Just As I Suspected: Pharma Companies Set Up Google+ Ghost Towns

Eye On FDA's Mark Senak is keeping tabs on pharma's social media assets, including activity in Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and Google+. With regard to Google+, Senak notes that there are 79 Google+ pages in his database that are sponsored by pharma companies. "Of these," says Senak, "a whopping 31 ... have no followers at all."

Not only that, engagement in Google+ by pharma is low says Senak: "Removing the Inactive and Rare Updates leaves only 25 pharma sponsored pages. Pulling out only those pages that update Daily or Weekly leaves only 8 pages, while daily leaves only 5. By contrast, of the 123 Facebook pages being tracked, 34 of them had daily activity" (read "Catching Up on Google+ and Pharma").

Back in 2011 when Senak first began tracking pharma on Google+, I predicted that there would be a rush to Google+ by pharma marketers in order to get in on the ground floor of another social media eyeball fest! At the time, I heard that some companies were reserving Google+ account names without yet having any specific plans for how they will use it (see here). Senak's accounting confirms my suspicions.