If you work in healthcare advertising or medical communications, you need to stay abreast of developments in marketing in general as well healthcare marketing specifically. Online information and networking sites continue to pop up (and sometimes down) overnight. But others have stuck around…or look like they have the promise to. You surely know some of the biggest names: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia. Below you’ll find 20 more websites, some general, some covering issues of specific interest to people in healthcare advertising and medical marketing.
Healthcare-related sites
BIO
BIO is the world’s largest biotechnology organization, providing advocacy, business development and communications services for more than 1,100 members worldwide.
BioSpace
The leading online community for industry news and career opportunities for life science professionals. BioSpace offers an online job board, daily biotech news feeds, and community features to connect recruiters, job seekers, and life science professionals.
CafePharma
The website for pharmaceutical and medical professionals. You’ll find news, a job center, and-best of all-industry gossip!
FierceBiotech
Fierce Biotech bills itself as “the biotech industry’s daily monitor.” Offers the latest news, information on events, webinars, and ebooks, and also a jobs listing.
Medscape Physician Connect
More than 125,000 participate in this physician-only site’s discussion posts on clinical and non-clinical topics, CME-accredited case study discussions, and other online activities.
PhRMA
This site of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America features information on drugs in development, legislative issues affecting drug marketing, and other topics of interest to the biopharma world.
Sermo
More than 115,000 physician members communicate in discussion groups, surveys, and CME programs.
General interest sites
Delicious
The social bookmarking service that lets you save all your bookmarks online, share them with other people, and see what other people are bookmarking.
Digg
Digg is the place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by their users.
Flickr
A site for you to organize and share photos and video.
HubCulture
The meeting place (both virtual and actual, with events plus HubCulture “Pavilions” where members can work, lounge, and connect in cities worldwide) for “global urban influentials.”
Mixx
Mixx is your link to the web content that really matters to you. Use Mixx to tailor the content categories, tags, specific users and groups, and they’ll deliver the top-rated content as chosen by you and people who share your passions.
Plaxo
Plaxo’s 40 million members use the service to host their address books and share messages, blogs, photos, and other content they upload to Twitter, Flickr, and more than 30 other sites.
Reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web. Users like you provide all of the content and decide, through voting, what’s good and what’s junk. Links that receive community approval bubble up towards #1, so the front page is constantly in motion and filled with fresh, interesting links.
Squidoo
Squidoo is the popular publishing platform and community that makes it easy for you to create “lenses” online. Lenses are pages, kind of like flyers or signposts or overview articles, that gather everything you know about your topic of interest and share it with customers and friends.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites-matched to your personal preferences-that have been recommended by friends or one of 8 million+ other websurfers with interests similar to you.
Technorati
Increase your blog’s readership by registering it with Technorati, a network of blogs and writers that lists top stories in categories like business, technology, entertainment, and more.
Vimeo
A video-sharing site.
Around the world every day, over 9 million business professionals use XING-the global business network-in 16 languages to do business and promote their careers.
Ziggs
Ziggs is a one-stop source for creating and managing your online brand. Market yourself on the web, simplify how you stay in touch with people important to you, and network with millions of other professionals.
How can you monitor all these sites and more?
You want to use the most modern and effective tools for healthcare advertising. But the choices can be bewildering. Like the newsstand used to be with magazines and newspapers, on the web there’s something for every interest, both general and special, including healthcare advertising and medical marketing. Finding the time and skills to maximize networking opportunities for your organization and brand, and compile the key information and opinions exchanged, is a full-time job. Many pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, medical device companies, hospitals, and others hire a healthcare advertising specialist to help with choosing the appropriate sites then monitoring them.