So, what is a Blog?
A blog is nothing more than a web page; but it is a special kind of web page. A typical blog is a website with regularly published “articles” that are displayed “newest first”.� Blogs have certain attributes that distinguish them from standard web pages; namely, ease of web publication and mass syndication.� Most blogging software includes content management tools which enables the author to easily create, categorize and post content on the web in a matter in minutes.� This software also automatically publishes this content, much like a news story, to other sites (called feed aggregators) which then syndicates the content to whomever is waiting to find fresh content on the topic.� The ability to reach such a huge audience immediately is the core power of the blog.
How can Pharma use Blogging?
First, let’s dispel an important myth.� Blogs do not have to be set up as two-way communications vehicles.� Regulatory issues, notwithstanding, we would almost never recommend establishing a two-way blog for our industry because of the random and/or negative messaging that could be generated.� Therefore, all the information below is assuming you have established a blog where unmoderated reader feedback is not allowed.
Back to the question�Can our industry take advantage of this new marketing channel?
Like most things in life, it depends.� The first questions is - are you trying to blog about a corporate topic or a product topic?
A corporate blog is a much easier undertaking for the pharmaceutical/biotech industry and can be effective in driving traffic to your main corporate site.� Everything from press releases, to corporate/brand news, to customized “personal CxO” communications are ideal for publishing using this blog format.� For successful examples, you can look to bloggers, like Bill Gates, Mark Cuban and Donald Trump; all of whom have “personal” blogs that link from their corporate sites. And of course your blog would be rich with optimized text links back to your main corporate webpages as well, making it easier for the searcher to get more information as well as increasing your overall backlinks.
A product blog is much more difficult.� Since all product information needs to go through legal and regulatory approval, the speed at which new pages could be approved would be infeasible to the quick-posting nature of a blog. So, unless you have stored away scores of pre-approved pages that you can release on a frequent basis, you need to consider “3rd party” blogging.� One example is sponsoring a physician to write a blog about your condition/product and its success with their patients.� Another type is to encourage a patient to tell their story about your product or target disease/condition.� These patient testimonials can be very powerful and are tailor-made for blogging.� However, in both of the above examples, caution must be used in selecting your advocates.
Another option is to engage a trusted 3rd party to aggregate existing web page content, news and information about the condition and/or your product.� This is becoming very popular because the power of the syndication not only drives direct traffic to your site, but it also influences the search engines’ “opinion” about which web pages are the most important.� For example, creating optimized incoming links (using targeted condition/product keyphrases) from your blog to your product site will increase the perceived “authority” of your site in the eyes of the search engine
Conclusion
As with any advertising or PR channel, the return on a blogging initiative will depend largely on what your corporate/brand goals are and how you structure your campaign. Generally speaking however, by leveraging the huge audience and instant content syndication, pharmaceutical/biotech sites can boost their search engine rankings and drive well-targeted web traffic for their keyphrases.
For more information email us at info@CatalystSearchMarketing.com�
