the transformation of what Dr. Luks calls, “Howard 2.0.”

The first step in that journey was to start “leveling the playing field for patients.”  We at WCG have noted that most health data on the internet is garbage – in fact, more than 90% of blog posts mentioning a drug are from spam sites.  Howard saw that too – and decided to do something about it.  He started to create real, relevant, quality content for his patients online at http://www.howardluksmd.com/.

Website Welcome Video from Howard Luks on Vimeo.

The average doctors’ appointment lasts 18 minutes, and nearly half of patients can understand what they’re told about their diagnosis and treatment … a percentage that Dr. Luks feels goes even lower when the diagnosis a serious one.  His goal is to “surround sound” his patients with high-quality, relevant information.  He keeps a PC and his iPad available in the exam room to show patients videos and articles during the appointment.  Even more interesting, he has created custom handouts for patients that include links and QR codes to make it incredibly easy for those patients to access the right information between appointments.

“A lot of doctors don’t like to search for information during an appointment, fearing that it will make their patients uncomfortable.  But with nearly 6,000 articles published every day, there is no possible way that a doctor can keep up with every study that exists.  And I’ve never had a single patient who was bothered by the fact that I didn’t know everything.”

– Dr. Howard Luks

As you can see from even a cursory review of his web site, it’s clear that Dr. Luks has gravitated to video as an effective means of patient communication.  This makes sense on a lot of levels:

• Most adults consider themselves to be visual learners, and process information most effectively through visual means
• It’s easier and faster to produce for Dr. Luks

But it has a side benefit that he didn’t initially consider: It’s drawn more (and better) patients to him.  What makes a patient “better?”  When there is trust between a patient and physician, the relationship simply works better and more effectively.  And because new patients are able to see Dr. Luks on video before they come to visit (and his videos are always casual and unscripted) they feel that they already know and trust him.

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From Dr. Luks:

Healthcare and Social Media: The ROI is Real, but the Message Matters

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“Credentials only go so far.  New patients who’ve seen my videos don’t sit at my desk thinking, ‘Gee, can I really trust this guy?’  They are already comfortable enough that they can hear, listen and understand from the first moment.”

– Dr. Howard Luks

The more success Dr. Luks saw with his patient-focused content, the more physicians started getting curious about how to build their own digital presence.  When he hears social media “experts” talk about Doctors not participating online because of privacy or security concerns, he doesn’t buy it.  “I’ve talked to thousands of doctors,” he says, “They get it.  They see a need [to engage digitally], but they don’t know how to do it.”  In order to meet that growing need, he’s recently started a new blog: Tactical Social Media Guidance.  There is plenty of information available about what doctors can’t do online.  The focus for this blog is on helping docs to understand how to do the things they can.  It’s a powerful distinction, and it’s gaining traction.  When I asked him why it was so important for him to invest his scarce time into an initiative focused on other doctors, it came back to the patients again: With all of the lousy health information out there, Dr. Luks knows he can’t redress the balance all alone; he needs to have thousands of doctors who are sharing what they know.

“Doctors need to have a clear online strategy.  Who’s your audience online?  What is it you want them to know or do?  What bandwidth are you prepared to invest in achieving your goals?  Going online without thinking through those basics is worse than not going online at all.”

- Dr. Howard Luks

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From Dr. Luks:

Planning Your Healthcare Social Media Presence: Your Digital Footprint, Part II

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Dr. Luks is a member of several online social networks: Doximity, Sharecare, Healthtap and OrthoMind among others.  Dr. Luks believes that much of what happens between doctors in online networks needs to take place behind a firewall – and must not be anonymous.  Anonymity, he believes, tends to lead to flame wars early and often – and results in being a waste of time.  Interestingly, OrthoMind, while it has only 5,000 or so members, makes up a very robust percentage of the orthopedists in the country – and as a result, has proved to be a really good place to discuss issues that go beyond the clinical.  Those discussions – important for doctors to have – cover issues like health policy, insurance reimbursement and malpractice … all subjects that doctors would tend to shy away from in a true public forum.

It’s hard to say where Howard 2.0 is going to go next, and the Tactical Social Media initiative for docs is likely to take up a lot of bandwidth in the near future, but one thing is clear: Dr. Luks’ primary focus is helping his patients, and always will be.

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Some folks on Dr. Luks’ Reading List:

Dr. Natasha Burgert: http://twitter.com/#!/DoctorNatasha

Dr. Bryan Vartabedian: http://twitter.com/#!/Doctor_V

Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson: http://twitter.com/#!/SeattleMamaDoc

Dr. Ves Dimov: https://twitter.com/#!/drves

Dr. Kent Bottles: https://twitter.com/#!/kentbottles

Phil Baumann: https://twitter.com/#!/philbaumann

Angela Dunn: https://twitter.com/#!/BlogBrevity

Thomas Lee: https://twitter.com/#!/tmlfox

Eric Glazer: https://twitter.com/#!/Ericglazer

Dr. Steven Mora: https://twitter.com/#!/myorthodoc

Jody Schoger: https://twitter.com/#!/jodyms

Dr. Ted Eytan: https://twitter.com/#!/tedeytan

Lee Aase: https://twitter.com/#!/Leeaase

Dr. Mark Ryan: https://twitter.com/#!/richmonddoc

Nick Dawson: https://twitter.com/#!/nickdawson

Faisal Qureshi: https://twitter.com/#!/Faisal_q

Tim Sturgill: https://twitter.com/#!/symtym

Dr. Ryan Madanick: https://twitter.com/#!/ryanmadanickmd

I recently came across a great cartoon related to this topic by Tom Fishburne, entitled “Brand Loyalty“, which makes a salient point within the humour:

'Brand Loyalty' by Tom Fishburne

Basically, your customers will swear their ‘loyalty’ to you and your brand now, right up until something better comes along. To elaborate on the wedding analogy, both parties need to work on the relationship, all of the time. Furthermore, working on the relationship is pointless if neither party knows what the other person wants, or even if what they are doing is working at all!

Let’s take a pretty standard example: a satellite symposium at an international congress, which will probably set your medical communications budget back by well over £100k (or equivalent). You gain the services of 3 or 4 top-tier KOLs to act as the scientific panel (although how were these people selected – are they really the top influencers of your target audience? That’s a whole new discussion for another day…); they do a fantastic job of presenting your key data to a couple of hundred delegates (some of whom won’t in fact be your competitors), and you head back to the office with a stack of evaluation forms showing your event scored 4.5 out of 5 on all measures.

Job done. Marketing Director happy. End-of-year bonus assured.

In the current regulatory and economic environment, most Pharma marketers are well aware that the general situation outlined above doesn’t cut it any more. The second the KOLs have delivered on their contractual obligations, will they devote any of their own time to be an advocate for your brand? Once the physicians in the audience have completed the evaluation form, how many will go away and talk positively about what they heard to their peers (either offline or online)? In short, what are the actual, measurable outcomes from your major investment?

