Social Media for Healthcare

Healthcare Marketing: Smaller Hospitals Effective Using Social Media

Study shows smaller hospitals use Facebook more effectively than larger ones.

Hospitals are getting into the social media game.  Although late adopters, hospitals are increasing their use of social media.   Some larger institutions, like the Mayo Clinic, have large social media departments and have extensive activity among social media networks.  But it’s much more challenging for smaller hospitals.  The resources, the time requirements and support from upper management are definite limitations.  But even with those liabilities, a recent study indicated smaller hospitals can be effective utilizing social media.

In two studies at the University of Missouri, the findings indicated that smaller hospitals use Facebook more effectively than larger ones.  One study was conducted by Dr Ricky C. Leung, assistant professor of health management and one by Dr. Kalyan S. Pasupathy, assistant professor of health management and informatics.  The research findings were reported by Brian Horowitz in eWeek .  The research indicated that smaller hospitals are more committed to Facebook once they decide to use it.

Despite larger hospitals having more resources to build stronger Facebook page, they have more channels to develop and populate.   Smaller hospitals who are limited in what they can do, concentrate their efforts more narrowly and are therefore more effective with the tools they use.

Of the sites studied, the average number of “likes” for the hospital’s Facebook page was 1321.

The take-away from this research is that smaller hospitals can have success using social media.  The key for smaller hospitals is to limit the number of social media channels used and concentrate on only as many channels as can be done well.  To spread the marketing department too thin by trying to do too much is counter productive.  It’s much more effective to do one or two things and do them well.

An effective social media effort is not limited to larger hospitals.  Smaller hospitals can also be effective by strategically choosing a limited number of social media tactics and doing them as well as possible.

Healthcare Marketing: How Often, What, When to Post on Social Media

Timing, frequency and content of social media impact its effectiveness.

Hubspot’s Dan Zarrella examined more than 100,000 social media accounts to determine what timing and frequency renders the most effectiveness for outcomes.  Of course effectiveness is different for each specific activity but Zarrella did discover some general guidelines.

Frequency: What is the right amount of frequency in social media?  Am I communicating too often?  Not enough?  The take-away from the finding was to not crowd the content.  Each site will be different depending on the activity of the site but the general recommendation is to have at least two hours on each side of shared links.

Timing: Which days and what time of day are best for generating activity and engagement?   The general guidelines are:

Twitter…late in the day and week are the most tweetable times.  Between 2 PM and 5 PM (EST).

Facebook…. Highest during the weekend.  This is due to restrictions some employees have for social media activity at work and more time for social media activity over the weekends.

Types of Content: The most important guideline about content is to mix it up.  Make sure you’re not sharing the same content and types of content. A variety of content optimizes attention and engagement.

Here are some suggestions for different types of content:

  • Links to new content
  • Links to other helpful content
  • Industry news
  • Surveys
  • Visual content (photos, charts, video, infographics)
  • Answers to common questions

Social media is a challenge for healthcare marketers.  It requires a considerable amount of time, which is hard to come by.  So playing the odds and learning from the research on how to maximize our efforts is essential.  We need to work social media but we need to work smart.

Healthcare Marketing: Social Media Lessons to be Learned from Target

Target has 5 million Facebook fans….. here are 5 social media lessons we can learn from their success.

Target, the third largest retailer in the nation, has 20 million fans and added over 2 million fans in one month.  But they have more than just a quantity of fans.  They also have very high engagement levels with their fans.  Morgan Arnold, reporting for Social Media Today reviewed Target’s social media success and offered 5 of their best practices, which can be very helpful to healthcare marketers.

1.    Keep messaging and delivery mechanisms simple and relevant to the customer.

Target is constantly attempting to craft tools and applications that not only facilitate interaction among online friends but also actually create new opportunities for transactions with the brand.  They create win-win situations that are useful and rewarding to their fans but also lead to transactions and engagement with the brand.

2.    Use Twitter as a tool to create conversations.

Many organizations use Twitter just to dispense information.  It is an outstanding medium for that but also to engage followers in conversations.  Additionally it’s a way to build buzz and launch new services.

3.    Whenever possible, say it with pictures.

Track Social’s recent white paper Optimizing Facebook Engagement showed that photos are the hands-down winner when it comes to boosting engagement scores.  Photos should be an integral component of the content brands post.

4.    Community Engagement = Social Engagement.

Involvement in the community will increase engagement on Facebook.  Any community involvement should be documented on Facebook as a means to create consumer involvement.

5.    Think Global, Post Local.

Always localize healthcare issues and news.  Use healthcare issues of the day but always explain what it means and how it impacts your local audience.

Healthcare marketers could learn from Target’s approach to social media.  Be relevant and engage the social space in ways that are meaningful, creative and mutually beneficial.

Healthcare Marketing: 5 Tips from Big Business for Better Social Media

Healthcare marketers can learn from big business about how to approach social media

An article in Social Media Today  outlined lessons than can be learned from big business about how to effectively use social media.   Here are the 5 lessons outlined:

 1.    Begin with the End in Mind

Have a goal and work backwards to accomplish the goal.   Know why you are using social media.  Pick a goal and prioritize your tactics to accomplish it.

