Get Ripped with Social Media Analytics

Posted by: Shruti Saran in Social Media Insights & Trends on May 23, 2013

The business of personal fitness has blown up in the last few years, from a tiny niche to an enormous industry with thousands of fitness gurus touting their own specialized methods for attaining an ideal physique. The industry is largely unregulated and periodically inundated with new fads (juicing, anyone?). Furthermore, online social platforms have allowed experts and non-experts alike to flood the web with health information. If you have ever looked for fitness or nutrition information on the web, chances are you left a little confused.

But quality rises, and social media’s collective conscious has promoted, commented, retweeted and linked trusted content all the way to the top. It just takes a little digging (and social media analytics) to move past the “flavor of the moment” fitness fads and unearth emergent leaders in personal training and fitness instruction.

I decided to do just that, and compiled a list of over 100+ fitness instructors and personal trainers to rank by online influence.

I included:

“Celebrity” trainers
Trainers who work one-on-one with clients, but also maintain an online presence
Trainers who train exclusively online via YouTube

I did not include:

Fitness gurus whose entire online presence is a sales pitch (“buy my workout DVD”, etc.)
Fitness influencers who no longer train or never trained but began training programs or opened training facilities (like Greg Glassman, the founder or CrossFit).

The result is a list of trainers who have worked hard to earn an online following, promote proven exercise and nutrition methodologies, and/or are just killing it on social media with their marketing prowess and engagement tactics.

To create this list I looked at dozens of metrics across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and each trainer’s website. Each channel was analyzed for 1) reach which takes into account the number of followers, subscribers, visitors, fans, etc., that a channel has, and 2) resonance which measures how engaged readers and viewers are using shares, likes, comments, retweets, etc. For clients, we go one step further and measure quality of content across certain topic areas. If I had done that with the following influencers, I might have examined topic areas like fat loss, resistance training , interval training, nutrition, etc.

Top Personal Trainers and Fitness Instructors Online

1. Jillian Michaels “America’s Personal Trainer” best known for her role in The Biggest Loser TV show and Losing it with Jillian. She is a New York Times best-selling author, has released several DVDs, hosts a weekly podcast, and launched video games for Wii and Xbox360. She utilizes a blend of strength training and cardio techniques with her clients, including kickboxing, yoga, Pilates, plyometrics, and weight training. Jillian is the only person on this list with over one million likes on Facebook, and her strong Twitter and website presence put her firmly in the #1 position.

2. Lisa-Marie Zbozen A host on Bodyrock.TV and the newer DailyHiit.com. The sites promote daily short High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) workouts and a clean diet through the free workout videos which have gotten over half a billion views.

3. Freddy Light The videographer behind BodyrockTV and DailyHIIT, as well as an occasional host. Freddy took Bodyrock.TV from its humble beginnings to an online home workout movement and social media phenomenon along with his then-wife, Zuzanna Light (#4). The BodyRockTV/DailyHIIT channel has 600,000+ subscribers and over half a billion views.

4. Zuzana Light The original face of Bodyrock.TV, Zuzanna began Bodyrock.TV in 2009 with her then-husband Freddy Light. After their separation she began her own workout website in 2012, ZuzkaLight.com, where she posts HIIT workouts similar to the ones she did on BodyrockTV. Since beginning her channel under two years ago, she has already amassed 164,051 subscribers (many of whom followed her from BodyrockTV) and almost 20 million views.

5. Bob Harper As a celebrity personal trainer who trained on The Biggest Loser alongside Gillian Michaels, Bob’s team has won most of the weigh-ins on that show. In addition to training and teaching yoga in Los Angeles, Bob has written several books, created a few fitness DVDs and sells his training program on his website. However, his #5 ranking can be attributed to his incredible Facebook (595,504 Likes) and Twitter (446,093 followers) presence.

6. Charles Poliquin A trainer to numerous Olympic athletes and a prolific writer for bodybuilding online magazine T-Nation. His position on this list due in large part to his YouTube channel, where his posts on bodybuilding and nutrition have earned him over 11,000 subscribers and more than two million views.

7. John Berardi a CSCS certified personal trainer who has made a name for himself as one of the top exercise nutrition experts in the world. John is on this list because of his strong Facebook presence and the success of his scientifically backed nutrition coaching company, Precision Nutrition. He has also written several books, has a PhD in sports nutrition (he teaches at the University of Western Ontario), still personal trains one-on-one, has written for magazines like Bodybuilding.com and T-nation, and gets his research cited in those same magazines a lot.

8. Karena Dawn Karena and Katrina Hodgson are fitness models and personal trainers who run ToneItUp.com, a website with nutrition and exercise advice, as well as free videos. While Katrina and Karena are similarly ranked across platforms due to their highly viewed YouTube channel (200,000+ subscribers and over 17 million views). Karena’s slightly better Twitter presence puts her slightly ahead of Katrina in the top 10.

