Pharmaceutical and healthcare companies can engage with blogs on two fundamental levels: establish a blog and/or reach out to existing influential bloggers.

Here are three observations to keep in mind as you explore:

It's called personal media for a reason. It's about making a personal connection and speaking in a personal voice. If you are not willing to do that, then you may need to choose another strategy. Shahid Shah, a healthcare IT expert, who runs a couple of great blogs, makes a good case for pharmaceutical corporate blogging. Shahid states that if ever there was an industry that could use the goodwill derived from direct customer contact, it's the pharmaceutical industry. And while the industry is heavily regulated, the FDA has no specific regulations about corporate blogs, per se. Even though pharmas could benefit from what blogs are doing now for Microsoft, GM and other companies, it will take a bold pharma to seize this opportunity in a big way. The transparency required for a successful blog flies in the face of years of communication practices of carefully crafted messages cleared through multiple rounds of legal, regulatory and medical review. You cannot do that with a blog. It will take some strong leadership from within to change that approach.

Lots of companies do it differently. Sun, the software maker, has thousands of employee bloggers. Some are sanctioned, some just allowed. They have a blogging policy (every company should have a blogging policy even if your policy is to not allow employee blogs). They do this to establish a strong relationship with the developer community and final customers. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, and Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman of GM, do it to make a connection between the public and company leadership. In each case, companies are using these mediums to build trust through a deeper level of engagement (time spent, interactions, dialogue, etc.). It is not like traditional marketing which includes as many "impressions" as possible and a good reach and frequency numbers.

Observation number two: personal media cedes control to the user. Customers become co-brand managers in the most extreme cases. In most cases it simply means allowing for a dialogue (i.e., positive and negative comments). The most popular Avon blog (not sanctioned by Avon) is Beauty Dish run by an Avon Lady who offers honest product reviews. She says "this product works," and "this product - not so much." It is the best thing that could have happened for Avon. Now they have a credible brand enthusiast engaging other women online about products and the Avon brand promise. If you can't give up this control and invite the user in, then a different strategy is in order.

Observation number three: you can use blogger relations to help manage a crisis, just be careful. Whether a blogger is a mom, a "citizen journalist" or a professional journalist you cannot expect to enlist them as allies without understanding what motivates them and what their aptitudes are for journalism. Walmart (or their agency) got a bit of heat for using ally development techniques generally found in gloves-off political campaigns (which is pretty much any political campaign these days). It's a good idea to know who your most influential bloggers are such that you can keep in touch with them. There are ways to keep the dialogue open, build some goodwill while maintaining openness for all to see.

Blogs are just one part of the change. Search - Google, Technorati, Yahoo - is dramatically changing the way people find information. Microcasting - podcasting, video podcasting, mobile video and broadband channels - put consumers in the content creation-seat and give all content creators new ways to deliver programming to consumers who expect anywhere, anytime access. But these are topics for another day.

Just the emergence of personal media alone signals new opportunities for healthcare companies. And new risks. Now is the time to create a digital influence strategy for your company that assesses these opportunities and equips those within the industry who are ready to take a leadership role. It is time for a bold company to take the lead.

Helpful resources:

• www.hitsphere.com Shahid Shah's healthcare business blog aggregator/directory
• blogfeeds.ogilvypr.com Ogilvy PR's collection of noteworthy pharma and health-related blogs
• www.healthcareguy.com Shahid Shah's other blog
• www.envisionsolutionsnow.com/spotlight.html A broad primer on blogs and the healthcare industry (fee)