Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Liz
Bryan

Top Five Survival Tips for ASCO

Monday, June 11th, 2012

I’ve attended a lot of medical meetings over the past eight years and just recently had the chance to attend the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)’s Annual Meeting for the first time. I knew the research presented at ASCO always generates a ton of news, but I had no idea how large and influential the meeting really was until I got there. I arrived back in D.C. with a new appreciation for the researchers who present their life’s work at these meetings, and the reporters who have to sift through all of the data and share it with the masses. After a few days of sessions, media outreach and downtown Chicago, I decided there should be a list of things that are essential to surviving ASCO, the granddaddy of all cancer-focused conferences.

#5 – Have a plan, but be flexible. As communications professionals preparing for a major medical meeting, we plan, plan again and then plan some more. But the biggest lesson I learned is that media priorities are constantly changing and your plan must evolve alongside. Keeping pace with Twitter, published stories and daily meeting news allows you to tailor your communications and plans as you go. You may have prepared a great pitch based on certain meeting trends and chatter, but being able to adjust your angles, available interviews and materials in real-time will make you more valuable to reporters.

#4 – Keep it short and sweet. Everyone at ASCO is being pulled in a million directions. Reporters have to attend press conferences, interview experts and write stories about multiple studies each day. Researchers are presenting, constantly meeting with people and giving interviews. Be prepared to ask your question, pitch your story or introduce yourself in 20 seconds or less. This way you’re respecting their time and making yourself get to the point faster.

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Kaitlin
Bowen

How to Land a PR Internship (and Take Advantage Once You Do)

Monday, January 9th, 2012

Spectrum’s new crop of interns starts today! (Can you tell how excited us junior level staff are?!)intern preso

This time of year reminds me of when I first started working at Spectrum as an intern in the spring of my senior year in college. In some ways, I feel like I was more buttoned up with my PR know-how then. I had mastered Grunig and Hunt’s four models of public relations and I could outline an RPIE approach to a campaign in no time. However, after being out in the “real world” for a few years now, I know that PR cannot be so easily defined or broken down into four simple models, and I’ve seen that there’s never as much time as we’d like to R (research), P (plan) and E (evaluate) – which is unfortunate, really.

Securing a PR internship and capitalizing on the opportunity is one of the most important things PR students need to do to land a job after college.  It’s the time when you begin to learn those invaluable out-of-the-classroom lessons. Below is a list of ways for students to distinguish themselves from other internship candidates and leave an impression (a good one, that is):

 

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Anthony
LaFauce

Why I dis-like the FDA’s New Draft Guidelines

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

After reading the FDA’s ‘guidance’ I really have to say I am not impressed with this effort. To be honest it looks like a cookie cutter response to questions our industry has had for the past 4 years. I am truly moved by the fact the FDA opened with a disclaimer stating that the guidance provided was not the end-all-be-all to help communicators communicate.

FDA’s guidance documents, including this draft guidance, do not establish legally enforceable rights or responsibilities.

The document has some difficult to digest information regarding the difference between “non-public” and “public”. This means that the document fails to address if information is shared with a patient in a non-public area and that information becomes public. This is very disturbing if you consider the FDA’s guidance that information should be pushed to off label users in ‘private’ communication tools.

The document also has a small example, in line 189, which focuses on how information of a medical nature is presented to potential patients while on a website. The guidance suggests if a website talks about a various disease or condition AND includes items located in a header or menu that a refers to another disease condition a person can misconstrue this as a company endorsing a products use and the company is at fault.

If a firm sets up a website that enables viewers to read prepared standard responses for the firm’s products that are generated from prefixed pull-down menus naming various disease states, including any standard responses related to off-label uses for the firm’s product, resulting requests for off-label information would be considered solicited. Moreover, if this website makes it possible to use search terms to generate standard responses that go beyond the scope of the product information being requested, including off-label use information, resulting requests for and responses to such a search would be considered solicited requests.

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Kaitlin
Bowen

Managing your Reputation: Back in the Day and Today

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

“Oh, Johnny the butcher, he’s great! He always asks about the kids and serves up the best three and a half pounds of roast that my family could ask for.”

Back in the day, word of mouth recommendations were a golden currency. Proprietors got to know the people who came to their shops – they understood who they were and what their needs were. In turn, business owners relied on their customers to spread the word to their friends and family about the services they provided or the products they sold.

Today, the web is actually taking us back in time, according to Mark Britton, CEO of Avvo.com, the largest legal- and health-related Q&A website. Just like with Johnny the butcher, people today are usually using a good or service based on a friend’s or family member’s recommendation. And sometimes, it’s not just friends and family, but the random person on Yelp that helps you decide what hair salon to go to or which Mexican restaurant to go to downtown.

