Fake vs. Real Pharma Twitter Followers

Fake vs. Real Pharma Twitter Followers

Piotr Wrzosinski (@pwrzosin), IPM Digital Marketing at Roche and a member of my Pharma Twitter Pioneer Group (see here), recently posted this to Twitter today:

"0% of my followers are fake. How many fake followers do you have..? http://sttsp.pl/ahaf @StatusPeople #FollowerSpam"

Goodie! Another social media metric I can use to compare pharma Twitter accounts. I quickly followed the link to StatusPeople Web site where I was invited to "Find out how many fake followers your friends have."

Before looking at my "friends" data, however, I looked at my own and found out that 73% of my nearly 12,000 Twitter followers were neither "fake" ("spam" accounts that "tend to have few or no followers and few or no tweets, but [which] tend to follow a lot of other accounts.") nor "inactive." This was quite better than most pharma Twitter accounts as can be seen in the following chart (click for an enlarged view):

I do not have 0% fakes like Piotr; six percent (6%) of my followers may be fakes. This is the lowest percentage among the 16 pharma Twitter accounts I measured. @Abbottnews had the highest percent of "fake" followers: 18%. Fouteen percent (14%) of followers of Roche, Novartis, Pfizer GSK(U.S.) are "fakes" or suspected spam accounts.

Why is it important to know how many fake and inactive followers a Twitter account has?

"There are two reasons," says StatusPeople. "First it's important for you to be sure when you communicate on Twitter that you are communicating with real and active followers. Because the more active your follower base the more likely they are to share your content.
The second reason is there are a growing number of Fakers out there. People who buy followers in a vain attempt to build legitimacy. "'Look at me I have 20,000 followers, I must know my...' They are essentially trying to game the system and it's important for you to be able to spot them, and steer clear of them. Because ultimately if you're willing to lie about how many friends you have you are not a very trustworthy individual."

Well, Pfizer has over 31,000 followers. Way back in 2010, I asked "How Did Pfizer Get So Many Twitter Followers?" (see here). I suggested that Pfizer sent out a memo to all their more than 100,000 employees worldwide telling them to follow @pfizer_news. I was kidding, of course. But I suspected something was up because Pfizer_news somehow attracted about 3-4,000 NEW Twitter followers in just a few days (see chart below)!

Source: pharmamkting.blogspot.com via Pharma on Pinterest

Did Pfizer "attempt to build legitimacy" by "gaming the system?"

One caveat: StatusPeople contends that its tool provides "very accurate insight into how many inactive and fake" followers a Twitter account has, but ONLY if there are fewer than 10,000 followers. "If you're very 'popular' the tool will still provide good insight but may better reflect your current follower activity rather than your whole follower base."

Only 6 out of my sample of 16 pharma Twitter accounts have fewer than 10,000 followers (Phrma, SanofiUS, Diabetes_Sanofi, BoehringerUS, BMSnews, and Abbottnews).

If you want to learn how many fake followers you have, go here.

Pharma People Pioneers on Pinterest

Pharma People Pioneers on Pinterest

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:

1. 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),


2. to keep track of how these pioneers are using social media, and


3. 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

Craig likes some of the brands I like, including BMW, Movado (watches), and Apple ("Apple MacBook Air My latest tech crush"). Novo Nordisk, of course, is also on his list of brands that he likes and obviously lives by.

I was also interested in what Craig pinned on his "Politics" board, especially this one about Mitt Romney:

Source: a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net via Craig on Pinterest

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).