9. Eric Cressey Eric is the president and co-founder of Cressey Performance in Boston, where he coaches and rehabilitates athletes. He has authored over 500 published articles, five books, and co-created four DVD sets. His master’s thesis on power reductions through unstable surface training was highly shared on the web and saved personal training clients everywhere from doing exercises on stability balls to “improve core strength”.

10. Katrina Hodgson Karena’s co-trainer on ToneItUp. She has filmed over 200 fitness DVDs and is the go-to online trainer for MS active source, a physician-mediated online resource for patients with multiple sclerosis. Along with Karena Dawn, Katrina is in the top 10 because of the viewership on the ToneItUp YouTube channel (200,000+ subscribers and over 17 million views).

11. David Kirsch The founder and a celebrity trainer at the award-winning Madison Square Club in New York City. David also runs davidkirschwellness.com where he sells everything from his books and training videos to detox kits, snack bars, and supplements. Surprisingly, it’s other social channels (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) which put David firmly in the top 15. He posts fitness tips on Twitter, uses YouTube to post promotional videos, workout videos, and motivational “coffee talk” videos. David also uses Pinterest and Tumblr to blog about food and recipes.

12. Jen Sinkler A former professional rugby player and former editor for Experience Life magazine, Jen is a refreshingly intellectual presence who is committed to writing and discussing training in a research-backed way and quickly gaining respect in the women’s weightlifting and sports science communities. Her Twitter presence (8569 followers) earned her the #12 spot on this list.

13. Tara Stiles The only fitness instructor on this list who teaches yoga exclusively. Tara founded and instructs at Strala Yoga in New York City. She is #13 because of her strong Twitter presence and numerous videos on her YouTube channel, which has over 100,000 subscribers and 16 million views.

14. Todd Durkin A trainer to NFL and MLB athletes and the founder and creator of Todd Durkin Enterprises in San Diego, CA which provides personal training, massage therapy, Pilates, yoga, sports performance training, nutrition, physical therapy and chiropractic services. He is on this list because of his website, where he generates content daily, and because of Facebook and Twitter where he has 8,000+ likes and over 20,000 followers, respectively.

15. Tracy Anderson Best known for the dance-inspired exercise method — the Tracy Anderson Method – that she created, Tracy became famous by training famous clients including, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Richie, Courteney Cox, Shakira, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ashley Greene, Jennifer Lopez, and Bethany Frankel. She is on this list because of her website, which gets more in links than any other site in the top 15 except for JillianMichaels.com.

So there it is! Whose workouts are you going to try?

By: Shruti Saran

Find me on: Twitter

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Two Scary Words and Three Questions for the FDA

Posted by: Adam P. Silverstein in Social Media Insights & Trends on May 16, 2013

Quick. Word association. What are two words from the FDA that healthcare marketers and communicators almost universally fear and dread?

The answer: Warning Letter (but I’ll admit “not approved” is also at the top of the list!)

For those unfamiliar, the FDA, and in this case the Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) issues warning letters when a company or organization insufficiently or inaccurately communicates a medical product or device’s benefits and risks. This includes not fully describing the side effects associated with a product or using language or visuals that imply a product treats a certain condition which the FDA has not approved. A warning letter is what it sounds like; a cautionary notice – “Strike 1” to use a baseball analogy – from the FDA that a company should consider revising its communications to avoid enforcement action.

Of course, Warning Letters can be viewed through different lenses, with the chance for confusion. It’s like the batter who thinks he’s received ball four when the umpire calls strike 3. Different interpretations and views of the information, and the warning letters themselves, in healthcare communications can seriously impact future marketing efforts much like disagreements over the strike zone can affect a game’s outcome.

Luckily, the FDA does not issue warning letters without explanation or allowing for questions. Today at 11:30 a.m. ET, the OPDP will host an Enforcement Webinar that lets viewers directly communicate questions on Warning Letters and Untitled Letters November 2012 through March 2013.

During this time, the FDA issued six Untitled Letters for misleading claims about the efficacy or risks associated with products treating a variety of diseases and conditions.

Here are the three questions that I’d like the OPDP to answer today:

Looking forward, do you have a sense of particular areas of concern when it comes to trends you’ve seen with drug promotion? For example, are you seeing more violations in terms of overstating efficacy claims or understanding potential risks?
There was only one online letter dealing with a company’s web site and podcast. What are your primary concerns regarding potential violations on digital platforms? Where do you see the biggest risk for sponsors?
How do you plan to include the information you’ve used for these Untitled Letters in whatever policy FDA eventually issues regarding social media promotion?

I’ll be live-tweeting tomorrow’s meeting using the hashtag #FDAletters. Please follow along and look for another update on this blog later this week. And if you have additional questions for the FDA, please leave them in the comments section. I’d love to see them.

