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SOCIAL MEDIA
THE PHARMA
UK TWITTER RANKING - SUMMER 2018
SERIES.

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
Welcome to this, the second edition in our Pharma Social Media Series, the UK
Twitter Ranking. This ranking has been developed in partnership between Owen
Health and firstlight PR.
The ranking aims to take a snapshot of the performance of these pharma companies
on Twitter in the UK and provide some commentary on our findings.
Shining a light at the country level really starts to identify the challenges these
pharma companies are facing with social media, namely commitment. The danger of
zombie communities, as seen in our Global Twitter Ranking, is even more
pronounced here.
Pharma companies need to define a clear purpose for their UK Twitter presence and
how it fits within their wider global Twitter strategy. Too many seem to struggle with
their identify and purpose. Committing to a robust content marketing plan, which
delivers relevant and distinctive content for their UK Twitter account is vital and can
be done at scale and in a cost effective manner. Working smarter not harder is true
when it comes to Twitter content.
Without this they’re just playing lip service to social; at best missing opportunities and
at worst damaging their corporate brand.
We hope you enjoy the read and if you would like to learn more please feel free to
get in touch.
WELCOME
Steve Sponder
Director, Owen Health
Grant Fisher
Director, firstlight PR

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
We started with the 22 largest global pharmaceutical companies, measured by
revenue, that appeared in the Global Twitter Ranking of our Pharma Social Media
Series. Of these, only 12 have a dedicated UK Twitter account, therefore, these
were the profiles we used for our analysis.
The overall performance scores, used to position the companies in our ranking,
have been calculated using various data points which take the following attributes
into consideration.
● AUTHORITY - Is the Twitter account verified?
● REACH - How many people are following the account?
● ACTIVE - How frequent are the tweets?
● ENGAGEMENT - How much response are the tweets receiving?
● INFLUENCE - How much influence does the account have?
As a snapshot of performance, we looked at all activity during April 2018.
SO, HOW DID WE DO IT?

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
THE RANKING
RANK COMPANY HANDLE SCORE
1 Bayer @UKBayer 66 (65)
2 MSD @MSDintheUK 65 (34)
3 AbbVie @abbvieuk 59 (53)
4 Roche @_RocheUK 58 (69)
5 Novartis @NovartisUK 54 (67)
=6 AstraZeneca @ASTRAZENECAUK 51 (69)
=6 Boehringer Ingelheim @BoehringerUK 51 (66)
=6 Sanofi @SanofiUK 51 (46)
9 Pfizer @Pfizer_UK 49 (75)
10 Teva @Teva_UK 45 (24)
11 Daiichi Sankyo @DaiichiSankyoUK 33 (34)
With a maximum score of 100
there is more work to be done to
unlock the true potential of
Twitter for these pharma
companies.
When comparing performance
against the pharma company’s
global Twitter profile, we see it’s
a very mixed bag.
Scores in brackets are the global
Twitter scores from our Global
Twitter Ranking published earlier
in the year.

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
VERIFIED ACCOUNTS
COMPANY HANDLE VERIFIED
Bayer @UKBayer
MSD @MSDintheUK
AbbVie @abbvieuk
Roche @_RocheUK
Novartis @NovartisUK No
AstraZeneca @ASTRAZENECAUK No
Boehringer Ingelheim @BoehringerUK No
Sanofi @SanofiUK No
Pfizer @Pfizer_UK No
Teva @Teva_UK No
Daiichi Sankyo @DaiichiSankyoUK No
Verified accounts on Twitter are
identified by a blue checkmark
and are used to establish the
authenticity of identities.
We believe it’s important for
pharma companies to ensure that
their Twitter profiles are verified
because they share health
related content with various
stakeholders, including the
public.

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
THE MOST REACH
The more followers the pharma twitter account has, the
greater potential for organic reach. Sanofi and Bayer
are ahead of the pack on this metric with 4,164 and
4,084 respectively.
Although the size of a brand’s community is not itself a
key measure of performance, it enables the companies
to drive other important performance metrics such as
engagement.

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
Daiichi Sankyo
FOLLOWER GROWTH
Unlike global Twitter accounts, where the longer the
account has been live the more followers it has, UK
Twitter accounts do not follow this adage. If we take
Bayer’s performance of acquiring circa 4,000 followers
over 8 years as the category benchmark, we can look
at Twitter profiles under the dotted line as poor
performers and those above as good performers.
Good
Poor

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
THE MOST ACTIVE
We measured the number of tweets posted during
April 2018 to get an understanding of how active these
pharma companies were. Daiichi Sankyo have a UK
Twitter account although have not tweeted from it.
We would recommend deleting an account instead of
leaving a dormant account live for people to find.
Boehringer Ingelheim didn’t score as they only re-tweeted
during April and we only count owned content.

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
THE MOST ENGAGING
With engagement such a key performance metric we
created a weighted formula, incorporating likes,
retweets and replies, which produced an engagement
score for each account. We then normalised this score
taking into account the number of followers and the
volume of tweets sent during the period. This resulted in
a final engagement score which provides a clearer
understanding of whose content is working the hardest.

