The Social Media “Syndrome” Affecting the Pharmaceutical Community

I first became enamored with the concept of social media and sites like Facebook LinkedIn, and YouTube back in 2007 when I first opened an account on LinkedIn and thought that it was the coolest thing I had ever heard.  I was living back in my home country of Albania, which is a developing country in southeast Europe and communication technologies had just started to flourish there. It wasn’t common for someone to have a public or social account of any kind. Not until the advent of Facebook at least and its global popularity.

Back then I had no idea to what extent and depth the social media concept would go. Who would have predicted that almost every aspect of our life could be so perfectly arranged into a virtual reality to the point that a business is not a business anymore without a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, or some sort of social media marketing campaign.  It didn’t take long even for the pharmaceutical industry to catch up with the big social media hype.

In fact, the main idea of this blog is to provide you with the history and information about the social media effects in the pharmaceutical community and I will specifically focus on the role of social media for a specific role within the pharmaceutical industry.  My background is in sales and my American husband is a doctor who works as an executive in the pharmaceutical industry.  My career took a different turn when we decided to start a new company with the simple goal of creating a virtual “meeting place” for a particular profession within the Pharma industry.  The website consists of a number of career resources, including career articles, job posting, the possibility to connect with recruiters and post a resume, etc.  After 11 years of expertise in his field my husband realized that the role that he had been managing for so long, not only is such a niche position, but lacked external recognition, networking opportunities, and most importantly, there was no information available - either online or in print - to people wanting to break into this role called the Medical Science Liaison.      

It took a little over a year and a half for us to launch this website (www.mslworld.com). Combining and integrating the social media component, jobs, articles, blog, and launching an awareness campaign was not an easy task. However, it was made possible in part through the use of social media channels. We decided to create an entire social media campaign with creating a LinkedIn group, a Twitter account, a Facebook Fan Page, a blog, and even a YouTube Channel. We used LinkedIn to promote the launch and introduce the new website to over 1000 of existing connections within the field.  Then we connected all the other social media accounts (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the Blog) so that whenever a new post was added to Facebook, for example, it simultaneously gets posted in the other accounts connected to it. All this is made possible through individual applications within each account which allows you to select and connect with several social media platforms, and it’s all automatic from there.  

Our Social Media Icons from MSL WORLD.com

Do you think I could have accomplished the same without an entire social media campaign?