The past two years marked a turning point for specialty pharmaceutical company Endo International plc, which welcomed a new CEO in March 2020, amid a challenging environment for all businesses. Along with new leadership came a new vision and strategic priorities that would guide the company.
The Corporate Affairs team saw an opportunity to amplify Endo’s evolving story through its LinkedIn account, which officially launched in November 2019. As Endo’s only corporate social media outlet, LinkedIn offered a platform to build the corporate reputation, showcase company news and generate team pride—all guided by our new strategic priorities.
The challenge: Until recently, team members were prohibited from all Endo-related social media activity, a standard pharmaceutical guidance due to the industry’s highly regulated environment. Even after the 2019 revamp of the social media policy that allowed employee engagement, team members still had to be mindful of regulations and guardrails that dictated the types of permissible content.
But the Corporate Affairs team was determined. We knew that this was the time to share our corporate identity and engage team members—the company’s greatest ambassadors who, for the most part, were now working remotely.
Our goals:
We had a plan to achieve our goals in 2021, and then we got to work!
Social Media Trainings:
We empowered team members through live (virtual) social media trainings. While all employees are required to review and sign the social media policy and pass an accompanying quiz, the trainings were an additional opportunity offered to top executives, their leadership teams and teams identified as active on social media.
Three Content Series:
New series gave followers a peek into Endo’s culture, ESG accomplishments and recent milestones.
Endo Hashtags:
We began using #EndoProud for accolades and team member spotlights and #EndoForGood on ESG- and philanthropy-related content (inspired by one of our three new strategic priorities: Be a Force for Good). While we didn’t overtly tell employees to use these hashtags, they saw them and organically began including them in their own LinkedIn comments and posts.
News & Spotlights:
We made a point to share all relevant Endo news and timely content to highlight our accomplishments, momentum and team members.
Topics included corporate news (linking to press releases), announcements of new scientific data, media coverage, brand milestones and campaign launches. We also shared content geared toward our internal audience, such as our two employee resource group launches and photos from presentations and other events.
Team Member Templates:
Armed with ready-to-post social media content from the Corporate Affairs team, employees could easily share Endo news with their networks.
We supplied approved social media posts (visuals + copy) for topics that team members would not have been able to post about, such as product launches and product marketing campaigns. We also provided post templates they could use or adapt for topics that did not require approval in order to prompt them and to provide general guidance if they needed it.
We also sent sample post copy to executive team members that they could use when sharing posts from the Endo LinkedIn account. This encouraged engagement with team members and provided easy-to-execute thought leadership opportunities.
Through consistent and quality content, we grew our audience in 2021—while maintaining a high engagement rate.
Endo team members took the supplemental social media training—underscoring the desire to understand our social media guidelines and engage on social in a compliant manner.
Endo leaders and team members engaged on social media.