Now, you may be lucky and the return on your investment may extend beyond the event itself. However, wouldn’t it make sense to set up your Med Comms projects properly to begin with? That is, to assess how and where your customers and KOLs are talking about your brand before, during and – most importantly – after your event? To find out what would gain their loyalty, and proactively work to keep it?

Here at WCG, we’re developing new models for Med Comms, founded on our industry-leading analytics. We’ll be expanding on this in subsequent posts, but get in touch if you would like to start building true KOL and customer relationships today.

About 8,000 people officially attended the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the biotech-investment marked by crowded hallways, expensive drinks and general excess. But a much larger audience, including me, watched the meeting from afar via new media, from a hundreds of webcasts to thousands of tweets.

I wanted to capture what the meeting looked like for those viewing it through the lens of social media, and four charts tell the story.

Two years ago, when online discussion of J.P. Morgan hit the mainstream, there were a few hundred tweets. A blog post at the time said the #JPM10 hashtag was “widely used.” A year later, the number of tweets had almost doubled. And we’ll nearly quadruple last year’s number. The online aspect of the meeting has exploded.

But it’s not fair to say that the in-person aspects of the meeting took a back seat to Twitter. A look at tweets in the two weeks leading up to the meeting shows that those on Twitter were interested in connecting in real life, not cyberspace. The most often-used word? RSVP.

So what companies garnered the buzz on Twitter? If you were a newsmaking biotech, that helped. So did presenting earlier in the week. And having Adam Feuerstein of The Street take a special interest in a company helped boost tweets. On this map (complete map also available), bigger circles mean more tweets and retweets including the ticker symbol. And thicker lines means more attention from a given tweeter.

Of course, for those of us in the communication game, it’s always interesting to see who managed to generate the most retweets. This sprawling map (complete PDF copy also available) shows every RT or mention about #JPM12 over the past three weeks — all 2,000 of them. As ever, the big drivers were journalists, with Adam Feuerstein — again — coming up as far-and-away the most-engaged guyon Twitter.

If you’d like more information on the flow of social information at a future meeting, please let me — or your WCG contact — know.

“Doctors are beginning to realize that Google is the new CV.”

- Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, on changes in physicians’ attitudes towards social media

Bryan Vartabedian was standing in front of about a hundred of his peers at America’s largest pediatric hospital –  Texas Children’s … some of the toughest critics around.  Pediatric Grand Rounds.  And he was about to talk to them about the ethics of physicians in Social Media.

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Anyone who works in healthcare seems to be imbued with the notion that doctors have no interest in social media.  Three years ago, they’d have largely been right.  And today?  Things are changing fast.  Manhattan Research tells us that doctors’ internet use increased almost 400% between 2002 and 2009, and anecdotal evidence would tell is that those numbers have been dwarfed in the last two years. There are now thousands of doctors who are using blogs, twitter, Facebook and YouTube to communicate every day – with each other, with other parts of the health system, and yes – with their patients.

Dr. Vartabedian, a pediatric gastroenterologist who studied at the University of Massachusetts, has over the last three years become one of the leading thinkers on the the role of social media in medicine.  But it happened more or less by accident.  Dr. Vartabedian (known to his patients as “Dr. V” and to his online audience as “@doctor_v“) originally had a much more traditional reason for establishing a social media presence – and it had little to do with doctoring.

In 2006, he wrote his first book, “Colic Solved: The Essential Guide to Infant Reflux and the Care of Your Crying, Difficult-to- Soothe Baby.”  One of his editors told him that any author needed to have a blog in order to help sell books … so he started Parenting Solved … a blog for parents focused on diet, nutrition and digestion for your kids (side note: wish I’d known about it sooner!).  The blog wound up becoming a quiet success, engaging an audience of parents and a way to amplify the point of view he’d espoused in the book.  It also provided an early “Eureka” moment: In 2006, when Novartis began the process of selling its Gerber (baby food) unit, Dr. Vartabedian wrote a post called, simply, Gerber for Sale. The post drew the interest of the European financial press, who subsequently interviewed him on the subject.  It was to be the first of many times that Dr. V would be sought out by the press based on his blog.  According to Dr. V, “It turns out that when you’re an early adopter of anything – in this case social media – everybody wants to talk to you.”  And when you’re selling a book, or growing a private practice, that can be a very good thing.

After a few years of blogging at Parenting Solved, Dr. V admits that he started “getting burned out with the ‘reassuring voice of authority’ for parents.”  And his interest online had begun to shift.  AMA News had asked him what doctors should be doing if they were approached by their patients on facebook, and so he wrapped his philosophy on the subject into a 9-step answer that eventually turned into a post on his new blog, 33 Charts: “9 Things to Consider when Patients Contact You via Social Media.”  The piece, written in 2009, is still being circulated as a social media primer for doctors today.  And 33 Charts, “the intersection of medicine, social media and technology,” is still going strong.  In fact, it’s become the center of Dr. V’s online community.  While he is active on facebook and twitter (where I met him nearly three years ago through the #hcsm tweetchat), the blog is where most of the action is happening for Dr. V and the doctors with whom he’s discussing the future of medicine.

Dr. V has often been quoted telling today’s medical students that when they retire, “the practice of medicine will look nothing like the doctoring of today.”  And while many young doctors are leading the charge, Dr. V believes that medical schools need to take a long, hard look at their model – which largely hasn’t changed since being introduced by Dr. Abraham Flexner in 1910.  Flexner’s ideas represented a radical departure from prior medical training – and Dr. V believes that a similar revolution is beginning now.  Vanderbilt University, featured in the New York Times’ WellBlog in December (Dr. Pauline Chen’s “A Medical School More Like Hogwarts“), has generated significant controversy in the medical community – but what they’re doing is just the beginning.  And certainly there are few if any med schools what have begun to train future doctors on digital communications.  They’ve been left to figure it out for themselves – or learn it from pioneers like Dr. V.  And the cultural change is significant for people who can be sued for millions if they ever make a mistake – and often when they don’t.

Dr. V noted that, “there is a real fear [for doctors] of declaring themselves or saying what they believe in a public forum …it comes form this history we have of keeping this therapeutic distance between us and our patients.”  But the same doctors who thought he was crazy when he started blogging and tweeting are now some of the same folks who are asking for his advice today.

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As he faced down the Pediatric Grand Rounds at Texas Children’s, there’s no doubt that Dr. V was feeling a little nervous about the talk that he was preparing to give.  Though he speaks and writes about controversial subjects on a regular basis, it’s never without wondering what his peers and mentors – those whom he admires and respects – will think.  He went on to give a talk that was meant to touch on the heart of doctors’ primary reason for being in social media:

“As physicians we have an obligation to be a part of this [online] conversation.  We need to be creating content.”  There is a lot of bad (or at least biased) health content online … and people are desperate to find support from a system that’s increasingly unable to give it – especially in an 18-minute appointment with their physician.  Dr. V knows that it isn’t surprising that people are looking to interact with their doctors online … as a pediactric gastroenterologist, the patients he interacts with have young moms who essentially live on facebook – so why wouldn’t they jump at the chance to hear from their doctors there?  And although there are plenty of doctors who aren’t well-equipped to create original content, “there is a role that ANY doctor can play, and that is to curate content.  It makes a TON of sense.”