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
THE MOST ENGAGING CONTENT
TOP 3 POSTS WITH THE MOST LIKES
TOP 3 POSTS WITH THE MOST RETWEETS
TOP 2 POSTS WITH THE MOST COMMENTS

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
ZOMBIE COMMUNITIES
As we saw with our Global Twitter Ranking, it appears to
become harder to keep larger communities engaged with
valuable timely content. Pharma companies that have
invested in building the size of their UK communities
need to develop content marketing strategies to build a
sustainable social platform or run the risk of managing
zombie communities. Zombie communities add very
little value to the business while draining resources
developing content that is reaching no one. If this is the
case, and there is little appetite to create a content
marketing strategy within the business, retiring
accounts should be seriously considered.
Daiichi Sankyo

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
THE MOST INFLUENTIAL
RANK COMPANY KLOUT*
1 Boehringer Ingelheim 78
2 AstraZeneca 53
3 Novartis 50
=4 Bayer 48
=4 MSD 48
6 Sanofi 47
7 Pfizer 46
=8 AbbVie 44
=8 Roche 44
10 Teva 42
11 Daiichi Sankyo 0
THOSE WITH SWAY
We’ve used the Klout system to
measure influence.
“We use more than 400 signals
from eight different networks to
update your Klout Score every
day. The majority of the signals
used to calculate the Klout
Score are derived from
combinations of attributes, such
as the ratio of reactions you
generate compared to the
amount of content you share.”
* This is a klout score, more details can be found at klout.com

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
SO, WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
We can see that it’s relatively easy to build a large following on Twitter, however, it can
become an ongoing burden to keep these followers engaged and increasingly unclear
where the return on investment will come from. This isn’t helped by regulation within
the industry, which can sometimes stifle a company’s ability or desire to tweet.
However, some pharma companies have started taking a different approach by
seeking to become part of the relevant communities which are already active on
Twitter and across other social media platforms.
By putting the interests of your target audiences at the centre of a social media
strategy, you will be able to develop a content plan that makes your company a
valuable contributor to the community. Broadcasting information with no thought, adds
little value for you or the audiences you are trying to reach.
This approach is certainly more strategic, plays to the social platforms strengths and
has the potential to be more beneficial to corporate reputation and brand positioning
in the longer term.
What you want
to talk about
What your
audiences are
interested in
Your Content
Proposition

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
We’ve identified 5 stages of social media maturity. As pharmaceutical companies
graduate through each stage of maturity they gain a greater understanding, and
capability, unlocking the potential social media offers.
1. Secure a social media presence. Use the channel to promote corporate
and brand news as well as marketing published in other media channels.
Start following key stakeholders including KOLs, HCPs, providers and
patient groups. KPIs will tend to simply be the number of followers
2. Gain a deeper understanding of your followers and the broader social
media community around your key therapeutic areas. Create valuable,
timely content for your followers and community. Likes and retweets would
be useful KPIs
3. Have conversations. Don’t just start them, find, join and foster them.
Consider retweeting or curating great content which you know your
followers will find valuable. Adopt an always-on and real-time mindset, as
the conversation doesn’t revolve around you and your working hours.
Number of replies to your tweets or average response times would be KPIs
worth measuring
4. Identify social media influencers which may or may not be on your KOL
radar. Some of these may be micro-influencers, which means that even
though they have relatively small communities in a particular therapeutic
areas, they hold incredible influence. KPIs here would be the number of
micro-influencers following you and their engagement with your content
5. Use social listening tools. These tools will enable you to gain valuable,
timely insights which can be used to inform and then make improvements
across the whole company. ROI would be the ultimate KPI here.
5 STAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA MATURITY

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© 2018 Owen Health All Rights Reserved / The Pharma Social Media Series - UK Twitter Ranking - Summer 2018
WHAT NEXT?
We hope you’ve found this look into the performance of pharma UK Twitter profiles useful.
We have more rankings in the pipeline. To be the first to hear about them keep an eye on
blog.owenhealth.co.uk or follow us on Twitter @weareowenhealth or @firstlightpr
Using our methodology we can also help pharma companies benchmark their
performance against their competitor set or put in place social media measurement
frameworks. For details contact us at hello@owenhealth.co.uk
Owen Health is a healthcare communications agency specialising in multi-channel
marketing to make you digitally fitter, stronger and faster.
firstlight PR is a corporate and healthcare specialist communications agency that uses data
driven insights and creativity to create compelling content that returns measurable return
on investment to your business.
Together we have worked with some of the biggest global brands such as GSK, Roche,
Novartis, AstraZeneca, Gilead, Activision Blizzard, lastminute.com, LinkedIn, Lush
Cosmetics, Honda, PepsiCo and SABMiller.
Owen Health’s models and thought leadership on multi-channel marketing for pharma can
be found here:
● The Pharma Multi-channel Marketing Maturity Model
● The Periodic Table of Pharma Multi-channel Marketing
● Pharma MCM Brand Planning Methodology
● Check out the Global Twitter Ranking

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