I have been keeping track of pharmaceutical employees who have personal accounts on Twitter for over a year (see “More Pharma Social Media Pioneers Recognized“). There are currently 105 people on the list (find it here).
I do this for several reasons:
- to see if the people who “talk the talk” of pharma social media actually “walk the walk” (only 40% of pharma people who have taken my Social Marketing Readiness Self-Assessment personally use social media “frequently; fill out the assessment here and see more results),
- to keep track of how these pioneers are using social media, and
- to help me communicate with them (it’s often impossible to reach them via email or by phone).
A majority of these pioneers have LinkedIn accounts for professional use and probably many also have Facebook pages. While I also keep track of pharma pioneer LinkedIn pages, I generally do not bother to peer into their personal lives that they may chronicle on personal Facebook pages.
Recently, I’ve been interested in Pinterest for my own use and started searching for pharma companies who have Pinterest accounts (see “Should Pharma Ponder Pinterest? Novo Nordisk Is!” and “Pharma Pinterest Update: Bayer US Pins, Novo Nordisk Depins!“). Yesterday, however, I received an email notice from Pinterest that Craig DeLarge, Director, Healthcare Professional Relationship Marketing at Novo Nordisk, who liked my pin “Charlie Kimball, Novo Nordisk, and Me Make Up. http://bit.ly/kjIAH.” (This link is to the blog post in which that pin/image appears.)
Craig has a very interesting Pinterest page (here) that includes the following “boards” (ie, categories of images):
- Places I’ve Been
- Brands I Love (Live)!
- Health
- Wisdom
- eMarketing
- Social Media
- Politics
I was also interested in what Craig pinned on his “Politics” board, especially this one about Mitt Romney:
I’ve learned a lot about Craig DeLarge in a very short time via the images he has posted to his [emphasis]personal[end emphasis] Pinterest page. While Facebook also now is very visually focused, it takes me longer on Facebook to discover a person’s true beliefs and interests than it does on Pinterest. As they say, an image is worth a thousand words.
I searched Pinterest for other pharma people social media pioneers on my list, but found only 2 others: Kevin Nalty, Consumer Product Director, Psychiatry, Janssen, and Brad Pendergraph, Manager, Consumer Digital & Social Engagement at Novartis (recently or soon to be laid off). These people — and Craig — are among the most followed pharma people on Twitter, so it makes sense that they would lead the way on Pinterest.
I look forward to finding more pharma people/social media pioneers on Pinterest. In fact, I think I will start a new board on my Pinterest page dedicated to “repins” from pharma people (I already have one for repins from pharma companies).