The presentation at Pediatric Grand Rounds was a success.  He knows that there were some folks out there who will never really “get it.”  But there were many more who did … who stayed afterward to talk and ask questions, who are now reading his blog, and likely following Dr. V’s twitter account as well.  While 33 Charts may not always be focused on doctors and social media, it will continue to focus on the future of medicine – the place where Dr. V and innovators like him continue to lead us.

To see the content that Dr. V presented at Pediatric Grand Rounds (and you really should), check out “Physicians, Risk and Opportunity in the Digital Age.”

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Follow Dr. V on the following channels:

33 Charts (Blog): http://33charts.com

Twitter (@doctor_v): http://twitter.com/doctor_v

Facebook (33 Charts): http://www.facebook.com/pages/33-charts/113590062029306

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ODDS and ENDS

The tools in Doctor V’s Digital Tool Belt:

• iPhone/iPad
• MacBook Air
• Evernote (as a self-described “addict” – as am I: I count at least 8 posts where it’s mentioned)
• ePocrates (iPhone app) pill identifier
• Dr. V will frequently “prescribe” additional online resources to parents

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A sample from Dr. V’s physician reading list (going beyond the “CelebriDocs”):

#MDigitalLife is a WCG program designed to learn from and to showcase physicians who are blazing new trails in the digital world – changing the way that medicine is practiced and better health is realized.  The series intro is here.

But in an ever changing global marketplace the winners both on and off the field today are those that can quickly and accurately discern a set of variables including customer shifts, competitive pressures, pricing trends, reputational risks, technology disruptions, and talent gaps among other things.

In the past, this was often the purpose of strategic plans and the purview of CEOs. However, the pace of business is such that CEOs are not only decentralizing organizational structures they are also transferring strategic decisions along with day-to-day tactical decisions to select leaders.

Getting back to the gridiron, such moves are akin to the quarterback calling the game at the line of scrimmage or the point of contact. No longer can a game plan or strategic plan be relied on to guide decision-making against a myriad of forces impacting success.

For communicators, this shift in organizational authority is significant. First, it forces us to ensure that all of our effort is being directed at the right targets and goals. And at the right time.

Who is making these decisions within the organization? Are we using communications to help them get smarter about the business? Does our counsel – based on our expertise – guide the right actions to propel the organization toward it’s business goals?

From a Communications standpoint, this new reality is built perfectly for social media from an analytics and programming opportunity. Providing the right metrics and dashboard can clear the road ahead offering a more coherent set of actions to drive results. Further, the insights drawn from such data paint a picture of the future, which is critical to senior leadership in making investments and driving change.

As 2012 unfolds we are already seeing companies scrambling to find their center of gravity.

There’s no better time to truly burnish our value proposition than right now!

What do you think?

As a result — in a fitting reflection of how starved people are for rules governing the use of new media technology – the document has been widely referred to as the FDA’s “social media guidance.” AdAge’s headline called them “Social-Media ‘Guidelines” in a widely cited piece. Slate’s headline used “Draft Guidance on Social Media.” FiercePharma’s headline talked about “sharing in social media.”

Though the excitement is forgivable, the headlines are not quite right. None of the larger philosophical questions about social media were addressed. None of the impacts of FDA inaction I wrote about last month have been ameliorated. It’s hard to imagine any large-scale changes in approach based on this document. Indeed, to the extent that the new guidance is helpful, it is in codifying a set of policies that are already in place.

What the FDA published last week is not social media guidance. It is merely guidance that mentions social media, or — in FDA’s parlance — “emerging electronic media.” It uses the words “YouTube” (once) and “Twitter” (once) and “blog” (once). The lack of ambition was skewered by former Merck policy guru Ian Spatz, who called the document “a belated lump of coal” on Twitter.

But even if the guidance doesn’t change the rules on social media, there is reason for optimism. The FDA is clearly conversant in digital media strategies and the new rules suggest an understanding of the way that companies are operating in the online space. When it comes to the narrow topic of unsolicited off-label communication, the agency did a thoughtful job of including a broad range of potential communication scenarios, from YouTube contests to public medical meetings. If all future guidance is as inclusive, we’ll begin to see the outlines of a coherent communications framework. Eventually.

Of course, the alternative is that the FDA could pull back the curtain on that framework even faster. Now that would be headline-worthy.

** WCG clients: We’ve done a brief analysis of the implications of the new guidance for both real-world and on-line communications. Please talk to your client partner if you’d like to learn more.

Courtesy: Momentfeed

It took points of view from a lot of smart people who know a ton about the location-based marketing space. As promised, we are following up this post with a look toward the future. In the look forward, we’ve added a few voices including those of brands like American Eagle, Applebee’s and RadioShack.

Jess Berlin

Jess Berlin, social media manager, American Eagle Outfitters | AE blog
In 2012, location will get personal. Location-based services will be able to tailor the user’s experience by offering personalized recommendations and offers based on your check-in history. There will also be further integration with loyalty and payment technologies to make for a personal and cohesive check-in experience. You can literally claim a recommended deal, receive loyalty credit and pay for something all within a check-in.

Jason Falls

Jason Falls, author, speaker and CEO of Social Media Explorer
I think 2012 is going to further divide LBS and Social Media. The gradual adoption of location-based services by the mainstream and the marriage of location-based services and business models that demand revenue (Groupon buying Whrrl, Facebook buying Gowalla, etc.) will mean that LBS becomes less social and more advertising driven. While there will probably be pushback and whining from the social media crowd, the mainstream will eat it up and LBS will become the Sunday coupon section of our generation.

Eric Katerman

Eric Katerman, co-founder, Forecast
2012 will be the year where foursquare becomes a legitimate platform, although they’ll have trouble spreading the message that they’re not just a check-in app. Theirs will become the defacto venue database for all manner of applications and we will start to see massive growth in the number of third-party apps. We’ll also see more focus on future-tense social networking, Facebook is up to something…

Jason Keath

Jason Keath, founder & CEO, Socialfresh
Who to watch in 2012? Keep an eye on the growth of eBay owned barcode, QR code reader Red Laser as well as Amazon’s similar price check app. These tools have such a massive value to the mass market that their growth potential is huge. Geeks love both of these apps, but both will continue to creep into mainstream use.

Just as with the rest of social media, location apps will continue to fragment into innovative and niche use cases. Shopkick, LevelUp, TopGuest and many others have a clear runway for finding their audiences in 2012.

Asif Khan

Asif Khan – president, Location Based Marketing Association
2012 is going to be a banner year for location-based marketing. I expect to see further integration between mobile and other proximity-based media like Billboard and DOOH. Watch for platforms to emerge that give consumers’ more control over their location data, and for lots of experiments with NFC, but not for payments. Tapping phones on smart posters to download coupons or bus schedules, and exchanging business cards and video clips with such enhanced NFC P2P features as Android Beam will grow in 2012.

