Expert Gives Medtronic's Social Media Effort a Big A+, Patients are More Critical

 Last week, I wrote a glowing article about Medtronic's efforts in social media.

The story was largely based on the opinion of a brand marketing expert who said that other medical device companies should follow Medtronic's example in developing their presence on social media.

I tweeted my story as well. And then followed an interesting exhange on twitter with patients and social media denizens who were less than generous in their critique of Medtronic's actions on social media. I am pasting the exchange below.

Here is my conclusion after seeing the patient response. In terms of simple social media presence, Medtronic truly is an example to follow. They are on all the major social media networks and have created separate but uniform brand presences for innovation, for diabetes, for cardiac and so on. When CEO Omar Ishrak began to tweet, it was a watershed moment in medtech social media. So in terms of being way ahead of their medtech counterparts, Medtronic deserved all the kudos it can get. 

But social media is about true engagement albeit the legal minefields that a regulated business like Medtronic must not ignnore. Even the marketing expert - Elis Schadauer, principal at Tapis Marketing - said social media is about engaging people, about being part of the conversation and not pushing out information expecting no response in return. And that is where Medtronic has miles to go.

Here is the exchange. Note that even though MDT_Cardiac, an official twitter account of Medtronic, is mentioned by name in the exchange, the company never joins in the conversation.

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By Arundhati Parmar, Senior Editor, MD+DI