FDA Issues Warning to Novartis for Social Sharing

While I was out on vacation completely ignoring work and focusing on my new baby girl, the FDA issued a warning letter to Novartis for Tasigna®. This letter was issued because Tasigna.com uses a Facebook share social media widget which allows users to share Novartis-generated content via their Facebook status or updates. Based on the issuance of this letter, many pharmaceutical marketing experts have come out with their specific opinions and recommendations. This post is ONLY my opinion on the matter, but I felt like much of the issue is focused on the smaller piece of the concern rather than the real concern as I see it.

Many briefs I have read focus on the fact that social sharing widgets are based off of meta data and for that reason much of the “blame” for this warning letter has been associated with inappropriate or misused meta data. While in some cases meta data may be in non-compliance – particularly in examples represented in this notice of violation letter – in my opinion the meta data is not an issue that should be focused on as a solution. I have seen various recommendations, ranging from completely generic meta data to simply leaving those fields empty. From a search perspective, these options are not beneficial and would actually likely result in decreased search engine rankings and lower visitor engagement. These are not simply factors that concern SEO…they concern user experience and web best practices.

From my perspective, the larger piece of this letter that should be focused on is the use of social sharing for pharma companies and how we can make the sharing process FDA-compliant. The simple fact is people are going to share links if they find the content interesting. In order to stay current with the rest of the web, pharma websites must provide users an easy way to share links. Thus, the FDA and pharma need to define a compliant way for social sharing widgets to be an appropriate and applicable function on pharmaceutical websites. Simply placing the burden of the issue on meta data is easy, but it may not be the most appropriate recommendation or solution. Rather than change Title/Meta data to fit the needs of social sharing, why not change the way social sharing widgets work to fit the needs of social sharing without hindering the needs of search engine optimization?

How can we do this? The concept is fairly simple. There is no issue with a user sharing a link of their own accord. In fact, there is no way that this can be prevented. In order to be even remotely close to web 2.0, social sharing should be a requirement for a website as it provides users with a simple way to quickly share a link via their chosen social platform. So, the better solution would be to update a social sharing widget that doesn’t auto-populate what the user shares. Ask the user to enter the content as they want to share rather than auto-populate with pre-generated content created by the website. The simple fact of the matter is that search engines, like social media channels, have character limitations relating to what will be displayed. Even if you include the entire safety statement in the meta description, there is not way this will be displayed in results.

My Recommendation

Find a social media sharing widget that will allow you to provide a sharing experience that offers more control to the users when sharing content. Chances are that only a small percentage of users are going to use this social sharing feature. Let the users manually enter the content as they want to share it rather than automatically require them to use a specific canned statement (like the meta data of the page). By giving control to the user, I believe this would be a satisfactory solution.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.