Nataly Kogan

Nataly Kogan, VP customer experience, WHERE
2012 prediction – relevancy and ubiquity, baby! More relevant offers and experiences and ubiquity of being able to use them and pay for them easily. I think 2012 will be good for users as different apps/companies offer a combo of services. Find places to go, go there, find what you want to buy and get a great deal, and pay – all in one.

Brad Mays

Brad Mays, group director, WCG | blog
In 2012 the mobile category will continue to evolve from noun to verb, and location will begin to cement its position as a useful feature that anchors the ubiquity of mobile life. We’ll see location tags worked into more of the platforms we use everyday, mobile or otherwise, contributing to the explosion of big data and providing more of a physical retail trail. But, 2012 will continue to be a proving year for location, where most brands and individuals take a wait-and-see attitude until the case is conclusive. The good news is that we’ll get to have a lot more fun with location in 2012 because more brands will want to experiment, more of our friends will be willing to let us know where they are, and both will better understand why we check-in everywhere we go.

Jill McFarland

Jill McFarland, digital and social media, Applebee’s | blog
My 2012 prediction is that location becomes more of a part of everything mobile and people don’t even realize they’re doing it. I tell people all the time that you don’t have to check-in. You’re geotagging yourself all the time from your phone allowing data to be collected, ads to be rendered, searches to better, based on your location.

Eric Miltsch

Eric Miltsch, Digital guy @AuctionDirect. Co-Founder @CarZar_app. & LBS pro | blog
For our business, Auction Direct USA will continue to use location based marketing services to create more unique ways of connecting with customers, encourage loyalty and try to track foot traffic. I predict more activity from our internal sales people and even more from the customers as they take advantage of specials and recommendations. I also expect to see even more photo sharing activity from customers.

Adrian Parker

Adrian Parker director of digital/social media, RadioShack | blog
Location applications bring the rhythm of local interaction to life on your mobile device. Applications like foursquare give real-time snapshots of who is doing what, where and with whom – and layers on reviews, tips, points and interactions that allow physical experiences to be shared across the globe. As a business owner, it’s a creative, low-cost, high impact channel for maintaining a mobile presence in an emerging platform. Going forward, location capabilities will be injected into the DNA of digital advertising, marketing campaigns and social networks. I don’t see location platforms as a marketing medium, rather they are a business practice that will mature as mobile adoption escalates.

In just 2 years, smartphone adoption in the U.S. has skyrocketed from 18% to 44%. This represents a significant opportunity for location tools to engage consumers at their point of decision, on their terms. Phones will no longer be the 3rd screen of interaction, they will be the 1st screen, surpassing Televisions and PCs. The real impact is that consumers are beginning to take advantage of GPS, Siri, cameras, apps, Wi-Fi and other wireless capabilities, including mobile commerce. In the past 10 years, RadioShack has sold more than 72 million cellphones. As smartphones and tablets are becoming the preferred device shoppers use to research and locate products, we will leverage the products we sell as a medium to connect with consumers, locally.

Chad Reed

Chad Reed, CMO, Bluebox (and co-owner, Roll On Sushi)
The future of LBS resides with monetizing the app and making it more desirable for users and brands. I think geofencing will play a role with this. getting offers and recommendations pushed to you based off your interests when you are around specific locations is big. i also think the future is tying in with loyalty programs. Not sure exactly how that will work but someone will figure it out

Bluebox is now working directly with brands by turning their loyalty program in to a fun casual gaming network using social media and real rewards from brands.

Rob Reed

Rob Reed, founder and CEO, Momentfeed,
Three technologies to look at for 2012 from Rob’s recent SoLoMo Manifesto (download here):
1. Mobile commerce – includes a number of solutions ranging from in-app purchases, executed online or at the point of sale, to the venerable mobile wallet, which stores all of your credit and debit cards, gift cards, and loyalty cards. Google and PayPal, together with Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, are all angling to merge our wallets with our smartphones. Meanwhile, brands like Starbucks offer branded payment apps and startups like ChowNow and Splickit offer multi-merchant solutions.
2. Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging technology that facilitates payments and engagements with a simple tap of one’s phone. The NFC chip in the phone can communicate at close range with other NFC devices, such as point-of-sale systems, as well as with static NFC tags, which can take the form of a decal. For marketers, NFC represents an opportunity to position one’s brand at the front end of location-based engagements.
3. Indoor Location - The final frontier for location will be universal indoor navigation. Which is to say, the ability to navigate indoor spaces with the same level of coverage we enjoy outdoors via GPS but with pinpoint accuracy

Simon Salt

Simon Salt, CEO, author, Social Location Marketing and CEO, IncSlingers
Predictions for 2012… foursquare continues its growth, but as it does becomes less visible – e.g. it will continue to acquire new users but it is becoming like Twitter in that we don’t really talk about it anymore – its part of the social media fabric of life. Check-in will become irrelevant as an action on its own (if it isn’t already) – campaigns will have to become more relevant and less about just checking in. Marketers will start to leverage QR codes/NFC as part of their location campaigns – they provide proof of physical presence, and it can be done at the point of sale which provides better tracking.

Mike Schneider

Mike Schneider, co-author Location-Based Marketing for Dummies, SVP digital incubator, Allen & Gerritsen | blog
In 2012, I look for four things to happen:
1. Look for intent-based stuff to get serious. It’s time for companies to start making predictions based on our behaviors or intercepting us on the way to do something. Some big brand will capitalize. I’ll race ya!
2. Social loyalty everywhere. Connecting location to payments and providing value is huge. <– period
3. Micro-locations become more prevalent starting with your TV. An increased effort will be made to try to figure out what you’re watching and giving consumers ways to not only promote, but also to purchase.
4. More gaming! We have only seen the beginning of mobile / location based gaming. Look for companies to find ways to improve on the clunky experiences of Dokobots, Geomon and Hitcher to provide better interaction with the environment.

Aaron Strout

Aaron Strout, co-author Location-Based Marketing for Dummies, head of location-based marketing, WCG | blog
My predictions?
1. Check-ins become more passive (active checking in like we do today on foursquare doesn’t go away but become less of a focus).
2. Foursquare really goes mainstream and grows to 50 million users (yes, I know this is bold).
3. Location becomes a component of every mobile application (and some non-mobile applications).
4. Like Twitter and Facebook in 2010-11, a number of Fortune500 brands begin thinking about a “location” as part of their 2012 marketing strategy.
Bonus: Brand adoption of Instagram goes through the roof.

So what about you? Got a location-based marketing prediction? Leave it in the comments below. I’ll keep my eye on them and may pull a few up into the post!

MDigitalLife exists to showcase how forward-thinking physicians are using digital communication channels to change the way that they practice medicine.

While doctors have been spending more and more time online for the last several years (Manhattan Research tells us that their professional online time increased from 2.5 to 8 hours per week between 2002 and 2009#), we’ve noticed an unprecedented explosion of online activity in the past 12 months.

The goal of this series is to learn from these “doctors of the future” and to share their thinking with a broader audience in the healthcare space … we believe that they’ll inspire other physicians, hospitals, nurses, health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to be more transparent and more inclined to dialog for the benefit of all.

