Analysis of Social Media Interactions Between Pharmaceutical Companies and Consumers: The Power of the "Like".

Background: The way in which pharmaceutical companies are using social media is vitally important in staying competitive, but the way social media users respond is equally if not more important. This study aimed to evaluate the use of social media by the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and to determine how much consumers interacted with these posts.

Results: The top 20 pharmaceutical companies included in this study were present in varying degrees on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook (90%, 70%, and 50%, respectively). A linear regression analysis between pharmaceutical company interactions and corresponding consumer interactions for each social media platform did not find a statistically significant association ( r = 0.44, 0.49, and 0.22, respectively).

Conclusion: In a descriptive review of the social media posts analyzed, this study found pharmaceutical company posts to relate to disease state awareness, business updates, and community outreach projects.