I’ve been to several major medical meetings recently and Twitter is beginning to see traction. Slowly but surely Twitter hashtag use among doctors at meetings is growing. The vendors are there, too. I attended AGA/Digestive Disease Week this week and I have been unimpressed with the attempts of vendors to participate in the back channel. Those trying seem inept at real dialog.
Remember that a meeting’s Twitter feed is a communication channel, not an opportunity for spam. Go ahead and remind us about your booth but only after contributing in a way that serves everyone in a non-promotional way (one pitch tweet for 10-20 informational tweets).
What works is sharing, not selling. Take interest in the attendees. Watch the feed. Listen. Re-tweet the interesting stuff. Share some breaking medical information. Reach out to attendees in a genuine, respectful way. And fear is no excuse – because the most memorable dialog will not involve your drug or medical device.
Start there and Twitter will work for not only for you but everyone.
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You definitely hit the nail on the head but that’s the big problem with Twitter in general these days. The feed is mostly one big blast of people telling what they are doing and announcing their “stuff”. True connections and conversations are rare. If we want meaningful connections at meetings, we have to regroup and do that with Twitter in general, too.
Brian,
So glad you blogged about this. We spend a great deal of time educating on this very topic to our clients. They are in fact, Medical Manufacturer’s and Distributors!
This is EXACTLY what we are constantly preaching! Become a resource for information and you’ll grow your brand and credibility. This is a very important piece for all businesses. The medical industry however, it is imperative!
Major medical conferences in which Twitter is used in a big way tend to be a combination of informational tweets from delegates and media about things they have just seen/heard – promotional spam from vendors – and many retweets of the above on the same channel – interswoven with some actual exchanges based on earlier tweets.
The whole field is evolving as we watch and if the meeting feeds are overwhelmed with spam and retweets I think use of conference hashtags will slowly die out – which would be unfortunate given their potential value as information channels and ways to engage delegates
The Marketing Zen Group has some advice on how to engage with social media for general trade shows. I think much of it could apply to medical conferences as well.
http://bit.ly/ktDX1G
Mark, makes a great point and I’ve seen it in action. Christian Sinclair the founder of #HPM Chat showed those who were interested and attending the AAHPM Conference in Vancouver how Twitter worked during our regularly scheduled #HPMTweet chat. This was a wonderful way to show and tell people about Twitter. Not only could folks learn about twitter but they also could see the value of a tweetchat.
http://www.slideshare.net/practicalwisdom/hpm-2162011
I appreciate the “reframe” comment from Mark Harmel.
Cheers.
There is no doubt that advertising a brand via Twitter can seem like spam, but I think it is important to remember that vendors serving the medical community make their living selling products and services. The vendor reps may not go about it the right way a lot of times, but they are most likely doing their jobs the best way they know how.