We’re on to part two of our pharmaceutical social media series, pharmaceutical social media profile optimization. This article builds off of part one – Audience Research, so check it out if you haven’t yet!

Attention to detail during profile optimization is very important. We will discuss where to post ISI in your profile, how to conduct keyword research for pharmaceutical social media profiles, how to mobile-optimize your profile, and how to include promotional elements on your  profile.

Let’s start with keyword research.

Keyword Research for Pharmaceutical Social Media Profiles

After establishing a clear identity of your pharmaceutical social media profile’s audience, make sure that your offerings are optimized so that they can be easily discovered by potential followers.

Your first step should be to conduct social media keyword research to optimize your page’s information and post content. This research has to be platform-specific, so keep the following differences in tools and approaches between the major players in mind:

TwitterTwitter logo

There are several free tools you can use to analyze keyword volume on Twitter. TweetReach is one solid tool for measuring basic keyword reach. In order to use the tool, complete the following:

  1. Create a Twitter profile
  2. Visit https://tweetreach.com/ and click ‘Get Started’ -> Sign in with Twitter
  3. Enter your account login information
  4. Enter various keywords and hashtags in the Twitter Snapshot Report to get the number of potential impressions, number of contributors, individual posts, and general activity around various topics

Facebook LogoFacebook

Unlike search engine keyword tools that tell you which phrases are searched the most, Facebook’s ‘Audience Insights’ tool tells you how many people on Facebook have an interest in certain topics. To access Audience Insights:

  1. Create a Facebook page
  2. Create a Business Manager account
  3. Set up advertising access through Business Manager and add payment method. You will not have to pay to access Audience Insights
  4. Navigate to Ads Manager
  5. Click the hamburger icon next to ‘Ads Manager’ at the top left of the screen and navigate to ‘Audience Insights’
  6. Select ‘Everyone on Facebook’
  7. Enter your targeting information for the individuals you want to reach. Make sure you’re only targeting people who live in the United States.
  8. You will be able to see the number of individuals who are interested in the topics you select.

Instagram LogoInstagram

Since Facebook owns and distributes ads on Instagram, you will need to create a Facebook page and a Facebook advertising account by signing up for Facebook Business Manager here. Once you do that you will need to create a campaign through Facebook’s Ad Manager and only target Instagram placements.

  1. Navigate to Ad Manager -> Campaigns
  2. Click ‘+Create’
  3. Select ‘Reach’ as your goal
  4. In the ‘Ad Set’ configuration level enter one interest per topic
    1. Make sure your demographics and geographic targeting makes sense for your social media audience
  5. Under ‘Placements’ select ‘Edit Placements’ and target Instagramonly
  6. Give the campaign an unlimited budget
  7. Set the start and end date 1 month apart
  8. Enter the topics that are most relevant to your business. The potential reach for each topic is the number of people who are interested in that topic and this will provide you with a general idea of which topics will be most beneficial to focus on.
  9. Save this volume information as a resource

Youtube LogoYouTube

Conducting keyword research on Youtube is easy. All you have to do is create a Google Ads account and make a dummy campaign. The campaign’s setup menu features a targeting section where you can add one keyword at a time to check volume. Here’s how:

  1. Create a Google Ads account (it’s free) and create a dummy video campaign
  2. Create a new campaign and select ‘Brand Awareness and Reach’ as your goal
  3. Use the ‘Skippable In-Stream’ campaign sub-type
  4. Set the start and end date of your campaign exactly one month apart
  5. Give yourself an unlimited budget so that volume estimates aren’t limited by budget since your goal is just to see how many impressions are available per specific keyword
  6. At the bottom of the campaign setup window, copy the URL of any 15 to 45 second video on YouTube to use as your dummy campaign’s ad
  7. You can now enter keywords to see how many people per month typically view videos with content that matches the keyword you have entered.

Cross-Reference Social Media Research with Search Engine Research

Once you have found the highest-volume topics that are relevant to your product, conduct keyword research for search engines like Google and Bing. It’s a good idea to cross-reference high-volume phrases from social media to paid search engines since search engines will also help direct traffic to your pharmaceutical social media profile.

Book with dice in it spelling keyword

To do this:

  1. Create a Google Ads account (it’s free) in order to get access to Google Keyword Planner
  2. Create your account with the information that you anticipate using in the future
  3. Log in to your account
  4. Navigate to ‘Tools & Settings’ (i.e. the wrench icon)
  5. Click ‘Keyword Planner’
  6. Select ‘Discover New Keywords’
  7. Give your campaign an unlimited budget so that you are not limiting volume estimates (which predict impressions based on daily spend)
  8. Simply enter keywords to find the average monthly searches for these terms

Compare the volumes you see from Keyword Planner with what you gathered from other social media tools to determine the optimal keywords for your brand that have significant volumes across all tools. This method should allow you to find what is particularly important to social media users so that you can include those keywords as often you can in your profile. For research tools like Facebook that tell you reach estimates rather than keyword-based data, this will also allow you to deduce which keywords should be featured on a topic-by-topic basis.