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Kaitlin
Bowen

Recipe for Dining Social with Chicago Magazine

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

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During this year’s Social Media Week in Chicago, Spectrum had the chance to sit in with some of the city’s most online-savvy chefs, foodies and restaurateurs in a session called Dining Social, hosted by Chicago magazine. We’ve whipped up our “recipe” for dining social with some of Chicago’s best, which includes the top ingredients and directions for making digital work in the restaurant realm.

Also-if you’re looking for some insights from the District’s great digital foodies, head on over to D.C.’s Social Media Club event “I’m Only on Twitter for the Food Truckstomorrow, Wednesday, October 19 at 6:30pm. You’ll get to hear from @LobstertruckDC , @CurbsideCupcake and @BigCheeseTruck on how they’ve made social media work for their businesses.

Now, back to our delicious recipe for dining social:

Ingredients

  • 5 foodie panelists
  • 1 founder of Restaurant Intelligence Agency
  • A bunch of Tweets
  • A sprinkle of Facebook posts
  • A variety of blog content
  • 4 oz. of a good red wine

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Anthony
LaFauce

Digital Pharma East 2011 Day One

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

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A big thank you is in order to my employer, Spectrum, as I attend Digital Pharma East this week. Day one kicked off with a great session lead by Takeda Pharmaceuticals Chad Ballentine who spoke about how to use a patient focused, multi-channel, customer relationship management (CRM) to really capitalize on your database to assure you are getting the right information to the right people…and of course increase sales.

Chad had a ton of good points but I was blown away by his simple, and spot on, key points on how to get the best value out of your CRM. (more…)

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Kaitlin
Bowen

A Twitterview with AARP Illinois: Demystifying Social Media for Seniors

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

SMW_banner_250x250_Final_Global-sept11Last week, I had the chance to “Twitterview” (Twitter + interview) Jennifer Baier, Senior Program Specialist of Technology and Volunteer Engagement at the AARP Illinois State Office, as a follow-up to her Social Media Week presentation, Demystifying Social Media for Seniors and Beyond.

We’ve heard that those over 50 are one of the fastest growing demographics on social networks, but what exactly are older adults doing online? Besides looking at photos of their kids and grandkids, they are using social media for advocacy, healthcare and job hunting. Take a look below to view our live Twitter Q&A exchange to find out more about what’s getting some seniors plugged in and what’s still keeping some offline.

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Anthony
LaFauce

Digital is More than Social

Friday, October 7th, 2011

ExpertsHere’s the setting: I’m at an impromptu networking event with some of the regulars and we’re all talking shop. Most of us are Digital PR folks, some program managers, some PR professionals, some video guys. In walks a new guy, whose sunglasses I’m sure cost more than my car, who immediately introduces himself and starts talking about what he does.

He’s a Senior Digital Whatever at Whatever Firm, a smaller shop around town I wasn’t too familiar with. All of us begin talking digital media–different tools, things we have seen work before and things that we know will fail. New Guy keeps coming back to social media, which is obviously an important part of digital media. But he fails to add any value to our conversation when we get to things like video editing, writing PHP and using mobile.

The group was fine with New Guy until, maybe after one too many Cosmos, he declared that all of those “old forms of digital” are worthless and the only thing that matters is social media. (more…)

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Kaitlin
Bowen

Cracking the QR Code: QR is to mobile as URL is to Web?

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

You’ve seen them on the metro on your way to work. You’ve seen them while flipping through Time magazine. You’ve seen them on mailings you’ve received from your favorite retail store.

We even came across a QR code while on a tour at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., with our GLOBALHealthPR partners.

These pixilated square icons are popping up all over the place and they seem to be the cool thing to do – after, of course, you get a Twitter handle and a Facebook page.

QR Codes, which are short for quick response codes, are scannable barcodes that can be read by most smart phones. When the phone registers the barcode, you are then taken to the specific web page. It’s a fun, useful way for marketers and communicators to provide easy access to more information about your product, brand or company on the web. Here’s a cool look at what some folks have planned for QR codes in the digital healthcare space with a mobile hospital feedback system through the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge.

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Kelly
Barrett

BDI’s Social Communications & Healthcare 2011: Empowering employees to ‘play’ with social media

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending the Business Development Institute’s Social Communications & Healthcare conference in New York City. It was the third year that BDI has put on the conference but one of the first times the event has included such robust case studies from industry leaders.

It is unfortunate that in pharma, we really don’t have many social media case studies to look at, yet. And this isn’t just because social media is new, because really, it’s not that new anymore (and what’s new today is old tomorrow). The problem lies more in the fact that so many companies and agencies are doing innovative stuff that they aren’t yet allowed to disclose. Here at Spectrum, a number of our progressive social media-related initiatives are highly sensitive and stay confidential. However, in the meantime, it’s inspiring to see all the ways people are finding to best socially communicate.

BDI Wrap Up from Zemoga on Vimeo.

(Pixels & Pills covered the event and they provide a ton of great video interviews that you should check out. And New Millenium Research & Consulting has photos up on their Facebook.)

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