The truth is that these doctors are still very much trailblazers. There has been little if any guidance from the medical establishment (e.g., academic institutions, physician’s associations, etc.) on how and why physicians can improve their own practices and possibly even the health of their patients by using online tools and resources. There are certainly some notable exceptions (e.g., the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media), and we’ll take the time to learn from those folks as well.

But the focus here is clearly on the doctors. Their online activities are frequently misunderstood by their peers (if their peers are aware of them at all), but we hope to join them in changing that. Look for an interview here on WCG’s Common Sense blog every Wednesday morning … beginning with a leading light in the space – and a friend – Dr. Bryan Vartabedian.

View the LiveFromStubbs interview with Doug Ulman here.

The 3rd edition of the LiveFromStubbs podcast was a special one for me for more than one reason.  First, it was my first on-camera episode – and I’m always happy to share a stage with regular hostsAaron Strout and Kyle Flaherty.  But more importantly, the subject of our interview was Doug Ulman, the CEO of the Livestrong Foundation.  This is a big deal for me not only because of who Doug is – the CEO of one of America’s most remarkable and forward-thinking non-profits, and the man Fast Company has called “The Most Savvy Health Care Leader in Social Media” – but also because of how we came to be where he is.

A 3-time cancer survivor, Doug was forced to a difficult realization at a young age:

“[After being diagnosed with cancer,] All I wanted to do was connect with other individuals who’d been down the same path … I could not find them.  I thought I was the only one.  I felt all alone.  I knew all the statistics but I could not easily access other people.”

- Doug Ulman, CEO of the Livestrong Foundation at Social Health 2010 (SxSH.org)

Livestrong has dedicated itself to improving the lives of people affected by cancer worldwide.  And a big part of their strategy involves connecting cancer patients and their families with the resources they need … which often means helping to connect them to people like themselves – people who “have been down that road before,” as Doug puts it.  Over the last two years, Facebook and twitter have become the largest source of referrals of survivors to Livestrong.

One of the really unique ways that Livestrong helps people who approach them is to offer the services of a “Navigator” – a person who can help point them directly to the resources they need (and 90% of whom use twitter to interact with participants).  Increasingly, those resources either leverage the principles of social media (the groundswell vs. top-down, corporate hierarchy) or are literally built on social media platforms.  LiveStrong has positioned itself not as a be-all, end-all source for information or a lone behemoth, but as a “catalyst and convener” of all those who share an interest in living with (and ultimately beating) cancer.  Just a few weeks before our interview, Doug and his team hosted an event in Austin called the LiveStrong Young Adult Alliance – more than 200 organizations focused on helping young adults dealing with cancer.  That kind of crowdsourcing is a natural way to ensure that the best ideas bubble to the top, and that the right people are in the right place to make those ideas real.  And it’s use of Facebook has been particularly remarkable – operating separate communities that focus not only on different geographic regions, but also different types of cancer … whatever can deliver the most value to the audience it’s there to serve.

With that kind of thinking, it’s easy to see why Livestrong has made the transition from being a cause into a movement. Enjoy the video, follow Doug on Twitter, and be sure to check out the great work that Livestrong continues to do.  For more LiveFromStubbs podcasts, click here and subscribe!

While Mike and I both have perspective to share (and we both include these thoughts at the end of this post) we also wanted to ask some of the other bright minds (established AND up-and-coming) for their take. So without further ado, here are some thoughts on “the best of 2011″ for location-based marketing:

Andy Ellwood

Andy Ellwood, director of business development, Gowalla | blog
Location based anythings are quickly emerging to anythings and the ‘location based’ title is now becoming ubiquitous. As almost every device we use now includes a way to document location data, the questions of “should it include location” have been replaced with “how will it include location.” Brands that we worked with at Gowalla have spent the past two years exploring the nascent idea that their brand stories could be tied to locations and have learned how and where they want to be discovered and engaged with consumers on the go.

Jason Falls

Jason Falls, author, speaker and CEO of Social Media Explorer
The biggest news of 2011 has got to be the Whrrl acquisition by Groupon. The possibilities of the two of these companies coming up with some sort of location/daily deal hybrid is really intriguing. Of course, I would have thought we’d see something that was the result of that marriage by now, but still … I’m excited to see what they do and thought the acquisition was really interesting. The Facebook-Gowalla thing is too, but I figure that to be more of a talent acquisition than a functionality one. But I’ve been wrong before.

Eric Friedman

Eric Friedman, director of business development, foursquare | blog
I am most excited about the launch of foursquare Radar – for us its the intersection of the right information to the right person at the right time and place. We created a wealth of tips and information from friends and brands, and Radar allows a way to deliver this info to someone when they are near a location they are interested in.

Eric Katerman

Eric Katerman, co-founder, Forecast
Lots of consolidation in the checkin space last year: ebay buys WHERE, Whrrl goes to Groupon, Gowalla to Facebook. Foursquare won the check-in battle, but is checking in enough to keep users engaged? All are based on logging the past, keeping track of what has happened.

Jason Keath

Jason Keath, founder & CEO, Socialfresh
Foursquare stands atop a pile of their broken, sold, and dying competition when it comes to check-in apps. They won the sector a year ago and have now cemented their Jean Claude Van Damme dominance. Gowalla, WHERE and Whrrl where acquired and Facebook took a big step back. Revenue channels up, partners up, business support up, user growth steady.

Instagram has the steady growl of a 56 Chevy poised to take off of the start line. They are just getting started as the photo app to beat (15 million users in 1 year) and they are only on one of the top mobile platforms. They are the future of location, while the focus of the app is image sharing, location has been built in from day one, integrates with foursquare and Facebook, and picks up photo locations better than any app.

Asif Khan

Asif Khan – president, Location Based Marketing Association
2011 has been an amazing year for location-based marketing. Perhaps amongst the biggest moves is the failure of Gowalla, the emergence of indoor location platforms like Shopkick, PointInside and BeeMedia and the consumers’ zeal for deals from LivingSocial and Groupon. Perhaps my favorite app for 2011 is Sonar. I attend a ton of conferences and Sonar correlates check-in data from Foursquare with LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook data about everyone else in the room, helping you network better.

Nataly Kogan

Nataly Kogan, VP customer experience, WHERE
I think a few developments for 2011:

Consolidation of meaningful players in the check-in space. Gowalla goes bye bye because Fourquare is the de-facto check-in app. (Although I bet Instgram is gaining on foursquare in terms of being the primary client through which people check in.) Whrrl goes to Groupon earlier in the year.

WHERE gets acquired by PayPal/eBay, as PayPal announces its strategy to offer users a way to pay anytime, anywhere, including now at retail. Validation for LBS in a big way – need to offer consumers ubiquitous access to great deals when and where relevant and allow them to pay however they want.

