THE DIABETES EXPERIENCE (DX) BY

What Nitro thinks of

OVERVIEW

is US’s brand new curated site for the world of diabetes.

It is intended to showcase the b st of the web

and highlight Sanofi owned digital diabetes assets.

KOL (Key Opinion Leader) blogging and content curation are becoming essential cornerstones of a

good Social and search strategy.

http://diabetes.sanofi.us/

Having a voice and being seen to be an expert is important.

The conversation is diverse, spanning; diet, health, weight, cardiovascular issues, technology, translational medicine, parenting, education, and

even international politics.

The DX manages to reflect this with a diverse selection of articles.

WHAT IS CONTENT CURATION?

Definition

SVP, Global Strategy & Planning

“the act of finding, grouping, organizing or sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific issue.”*

*Rohit Bhargava (2009) SVP, Global Strategy & Planning, Ogilvy.

Professor of Global Marketing at Georgetown University.

The everyman hero

The content curator sorts the signal from the noise for normal people who are interested in a subject. The content curator is the hero next door. They appear as people (or companies) with a passion for their subject. The activity is now almost mandatory for bloggers to maintain presence.

WHAT WE LIKE

Big step for big pharma

Bringing in third party content is scary for big pharma.

As a sign of things to

come, this is promising

and exciting.

Some sites, particularly in the US, have selective feeds from external sources but showcase and commentary is not very common.

Melding KOL and curated content

The site melds together Key Opinion Leader (KOL) and curated content. This is important and should form the cornerstone of any pharma company’s marketing strategy. Not only is the original content good for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but the use of KOLs adds a social dimension. People involved in the area are more like to pick this up than a generic blog without any informed opinion leaders.

The editors

Catherine Price is a freelance journalist and type 1 diabetic who has written for The New York Times, Slate, Popular Science, and O Magazine, among others. She blogs about diabetes at asweetlife.org. Catherine is currently working on a book about the history and science of vitamins, to be published by the Penguin Press.

Jill Weisenberger, MS, RD, CDE is the author of Diabetes Weight Loss Week by Week, contributing editor for Environmental Nutrition and has written for many publications including EatingWell, Diabetic Living, Her Sports + Fitness, and LifeScript.

Teresa Dumain is a New York-based health writer. Her work has appeared in Prevention, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Reader’s Digest and EverydayHealth.com.

Amy Stockwell Mercer is a freelance writer with type 1 diabetes living in Charleston, SC. She blogs at re-Defining Diabetes and her work can be found in a variety of publications including Charleston Magazine, The City Paper, Diabetes Health, and Literary Mama.

Catherine Price: type 1 diabetic Teresa Dumain: health writer

Jill Weisenberger : diabetes educator Amy Stockwell Mercer: type 1 diabetic

Sanofi have assembled a credible team of diabetes KOLs for their website.

Front page design

The front page takes a lead from the ultra successful Pinterest

The user is guided to explore Sanofi’s world of curated content.

Scrolling top articles box

Article page design In January Google improved their search algorithm to include visual analysis. Sites that keep their content above the fold (on screen) rank higher than those that make the user scroll through ads. While this site has a toolbar that displaces content, text is maintained at a level above the fold.

The fold (for most laptops)

Content

Site toolbar

Centred layout for different browser window sizes.

Structure

The site sits within the sanofi.us domain and adopts a subdomain structure. Subdomains are favoured by Google. Domains pass on all of their rank to the subdomain where sub folders are only able to receive a limited amount.

http://diabetes.sanofi.us/ GO >

http://sanofi.us/diabetes NO X

http://sanofidiabetes.us/ NO X

Avoids common design mistakes

No immediately SEO unfriendly design decisions have been made.

The site uses no flash.

And no frames. So most content is

spiderable and search engine friendly.

THINGS THAT COULD IMPROVE

Accessibility

The site has no RSS feed. This is important for that people can subscribe to site updates.

Social sharing is enabled, despite the fact that the site has its own personality, it has no real voice or twitter account separate to the general diabetes one.

The site has no mobile version. This would cause accessibility problems should Sanofi run a mobile advertising or email campaign.

Probably known items.

Article Availability

Navigating the blog Very few articles are made immediately available on the site. No navigation, in the form of an archive section, is immediately available to the user. This could make the site seem incomplete and limited.

Archiving blog

Archive sections allow people to browse further in to the KOL and best of web content contained on the site.

Added value

The DX could be doing more to enhance the content it posts on the site.

Typically this is the difference between good

and great pieces of content curation.

Internal link structure

The site has many pages, but very few of them can be navigated to.

Internal links mostly occur in the footer.

Google prefers meaningful links in the main text of blog posts and values these more highly.

Putting the curators in front

The bottom of articles is the only place on the site where Sanofi showcases it’s curators and editors.

HARLEY DAVIDSON’S “RIDEBOOK”* A master class in attractive user experience with.

*not done by us!

Experience

There are sites outside pharma that do content curation very well.

While the DX is attractive, has great KOLs and is a big step for pharma, there are other sites that it could

take pointers from.

Harley-Davidson’s “The Ridebook” is the experience to aim for.

Uncluttered, stylish design

Articles curate the world, add a commentary and real value. High quality pictures

and videos make the article readable (no stock shots of people smiling).

Content is on the site, not anywhere else.

The total effect is that you want to read the site and build a relationship with the curators and editors.

CONCLUSION

Potential Sanofi DX has the potential to be strong.

Not just pharma strong, but as strong as non-pharma sites in the general health category.

However, it needs to concentrate on creating a compelling user experience and really clarify the message that it has KOLs and is bringing

the best of the web to its user.

If Sanofi really concentrate of personality then this site could be a winner.

Social media will be important in forming an authentic voice and a little more attention to

finer details and the quality of content available.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR KIND ATTENTION

Contact: Dan Winkler Business Analyst address 13/ 14 Archer Street, London, W1D 7BD website www.nitro-digital.co.uk

telephone +44 (0) 20 7148 6825 mobile +44 (0) 7912 275 066 email daniel@nitro-digital.co.uk