By: Adam P. Silverstein

Adam P. Silverstein Senior Account Manager

Find me on: Twitter

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Communication Design

Posted by: Laura Fusco in Analytics, Communication Strategy, Global Healthcare, Healthcare Insights, Healthcare Technology, Insights, Integrated Communications, Medical Communications, Medical Devices, Thinking Creatively, w20 group on May 15, 2013

By the W20 Healthcare Leadership Team

It seems like the whole world is trying to figure out the future of healthcare communications and marketing. What exactly are the opportunities in the expanding trend of consolidated marketing and communication assignments? Yes, the whole last sentence is an oxymoron.

There is no doubt that Healthcare is important on a national and local level. It is complex. But we are an industry of pretty smart people that have regular dialogue with scientists and clinicians and do okay.

Some would say Healthcare is fragile; an industry that was insular not so long ago but today is under siege, has lost its swagger and maybe even its edge. Again, there are a lot of good agencies out there vigorously trying to reinvent themselves to cement the cracks in the highways to “healthy healthcare marketing” and communications.

So why are all these smart, good people and agencies struggling so hard?

The problem around simply cementing the cracks is that eventually environmental pressures force the cracks wide open. One can see this on display in those cases where agencies (typically under a holding company model) continue to specialize in their verticals and piece together “team approaches” to healthcare stakeholder marketing and communications. The PR agency does their thing, the ad agency theirs, managed care theirs, and so on. Under the guise of integration the agencies form a unified team where the best communicators come together to ideate and create the programs and platforms that underpin successful brand education and promotion.

Beyond the obvious pressures of agency infighting over program control or revenue, this approach is artificial in that it cobbles approaches and people together rather than being designed or engineered around data as the communication strategy or tactic that is wanted or needed or the must have tool at a precise moment in time for someone to self-mange their health in a new healthcare system.

In the second scenario, you can’t really put a label on what the communication genre is. It’s not PR. It’s not Advertising. It’s not Med Ed. And frankly it’s irrelevant. Except of course to the individual groups that practice some of these crafts individually or exclusively.

In a world where nothing matters more than information and truth, the industry has to evolve to be less about contrived conversation starters or bombardments of brand messages to increase share of noise or voice. It all comes down to scientific and medical intelligence.

In a data-deep world gone social, gathering intelligence, engaging intelligently, and activating intelligent, co-engineered communications has never been more crucial. And you cannot get this by cobbling together a bunch of disparate entities with a hope and prayer that what needs to break through or be delivered to make thoughtful healthcare choices, decisions or even loyalties will in fact get delivered.

You get it when the borders go away. And the analytic workbench enables the mapping of social and contextual insights that translate variables into disruptive commerce models, digital platforms and trusted engagement (secondary but prized outcome = highly engaging/successful brand.)

W2o Group is excited to be able to invest our time and resources to reshape current products and innovate new ones designed to deliver healthcare resources like:

The World’s First Clinical Investigator Index
The World’s First Advocacy Index for clinical Trials
Dashboards for clinical trials showing all integrated information
Real insight and understanding of patients, disease states and investigators and the elements that will improve clinical trial enrollment
Improved connectedness through dialogue and engagement with all
Improved relationships as a result of value brought forward (for example, improved clinical trial enrollment that helps investigators build their practice and thought leader position)
Improved practices in how content is consistently shared for improved patient and advocacy relationships since the right patients will be in the right trials at the right time

W2o also recognizes that innovation is real time and never static. What is an innovation today can quickly become yesterday’s news.

And this is why we often describe ourselves as partners in communication design and engineering. Essentially this means that we partner with our clients as “optimizers of data that shape communications that spur a call to action.” In the case of healthcare, it means being a provider of precisely what is needed in the area of information or education or answers to enable self management and care in an era choc full of system of care challenges and complexities.

By: Laura Fusco

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Four Reasons It’s a Good Time to be a Patient

Posted by: Adam P. Silverstein in Healthcare Insights, Healthcare Technology, Social Media Insights & Trends on May 9, 2013

It’s a good time to be a patient. I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few weeks as I’ve read story after story about patient empowerment, patient technology and, most inspiring to me, patient persistence.

I admit that we still have plenty of challenges and imperfections in health, especially in the United States. The elephants in the room – access, cost, reduced research funding – have all gotten bigger, and they may soon sit on the gains made on behalf of patients everywhere. But for now, I’m optimistic that patients won’t allow these challenges to stop them.