Paul Mabray

Paul Mabray, chief strategy officer, Vintank
For me the biggest two factors was the understanding that location layers in data was important and seeing key platforms (e.g. Instagram) including them as “texture” to every post. Despite the naysayers, location as a layer is one of the most important elements that all apps/platforms should be integrating. Another key factor is the notion that we have limited time to use LOTS of platforms (even niche ones) and tools like Sonar demonstrated that asynchronous tools could be key factors to add value without forcing the user to leverage another platform. As an example imagine a platform like Foodspotting grabbing all your food data from Facebook, Twitter, etc and using that to build asynchronous suggestions for restaurants/dishes for you. This could be applied to books, movies, music, wine and more.

My favorite apps from 2011:

• Path
• Instagram
• Sonar
• Oink
• Up (love the concept of integrating physical objects to social and timeline)

Jill McFarland

Jill McFarland, digital marketing strategist, restaurant & hospitality industry | blog
One of my favorite things to see this year was first Cinnabon in November and now Arby’s donating a $1 for every Foursquare check-in to a cause.

Biggest moves to me were Groupon aquiring Whrrl and Facebook aquiring Gowalla but not because of dollars or size, what made them interesting is that they were both talent and UX acquisitions.

Liz Philips

Liz Philips, social media for TaylorMade, Adidas Golf & Ashworth | blog
As someone that’s a bit of an outsider to the LBS space, here are a few thoughts:

The integration of deals (Living Social, Buy with Me, etc.) into foursquare this past year is very interesting. Finally, a way to both aggregate deals (thank goodness, my inbox sees about twenty Groupon-like deals every morning, I simply can’t sift through them) and serve them upbased on relevancy. If the deal is relevant, obviously there is a higher conversion rate. Foursquare’s platform serves as the “pipes” for these vendors to geo-target based on previous traffic patterns. This makes a lot of sense for both sides as well as for the consumer – a win/win/win all the way around.

As for new apps/platforms… haven’t been impressed with anything enough to call out – so I look forward to reading your post! LocalMind is a great idea but without users, no traction. Same thing with Wenzani (good idea but bad execution; needs hooks to other social platforms for both content as well as syndication for sharing. Haven’t tried LOQUL. I also started using Waze for scoping out traffic on my long commute – the idea is nice (social mobile app with real-time traffic updates from other users for an optimal commute) but after a few weeks of using it, I figured out that Google Maps with traffic worked just as well.

My pick for the best location app is… Glympse – though it came out a few years ago, the app is now available on more platforms. Glympse is a location tracking app where (as they say in their tagline) you can “share your where.” Basically the app turns your smartphone into a tracking beacon and you can selectively share your moving or static location with whoever needs to know (the person who’s waiting for you at a lunch date, your parents to prove you’re REALLY at the movies and not some party, etc). Getting into the habit of simply “sharing your where” would cut down on phone calls and texts etc in the time that typically precedes an IRL meet-up.

Simon Salt

Simon Salt, CEO, author, Social Location Marketing and CEO, IncSlingers
Whrrl to Groupon – a very bad move. Gowalla to Facebook – remains to be seen but overall the loss of Gowalla is a bad thing for the user base. The closing of Bizzy was a shame but shows that the space is probably crowded.

My favorite apps in the space continue to be GoldRun and CarZar.

Mike Schneider

Mike Schneider, co-author Location-Based Marketing for Dummies, SVP digital incubator, Allen & Gerritsen | blog
The coolest LBS apps of 2011:

1. LevelUp: Free cash for consumers (inverted deals) not enough? Acqusition, retention, insight and reduced interchange fees for the merchants, plus a view of behavior across locations. It’s epic.
2. Uber: Need a ride? Uber has one and you will ride in style. I call this the Trader Joe’s of transportation. You basically get your own limo driver for one ride. It finds you, it puts you in touch with a driver, you see that driver on the map, they come and get you, they take you where you need to go and the transaction happens cleanly in the background.
3. Path: OK, it’s not from 2011 technically, but Path 2.0 is like UX porn. It’s supposed to be an intimate network for just your closest friends but it turns out that it’s a pretty cool way to show people where you are and see what is happening in places. See, people only
4. Trover: No one is going to use it, but they should. On the surface it’s too close to instagram, but it’s supposed to only be the most awesome discoveries in the area. As you browse the photo stream, the icon turns from a guy walking to longboarding to biking to car to plane.
5. Forecast: These guys have future foursquare. The question is whether or not they are afraid to start monetizing. The benefits are obvious. They need a big brand to sign on.
6. Alfred: Cleversense showed us all how to do recommendation engines. It’s what Bizzy would have been if they had not spent time on the web experience.  Google agrees. They gobbled them up.
7. foursquare: Yeah #fatdenny and the gang are still cool. The radar feature is pretty fun and their integration with American Express has raised a few eyebrows. They still need a few things (like impression metrics) to be taken seriously as part of the digital (mobile) media budget, but they did win the check-in wars and they do have one of the best platforms to build on top of (just ask Forecast).
8. Timehop: Your daily dose of what you did a year ago! It’s a smile-a-day.

Aaron Strout

Aaron Strout, co-author Location-Based Marketing for Dummies, head of location-based marketing, WCG | blog
For me? The two biggest things I saw in location-based marketing are the hockey stick growth of smart phone ownership in the U.S. (up to nearly 50% from 30%) and Facebook’s decision to transition location from a service to a feature. What I’m starting to see is that while many run of the mill Facebook users aren’t inclined to open the app to “check in,” they are more inclined to add their location to a status or image upload.

Next up, 2012 Location-Based Marketing Predictions.

The single biggest reason why 2012 predictions are wrong: they describe trends that are already happening, or — in some cases — have already passed. That’s the tricky thing about predicting the future in the new millennium: more often than not, the future has already happened.

Still, in leafing through dozens of lists, I’ve found five predictions that are indeed likely to define the communications industry over the next 12 months.

1. Credibility Becomes King. Or, at the least, prince. Writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, Robert Hernandez said that content creation is so easy, and the supply of content so great, that what really matters is not the ability to reach the masses, but to have the masses believe you:

“With technology empowering everyone with the ability to create and to distribute, I predict — and wish — that in 2012 the new dominating factor will be Credibility. Actually, earned Credibility.”

Bookmark this. In a world where attention is limited, this is huge.

2. Brand Journalism Goes Mainstream: Penned by Derek DeVries, this was number 10 on PRSA’s inconsistent list of 12 public relations trends for 2012. Brand journalism is the idea companies can create content just as easily as media companies, and the smartest companies will drop the corporate-speak and start bringing their consumers/readers smart, pithy, valuable content. We’re seeing the trailblazers do that already. But the barriers to adopting this sort of mindset should fall even further next year. Will people take “brand journalism” seriously? They will if brands keep in mind Trend 1, above.

3. Big (Health) Data Becomes Bigger: Electronic medical records vendor Practice Fusion put out their own list, which included Circle Square‘s Michael Lake predicting that the growing amount of data stored in EMRs will prompt a boom in analysis of this kind of health data. While predicting a dramatic increase health IT penetration has been a sucker’s bet for the last decade, I’m confident that the increasing amount of data will shape how we understand and talk about medicine.

