A new study of pharmaceutical marketing teams found that the most popular social media forum groups plan to use in the next one to two years is Facebook (73%), according to data published by business intelligence firm Cutting Edge Information.

Data found in the study, Pharmaceutical Marketing: Reevaluate Digital Trends and Metrics for Social Media and Mobile Success, revealed that YouTube (64%) and LinkedIn (55%) are also common for surveyed life science marketing teams, with Twitter (45%) at a more distant fourth.

Not as popular, but still commonly used social networking sites include Instagram and Tumblr, with 18% and 9% of pharmaceutical marketing teams utilizing them, respectively. Additional data from the study show that no surveyed pharmaceutical and medical device companies report using Pinterest, Vine, Flickr and Reddit.

"New technology offers many opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry," said Natalie DeMasi, research team leader at Cutting Edge Information. "As a result, social media and mobile platforms are becoming more and more a part of teams' digital strategies."