There’s no denying that Pinterest is one of the hottest social media platforms around, and it doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. So, is it worth pharma’s attention?

Retailers such as WholeFoods (the clear winner) and Target have amassed tens of thousands of followers based on an understanding that the secret to Pinterest is not marketing to the audience, but rather, inspiring them.

And inspiration is something that pharma serves up daily—along with hope, passion, commitment, and innovation. So yes, Pinterest is tailor-made for pharma.

The Brave Early Adopters

Some pharma companies have taken the first brave step and begun to develop their Pinterest presence—of note, Genentech and AstraZeneca. Both companies are leveraging Pinterest as a corporate platform (AZ is focused on recruitment), highlighting company philosophy, culture, and personalities, as well as their focus on serving the healthcare needs of people around the world.

Using Pinterest as another means to broadcast your company vision expands not only your message reach, but also its engagement potential. And if done right, corporate messaging can tap into a specific interest category—perhaps a disease area—increasing the likelihood that your effort will shatter expected engagement levels and referral traffic to associated company (and product) web properties.

Here are some quick tips and best practices to keep in mind when setting up a Pinterest presence:

1.  Find your following: Determine what you want to communicate and stick to it. Do you want to use the page for recruitment? Or to convey corporate vision? Or to promote a specific program or initiative? Once you have determined how you want to use the page, secure the vanity URL that makes the most sense and start creating boards that support your goal. For instance, if you choose the broader direction of communicating corporate vision, focus on causes the Pinterest audience can get behind. If yours is a company that specializes in multiple disease areas, consider creating dedicated boards focused on education and disease awareness for each disease category, then populate each board with appropriate promotions (imagery, videos, patient stories/artwork, etc.).
2. Don’t forget to “repin” and follow: According to RJ Metrics, 80% of Pinterest activity is repinning. This involves searching and finding content related to your page that you pin from another user onto one of your boards. For instance, say you have a board titled The Fight Against Cancer, you might want to repin the quotes and imagery that abound on Pinterest regarding people’s personal journeys with cancer. Through repinning, other users become aware of your page and may choose to follow your activity. In addition, you should find other like-minded companies, associations/societies (e.g., The American Cancer Society), and people to follow as you build your audience.
3. Be diligent: Understand what you are getting into. Take some time to learn about Pinterest and the legalities of pinning content (always link back to the original source and give credit where credit is due). In addition, as with any social media effort, someone needs to be in charge of keeping the content up-to-date and moderating comments. Unlike Facebook, on Pinterest, comments made by users to your pins can be deleted. To keep engagement up, it is better to respond to a comment than to delete it, but if you must delete, you can. See how Novo Nordisk handles comments to their Pinterest page.

The key to any multichannel strategy is to leverage channels that facilitate delivery of the right message, to the right audience, at the right time. Oftentimes, this means choosing a variety of media and allowing your customers to select the channel that they want to interact with (remember we’re in this to serve the needs of our audience). Clearly, Pinterest is a channel that more and more people are including on their daily online stops. Shouldn’t pharma be part of it?

What is your take on Pinterest? What do you see as its utility for healthcare marketing? Do you have any success stories to share?

If you haven’t already done so, check out our Pinterest page and the content we find “Pinteresting.”