I’m a 20-year marketer specializing in lead generation for medical companies. As a medical device consultant I write for multiple sites but never “went viral” until I wrote “The Twitter Chat That Killed Sermo.”
This article shares what I learned and how you can you benefit.
I interview one life science professional each week on #MedDevice, a Twitter chat on Thursdays at 8 pm Eastern Time. (Want to be a guest? Here’s a backgrounder.)
Lesson One: You don’t need a huge audience in order to make an impact.
(a) Each week I make a strong connection with a professional who may remember me when an occasion arises. What are you doing each week to expand your business network?
(b) I synthesize each chat into a blog post on my site. Visitors might also take a quiz, download my ebook, or subscribe to my blog. I get a list of professionals who may be interested in my services. Do you have reasons for visitors to share their contact information?
(c) I created a companion LinkedIn group called the #MedDevice Chat Group (Join us!). I discover new people and, because they are group members, I can send them a LinkedIn message for free. Is your company using LinkedIn to its fullest advantage?
Lesson Two: Those little icons really do work.
By adding Facebook and Twitter links on the bottom of the post, I garnered an extra 159 shares among people in my target audience. Do you use social media sharing icons?
Lesson Three: The title is everything.
When I published, I thought Sermo’s revelations would seriously damage the company, thus the title I chose. Time will tell, and the choice “Killed” is probably an overstatement, but there is no question the title begot clicks and retweets. I probably could have been more conservative with “The Twitter Chat that Hurt Sermo” and had a similar result.
The first headline I considered was “Should Physicians Be On Sermo? Should You?” I don’t think the article would have had nearly the traffic with this title, do you?
So, lesson three is spend time on your title. Often times, it’s the only thing people will read, so you have to hook them right away.
Lesson Four: Live by sensationalism; die by sensationalism.
Curiosity-seekers wondered what Sermo could have possibly said that hurt them so badly.
When I saw the huge spike in traffic I thought my chat would attract big numbers the following week.
It did not. The readers had come for the sizzle, not the steak.
Said another way, writing a viral piece was fun, but it did not do much for my business. The implication for you? Don’t ask medical device consultants to create something viral for you. It’s better to get something strategic that attracts less, but more qualified, traffic.
And last, 149 tweets later, here are some of my favorites.
I’m Joe Hage, a Wharton MBA and 20-year marketing professional. I specialize in marketing communication, strategy, and lead generation. Discover my
Another lesson for you to consider, @VinceKuraitis wrote a comment on the Sermo post:
Joe, I don’t know you personally but from reading your tweets and posts you seem like a thoughtful and courteous guy…
…except for the headline that ignited this inferno — “The Twitter Chat that Killed Sermo.”
I don’t think you got the headline right.
Maybe Sermo has taken a few hits here, but I don’t see a dead body. If you have evidence or reasoning that this event will have any long term impact, please share it.
This situation strikes me as more analogous to Facebook’s privacy changes last spring — a small minority of digerati got VERY pissed. They staged an initiative to get people to drop their facebook account — and the result is only 30K FB users leave (from a base of 500M).
Are you standing by your headline? do you owe Sermo an apology?
I really appreciated Vince’s “thoughtful and courteous” assessment and agree, I over-reached on the headline. At the time I wrote it, it really felt like “killed” to me.
But, as I wrote above, “Hurt” would have been an equally effective way to communicate the meaning of the post.
Maybe “killed” got a few extra curiosity seekers, but I’m not TMZ and I’m not selling subscriptions. I write about effective marketing communication for medical companies.
So my personal takeaway and message to readers in medical industries: Effectively communicate your message but err on the side of being too conservative.
Thank you for your provocative comment, Vince.
Joe, Thanks for thinking about my question and I appreciate your acknowledgement that “killed” was “probably an overstatement”.
I also appreciate that you DID think about the headline and possible alternatives. None of us are going to get it right 100% of the time.
You’re probably aware of the debate that’s been going on about the blurring boundaries between journalists and bloggers (or even more broadly, social media in general).
As a fellow blogger, I’m assuming you and I would both agree that we do have responsibilities to strive for accuracy in our writing, even though we don’t work under the legal and ethical restraints that journalists have.
If I were Sermo, I’d likely NOT be satisfied with a tepid acknowledgement that the headline was “probably an overstatement.”
But I’m not Sermo, so I’ll stop and leave it up to them to defend themselves and their business model.
I’ve said my peace…thanks for listening and responding.
My pleasure and, I made a new friend in you, which demonstrates another reason why these posts are intended to be **Conversations** not declarations.
My best, Vince.
See you online!
Hi Joe,
Sometimes sensationalism via social media just isn’t worth the risk. Although in traditional media we’re all aware that sensationalism sells! And it sells big time.
Television and radio stations that can get their hands on a hot or controversial story or one that’s laden with blood, guts, and gore are definitely in their glory! Their ratings skyrocket and they couldn’t be happier.
From a social media marketer’s standpoint, I think it’s cool that you touched a chord and garnered some attention. There’s a lot of noise on the net and it’s almost impossible to rise above it and be heard.
So the good news is you got through the filters and had a little fun. And the not-so-good news is that this calamity didn’t do much for your business.
There’s a lesson in here somewhere!
Melanie
It’s true, Melanie, it did not do much for my business but provided a great deal of learning.
In balance, a growth experience for me.