4. Influencer Rating Companies Lose Influence. Inkhouse says that the “influence bubble” will deflate in 2012, suggesting that narcissism-driven services like Klout will be exposed as something less than useful. That doesn’t mean that the need to understand influence will grow any less important. It just means that we’ll have to get smarter about how we define our terms. Real influence tends to work its magic in small, poorly defined groups, and those that develop the tools to enter and engage those groups will have an advantage over those that simply invent metrics.

5. “Conversations” Becomes the Killer App for Journalists: Joy Mayer, writing for Nieman, makes this plain: “In 2012, the divide will grow between journalists who are intently aware of and responsive to the needs of their communities and those who continue to make decisions based on long-ago-learned fortress mentalities.”

The sentiment here isn’t new. The wonderful Columbia Journalism Review article “The Newspaper that Almost Seized the Future” makes it clear that the idea of using electronic community to cement relationships between journalism and reader predates even the web browser. But we now have all the tools to make this real. A year from now, reporters who refuses to engage (on Twitter, in comments, on Facebook) will court irrelevance, no matter how big their news outlet.

Please use the comments to highlight other great predictions that I may have missed, and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

The new layout was announced in September at Facebook’s conference but is rolling out this week to users. As Facebook users receive the option this week to upgrade, they will be given a seven day period to customize their Timeline as they’d like before it goes live to their community. You can publish your page at any point during the seven day trial period, otherwise Facebook will automatically publish it to your community once the seven days are up. If you’d like to be upgraded, visit Facebook’s Timeline page and hit the “Get Timeline” button.

The following features are included in the new Timeline layout:

• Cover photo – your cover photo stretches across the top of your profile and is meant to reflect who you are visually. Your previous profile picture remains intact but is a smaller square and is now not the main “face” of your profile.
• Activity log – new page called the Activity Log that shows all content Facebook has from a user. Each item can be edited or removed.
• Timeline scroll bar – featured on the right side of your profile, allows you to scroll up/down from birth till now. Users can now insert life events that happened before you created your account on Facebook.
• Timeline drop down menus and highlights vs. all stories – if you don’t like the scroll bar on the right, you can jump to a certain year by selecting that year in the new drop down menu. You can also choose if you want to see highlights (most interesting posts) or all posts in your timeline.
• Post upgrades/downgrades – if you’d like to draw more attention to certain posts, there is now an option to “star” them to increase their status in your Timeline. You also still have the option of deleting past posts and limiting posts to just friends vs. general public. If you want to downgrade your old posts that you’d rather have as visible, you have the option of limiting all old posts to friends only instead of going through each one manually.

This new format hasn’t opened for brand or group pages yet and it’s unclear from Facebook when they will but given Twitter and other network’s  recent updates to be more brand-focused, it’s likely their turn will soon come. Forbes recently posted a great overview of possible implications this could have for brands, including the following:

• Brand and page likes have a larger focus on the page, immediately under the cover photo, next to friends, photos and a user’s location map. Instead of combing through a user’s wall or info page to find their common likes, users can now more easily display their likes and brand’s are getting better real estate on their profile pages.
• Interface changes like Timeline could cause users to spend more time on the site and ultimately increase engagement opportunities brands have with their current and potential new fans.
• Increased interest in profile pages and more time spent refining personal Timelines will help marketers share more relevant ads to users. Additionally because the ads remain in the same place no matter how far users scroll, they are receiving even more impressions than before.

As Forbes suggests, brands will ultimately have to step up their game and content if they want to encourage their community to make their branded interactions a larger fixture on their Timeline.

Mashable also recently posted a slideshow of possible “mock-ups” created by digital ad agencies to show how brand pages could look if Facebook made brands take on a similar Timeline layout. See one for Red Bull below.

From: Ryan Kennedy (via Mashable)

Some brands have already started to consider how to make their own footprint – Mountain Dew is now offering their fans downloadable branded cover photos. You tell us, would you sport your favorite brand as the cover of your profile?

That’s because the hiring of Smith officially marks a decline to the most detestable media trend in memory: search-engine optimized content.

As a reader, nothing has been more agonizing to watch than the rise of writing  created specifically to look good to search engines, engineered to be heavy on keywords and light on subtlety. The intention was not to necessarily create compelling narratives, but rather writing that Google machines could understand without difficulty.

Making Google the arbiter of what kind of media we would see gave us the easy-to-mock Demand Media and Associated Content, famous for high-ranking articles that said nothing at all. But the trend changed journalism at higher levels, too, encouraging newspaper editors to run banal, overly literal headlines rather than clever ones. (The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten skewered this trend last year in a must-read piece on the evils of SEO-driven journalism.)

Smith says that the decision to marry his hard-news background with the meme-creation machine of Buzzfeed is the start of something different and something better: rather than writing to impress computer algoritms, journalisms should be writing to encourage sharing on social networks such as Facebook. Here’s how he described it to Fast Company:

“We’re going to operate on the assumption that the main way readers get our stories is through sharing, and that we should be writing the sort of things people want to share,” he wrote back. “There’s a huge advantage organizing yourself around the distribution model that is actually how people get news.”

… “A lot of online journalism has been about gaming search engine algorithms–writing, in a way, for machines. Sharing is fundamentally about producing things people like.”

The fear, of course, is that a hyper-focus on what readers want (as opposed to what they need) encourages the creation of more Kardashian news and less journalism about, say, the death throes of the Euro. But those fears have always existed in journalism, and they’d exist with or without Facebook. Though I still have Filter Bubble fears, given a choice between what my friends like and what Google likes, I’ll stand with Smith.

For half a million people, December through February is the peak time for a specific type of depression: seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Today, those suffering from SAD and other forms of depression can access valuable information, support and resources online. But with the volumes of information available online, where would one even begin to look?

Coinciding with Seasonal Depression Awareness Month, SharecareNow, powered by WCG identified the most prominent online influencers (see video) affecting the lives of millions of Americans who suffer from depression. The “SharecareNow 10: Depression” list is a strong mix of practitioners, authors and patients, who are are passionate about increasing awareness and support for those affected by depression:

1. Julie de Azevedo Hanks, MSW, LCSW, BCD, JulieHanks.com
2. Natasha Tracy, Breaking Bipolar
3. Therese J. Borchard, World of Psychology
4. Chato B. Stewart, Mental Health Humor
5. Nancy Schimelpfening, About.com – Depression
6. Daniel J. Tomasulo, PhD, TEP, MFA, Psychology Today
7. Marcia Purse, About.com – Bipolar Disorder
8. Rick Nauert, PhD, Psych Central
9. Jack Smith, Coping With Depression
10. Michael Friedman, LMSW, The Huffington Post

In the U.S. alone, an estimated 1 in 10 American adults report that they experience some degree of depression. Equally as alarming, while the average age onset of depression is 32, the group most affected by depression is ages 45-64.

We believe that in order to truly revolutionize treatment for depression and other conditions, we must find ways to unlock the power of collective knowledge – especially that of physicians, therapists, patients, and educators in health and wellness. Think about this: if you have an in-person conversation with your physician, it can be very productive, informative, have very little misinterpretation, and you can take positive action. Then, when you go online to interact with your therapist, other professionals and patients, the conversation should stay that simple, honest and clear.