If it sounds natural, then include a top keyword in the name of your page as well. This will help increase the relevance of your ads when running promoting your pharmaceutical social media profile. This, in turn, will reduce the amount you have to pay per click because your ad offers something that social media ad serving tools perceive as related to your audience.

Optimize Your Profile for Mobile Users

As we discussed in the last section, Pharmaceutical Social Media: Audience Research, it’s important to optimize your social media profile for the mobile users.

As of 2019, Internet traffic is 52% mobile and 43% desktop. If you want to put yourself in front of the most users as possible then it makes sense to target mobile users.  There are a few important ways to do this:

Ensure links are mobile-friendly

Any page that you link to from your social media profile should load in under 3.5 seconds on mobile devices and should be mobile-responsive. Mobile users aren’t very forgiving of slow load times or having to zoom in on page content. Enhance your pharmaceutical social media profile’s ability to convert traffic into leads by optimizing your resources for mobile devices.

Ensure your pharmaceutical social media profile is mobile-friendly

It’s very common to have images and profiles created on a desktop device without consideration of how they will look on mobile. Make sure the team that creates your pharmaceutical social media profile has one eye on its desktop page and one on its mobile page during development. It’s a simple balancing act, but tie-breakers should go to mobile viewability.

Incorporate SMS message updates

Make sure that your pharmaceutical social media profile features SMS text message updates for content. Doing this is will help retain users by allowing them sign up for updates to your profile via text.

Keep posts short and media-heavy

In addition to being impatient with slow load times, mobile users also don’t like to read a whole lot. Having short post descriptions followed by videos, infographics, or gifs is a great way to keep users engaged.

Analyze “long-tail” keywords and address them in “About” section and posts

We discussed mobile keyword research in our ‘Optimizing for Voice Search’ article, but it bears repeating here. Mobile users often use their voice search functions when searching for answers. Your profile and post content should address common questions that users ask. Doing so will create a semantic connection between those searches your profile.

Mobile phone home page with social icons

Including ISI & Prescribing Information

Your page is a promotional tool for your brand and should feature product-specific information wherever possible.

Before adding promotional elements, make sure you include ISI wherever possible. Pharmaceutical social media profiles on Facebook should feature the ‘Important Safety Information’ and ‘Prescribing Information’ tabs. These are clickable grey sections akin to ‘About’ and ‘Community’, and they are unique to pharmaceutical profiles. It’s also wise to pin an ISI post to the top of your page.

For Twitter, make sure you include a link to the brand’s full prescribing information in addition to the pinned ISI. Since there is no ‘Prescribing Information’ tab available like there is with Facebook, you want to include a link directly to the prescribing information (rather than to your site alone).

The 150 character limit for Instagram bios makes including full ISI text impossible. Instead, add a link to your brand’s complete prescribing information next to a link to your brand’s website. 

Adding Media

Next, upload photos and videos from your website to serve as profile photos, cover photos, and lead gen assets for your pharmaceutical social media profile. It’s important to leverage as much existing media as possible that exists for your brand. Doing so will give visitors (particularly the first few) a good idea of your brand and what it stands for.

Visit this article by Hootsuite that provides the appropriate photo sizes for social media platforms.

Magnet pulling emojis into computer

Creators of pharmaceutical social media profiles on Facebook should consider using a cover video that discusses their brand’s benefits and patient assistance programs. This will help retain mobile users and is an easy way to promote your brand’s benefits without being pushy. However, keep in mind that these videos can only be a maximum of 90 seconds. Non-DSA pages for black box warning brands may require too much time for fair balance to meet the 90-second limit.

Fill Out as Much as Possible

After adding media, fill out your ‘About’ section. Include a link to your brand’s website on your profile. Similarly, remember to include links to your pharmaceutical social media profile on your brand’s website. After that, include a synopsis of your brand, its indication, benefits, and ISI.

It’s also a good idea to create a custom offer for your copay card in the ‘Offers’ section of pharmaceutical Facebook profiles. Create a new ‘Online Only’ offer with a link to the copay card download page on your website. Fill out details about the card in the description box. Once again, make sure you include important keywords when describing the conditions of using the card, such as “Save on your {brand’s indication} treatment”.

Don’t forget to include a call-to-action button to Facebook pages. A “Learn More” call-to-action button featuring a patient-facing video is a solid choice for pharmaceutical social media profiles. Another option to consider is a “Get in Touch” button that opens a Facebook Messenger conversation with your page. Make sure your pharmaceutical social media profile is frequently monitored if you plan to have conversations with patients.

It’s important to fill out as much information as you can about your brand in your pharmaceutical social media profile. Doing so will maximize the amount of time users spend on your profile. More importantly, it will show them that you are dedicated to giving them as much information as possible to make educated decisions that apply to their lives.

Fill out information even if it seems unnecessary. Like brands, social media profiles have personalities. Make sure your brand’s profile conveys good-faith communication and effort. Providing as much information as possible is a big part of this.

Stay Tuned for Part 3

That’s it for this installment of our series on pharmaceutical social media. If you haven’t read part one on audience research for pharmaceutical social media profiles, you can check that out here. If you’re ready to more on to the next step, check out part three on brainstorming & producing pharma content for your profile!