Here are four reasons why patients should be hopeful, and why physicians, health companies and regulatory agencies are adapting and growing to meet their needs:

The FDA has a patient web site: Haven’t heard of it? It’s called simply the Patient Network. Launched last week, it offers patients and caregivers a simple, navigable tool to have their voices heard and questions answered. In the past, the only patient outreach I’d seen from FDA was allowing patients to comment at advisory committee meetings. This is a big step forward. The proof will be in how FDA engages patients, and if it can expand this content onto the social media channels patients are already using.
Roni Zeiger wants to combine a clinical trials search engine with social networking for cancer. It’s like Google getting together with the ClinicalTrials.Gov and the best cancer patient forums out there: Haven’t heard of Romi Zeiger? I hadn’t either. Romi was the chief health strategist at Google. Now he’s working to create Smart Patients, a web site that will let cancer patients and caregivers – already extremely knowledgeable about their disease and treatment – learn from each other and let the healthcare system learn from them. The idea is exciting and has people talking. It’s made even more exciting by the fact that Zeiger’s co-founder created the Association of Cancer Online Resources (ACOR). Haven’t heard of ACOR? It’s one of the most widely used patient e-mail listservs for all kinds of cancers, allowing patients to share tips about treatments and ask questions about anything on their minds when it comes to cancer.
Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann wants physicians to let patients make their job better: Dr. Desmond-Hellmann is Chancellor at the University of San Francisco California School of Medicine. She knows physicians are under tremendous pressure and that the health care system is “stressing out the very people we need the most from.” To solve it, she says patient advocates can help expand access to medicines, and that “important, transformative things happen only because patient advocates and patients had a seat at the table.” But even if patients have a seat at the table, it’s not enough. She says patients have to drive their care and create a new social contract where patients supply big data for the greater good. It’s a tall order and may take time, but this social contract could offer something game-changing in how patients are cared for. Take the time to watch her TEDMED talk. You’ll be glad you did.
Natalie Stack’s wish is close to coming true. She has her parents and committed researchers to thank: The New York Times has the inspiring story of Natalie Stack. When she was 12, Natalie’s birthday wish was for her disease to vanish. Ten years after making the wish, she’s still alive. Natalie’s parents started a foundation to develop a new medicine for nephropathic cystinosis, a rare genetic disease that, if untreated, typically destroys the kidneys after only ten years. Even a kidney transplant may not help, and the disease is often fatal. Just last week, the FDA approved this new treatment, showing what’s possible when patients and caregivers don’t give up on progress. There will certainly be challenges over the cost of the drug, but the progress deserves to be recognized.

By: Adam P. Silverstein

Adam P. Silverstein Senior Account Manager

Find me on: Twitter

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The Emergence of the S²aaS Firm and the Future of Consulting

Posted by: Bob Pearson in Communication Strategy, Entrepreneur, Social Media Insights & Trends on May 9, 2013

Our industry is undergoing a tectonic shift. It looks subtle on the outside, but its impact is massive.

A new type of consulting firm is emerging, that we call S²aaS, in an industry that only had one S previously.

Within our firm, we like to say that we are in the process of creating a software firm within a services company.

It’s not a question of if…it’s a question of how.

Clients want relevant insights for paid, earned, owned and shared media, anywhere on earth, anytime of the day, for as far back as it may matter to understand an issue.

Technology is allowing us to see what people say at the store level via their phone right now, while algorithms enable us to know who has driven share of conversation for the last five years.
Customers are making decisions on their own terms. How we reached them in the past is decreasingly effective.
Competitive advantage will go to those organizations who are expert at identifying issues, opportunities, trends and competitor actions more quickly than their peers.

Hardware (physical labor), alone, is incapable of harnessing this combination of data and insights. Software helps solve the problem. Yet, in an industry where customers decide whether a brand is truly relevant, it will always be a combination of software and hardware (our brains) that wins in the marketplace. Neither alone is enough. Together, we enter a new age of strategic insights.

It means that communications leaders should look at the programmer in their office like they have looked at the creative director for years. They are the new artists, who can create solutions that were unimaginable a few years ago. Programmers are realizing that without the insights of client-facing teams, they will not build what is most relevant to the market. It’s why we have creative and digital together. We want our artists to know each other exceptionally well.

And all of us, when we strive to provide the best client service, will realize that fluency in software and “hardware” will lead to the best ideas and solutions.

The result is the emergence of the S²aaS consulting firm run by communications engineers. We are providing “software and services as a service”. We’re in the cloud and on the ground.

Of course, none of this happens without two key ingredients. Innovative clients and entrepreneurial agency teams. When we were selected this week as the digital agency of the year and the specialist agency of the year by The Holmes Report, it made us realize why we are so fortunate. It’s simple. We work with some of the most innovative clients in the world and we are building a team of super smart entrepreneurs who believe in pragmatically disrupting the status quo. This formula is leading to the creation of a S²aaS firm of the future.

Our goal is to help redefine the future of our industry day by day, client by client, as we figure out how to create software that makes a difference and “hardware” that knows how to achieve the right results.

We’re just getting started…time to get back to innovating with our team.