We’re seeing that web platforms, blogs, forums and other social sites are facilitating open and honest conversations across numerous health and wellness categories. And in every category, a passionate, influential group of individuals is working to further that discussion and knowledge sharing. The “SharecareNow 10: Depression” list can be a tool for those suffering from depression and related conditions to start learning more about their situation, connecting with those who can offer support, and furthering their own conversation about treatments.

The ultimate goal, what we’re all working toward, is facilitating better health.

Best,

Bob Pearson & Adam Pedowitz

Similar to how users can follow brands and celebrities on Facebook and Twitter, StumbleUpon channels will help stumblers discover content from the brands they know and love, or want to learn more about. I have already seen this dubbed: “more controlled stumbling” – an interesting concept.

In other words, it’s a way for brands to get desired content in front of their followers. And investigating the features (built upon an already impressive platform), StumbleUpon channels appear to offer a significant new content syndication tool.

Having played around with some of the beta channels, here are a few noteworthy features:

• Sleek Design: Featured content is displayed with images carrying the corresponding StumbleUpon interest category.
• Followers: The follower count is displayed for social proof, as well as the number of featured content pieces.
• Stumble Channel: If I don’t feel like selecting a particular piece of content, I can opt to stumble the channel and land where the algorithm takes me.
• Custom URLs: Such as su.pr/TheAtlantic (for The Atlantic) or su.pr/ESPNCFB (for ESPN College Football)

To help make sense of the new offering and its potential, a colleague at StumbleUpon had a few takeaways for brands to keep in mind when considering a StumbleUpon channel:

1. White Label: Channels are currently white labeled with a few brands/individuals. As such, they’re not widely available for other brands to create at the moment.
2. It’s Not A Destination: The initial purpose of a brand channel will be to integrate new content into StumbleUpon for users to discover, not necessarily to create a destination site, like brand pages on Facebook or Google.*
3. It’s Free (for now): As it stands, brand channels on StumbleUpon will be free to set up.
4. Potential Integration with Paid Discovery: Brand channels may provide a way to further enhance StumbleUpon Paid Discovery campaigns by combining promotional efforts for greater pageviews.
5. No Guarantee on Pageviews: While StumbleUpon Paid Discovery can deliver the pageviews a brand requests, the followers of a StumbleUpon channel will determine its success.

With more than 20 million registered users, and growing at more than 1 million each month, StumbleUpon represents a massive opportunity for brands to syndicate content, and to discover and engage new customers. It’s certainly a channel we will be paying close attention to.

* In order for users to find content (any content) through StumbleUpon, another user will have had to “discover” it and tag it appropriately. This action indexes the web page, video, slideshow, etc. in StumbleUpon. Channels will be a new way for brands to enter their content into StumbleUpon, and syndicate it for discovery by other users.

Bill Evans, EVP & Chief Digital Officer at Team Chemistry/WPP hosted and presented some interesting thoughts on pharma and social media:

• Pharma companies want to be innovative, but they don’t want to be first.
• In the world of pharma marketing online, “new” often equals “no” when it comes to legal and regulatory departments. Data doesn’t solve this problem. It takes education.
• The bandwagon effect: “I just saw that so-and-so company is using Google+ now. Why aren’t we?”
• The fallacy of scale: Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better. Or the myth, “We can’t use this new media tool, because it doesn’t work for everyone.” Brochures don’t work for everyone, but we still use them.
• Skeuomorphs: I know … I didn’t know the term either. A skeuomorph is a legacy element to an object that is in there because it’s always been there but serves no real purpose (maple syrup bottle handles, spokes on hubcaps, using a floppy disk icon for “Save As”). Many people at organizations like to keep these legacy processes simply because … they’ve always been there.
• Be sure you’re considering to socialize everything rather than coming up with a social media program.
• It’s okay for pharma companies to have real-time conversations with consumers. They do it all the time. It’s called the telephone.

Eileen O’Brien of Siren Interactive and founder of the Twitter chat #socpharm stressed the point of creating “shareworthy” information. When you create content, think to yourself, “Would I share this?” Next up was a panel of patient advocates who told some pretty gripping stories on what they face on a daily basis, living with a chronic disease (or two or three). From their discussion emerged one telling statement as to how they wish to be treated. “I’m not my disease, but if you haven’t met my disease, you haven’t met me.”

I have to say that my favorite of the day was David Thompson, U.S. Social Media Strategist for Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. His charming English wit was accented by an honest and no-nonsense approach to social media strategy for internal comms. He even managed to pull off a metaphor of Old MacDonald’s farm to represent internal social media policy. Healthy Women & Mom Central Consulting have been doing some interesting work together to reach moms via a network of influential mom bloggers about health topics and products, without being overly commercial in their outreach.

Overall, it was refreshing to see that over half the audience worked at one pharma company or another. Pharma is taking more interest in how social media affects their company and their brands.

Looking back, the lack of guidance might have had as big an impact as actual FDA action would have. There are 5 major consequences of the FDA decision not to move ahead:

1. Branded promotion has been stunted. Branded promotion online exists, but it has yet to flower, for the simple reason that the risk of being accused of improper marketing far outstrips the benefit of educating doctors and patients. The lack of guidance only inflates this perception of risk and stems the flow of creative ideas.
2. Unbranded promotion has been delayed. There are some excellent examples of pharmaceutical companies doing great, creative work online that is providing clear and obvious benefit to the health care system (including some great work by our clients), but these pilot efforts could have been blooming two (or more!) years ago. Instead, fear and uncertainly slowed their trajectory. Now that industry has figured it out on their own, guidance might not have a huge impact.
3. The public health has (probably) been harmed. While pharma companies — which arguable have more expertise in certain arenas of health care than any other organization — have been shackled on social media, there continues a rising tide of pseudo-science and fearmongering online. The best way to fight lousy information is with good information. Restricting the ability of industry to join this conversation has been a net benefit to those who with an anti-science agenda. (This was at the heart of an analysis that my WCG colleagues presented to the FDA more than 2 years ago.)
4. Basic questions remain unanswered. No one expected comprehensive guidance, but there has always been hope that the FDA would weigh in on some specific questions, such as whether — in a character-limited environment (Twitter, AdWords, etc.) — pharma companies were required to include or link to an entire package insert. Companies have made their best guesses, but, after years of study, only the FDA knows for sure what the rules are.
5. The agency has opened itself to charges of hypocrisy. The FDA has itself become increasingly skilled with its use of social media tools, even as they refused to push out guidance. It creates an unusual and ironic playing field: the FDA has great latitude to use modern communication tools to inform the public through a variety of channels, but it has stymied the industry’s ability to follow suit.

Though I have long been a skeptic that FDA guidance would be a magic elixir for industry, there’s no question that it has caused some damage, and that some of that damage can’t be undone. Still, the optimist in me wonders if this could still be the year. It is too much to hope for the FDA as social media Santa this year?