 2.    Be a publisher first

Content is indeed king.   You are a content creator.  You create content. Every time you publish a social media update, email a newsletter or post a blog post you create content.  So to succeed you must publish.

3.    Understands what motivates your audience

People do not care about your hospital or organization.  They care about themselves.  Don’t create content around your hospital, your services lines or your accomplishments.  Create content for you customer.  Your audience determines content.  Understand them and the benefits your services provide for them.

4.    Don’t overemphasize tactics

Social media s a new way to connect with people and talk with them.  The key is your objective.  Strategy is your plan to accomplish the objective.  Tactics are tools.  They help you accomplish your objectives.  And nothing more.

 5.    Enable others to share your story.

Create opportunities for others to tell your story.  Empower them to do so, and always express your appreciation for what they have done.  Take the risk to let them say what they want.

Healthcare marketers can learn valuable lessons from the way big businesses uses social media. Most of our hospitals are not considered large.  But it doesn’t mean we can’t learn valuable lessons from big businesses.  Especially in regard for social media.

Healthcare Marketing: Media Consumption has Shifted in Politics too!

For the two political conventions TV viewership was down and social media usage was up.

The recently completed Republican and Democratic political conventions revealed the dramatic changes occurring in media usage.   Television viewership plunged, depending on the night, from 25-40% from 2008.  And according to Nielsen the television audience was decisively older with very low number for viewers 18-34.  There were ten times more viewers 55 or older than 18-34.

But on the other hand, social networks and online saw a dramatic increase from the conventions just four years ago.  Several news organizations offered live streaming feeds online and both parities saw significant traffic on their respective YouTube channels.   The two conventions have also been one of the most talked about events of the year on Facebook.  But even there, the audience trended older.  Twitter was perhaps the biggest winner among social media options.  Where information is shared in increments of 140 words or less, Twitter only registered 365,000 tweets between the two conventions in 2008.  But this year the Republican convention alone drew 5 million tweets.  About 14,300 a minute during Romney’s acceptance speech, according to Beth Fouhy of the Associated Press.

These numbers just confirm what is obvious.  Media consumption is dramatically changing.  Now consumers are not tied to their living rooms and a TV set for news and information.  With laptops, tablets and smartphones, consumers can gather information wherever they are.  On demand.  Media consumption occurs anyplace online access is available.  And the information is often gathered by consumers in small increments of time and bits of information and not necessarily long format like a 3-4 hour convention coverage on television.

For healthcare marketers, it doesn’t tell us that traditional media is no longer effective, but that we must consider and explore other non-traditional mediums to be relevant and reach a broader audience.  And that is especially true if we want to reach the younger audience.  Only a few healthcare organizations have a marketing staff large enough to have a presence everywhere but every organization should be active in one or two.  Choose the one(s) that could be most effective for your brand and for which you can develop a good competency and consistent use and go for it. 

We might not have learned much from watching and listening to the conventions on whatever medium we used to consume them, but one thing we did confirm is that consumer media consumption is indeed shifting.  And we must embrace it.

Healthcare Marketing: 10 New Social Media Tips

Social media is not easy.  It’s not like traditional media.  It’s requires a new way of thinking.

Mashable interviewed OMD Word’s U.S. Director, Colin Sutton who offered his top 10 social media tips for brands.  Those tips are summarized here.

1.    Don’t Be An Island

Traditional and digital media should be coordinated into an integrated campaign.  If you are planning a social media campaign that’s not connected to the rest of your communications, marketing and media plans, then rethink it.

2.    It’s A Brave New World – Accept It

Don’t treat social media like traditional campaigns.  Social networks connect you with customers across multiple devices and media through two-way communications.

 3.    Listen Up  – And Not Just At The End Of the Campaign

What you hear is important.  It should impact planning, and execution.  It should dictate your marketing moves.

4.    Connect The Dots To Win

Content is king and media is amplification.  Make sure everyone is on the same page and working together.

5.    Goals Can Unite And Ignite Your Efforts

Identify the most desired social actions.  Agree on the goals and determine how you are going to measure them.

 6.    Benchmark Relentless

If there are past campaigns use the data to set benchmarks.  If it’s the first campaign compare against similar campaigns by competitors.

7.    Long-Term Value Is Paramount

Meaningful experiences drive long-term relationships and build advocacy.

8.    Understand All of the Social Channels You Are Targeting

Understand how each channel works and how customers live and breathe there.

 9.    Optimize Ruthlessly and Intelligently 

Collect data, understand it and optimize it.

10.    Think About Eyes, Minds and Wallet When You Are Evaluating Success

Success is more than the value of earned media.   It’s also about perception.  Consider the consumer’s minds and hearts when measuring perception.

Most healthcare marketers are still trying to learn how best to use social media, if at all.   With few exceptions, most don’t have a vast amount of social experience.  But we can minimize our mistakes and maximize our effectiveness by learning from others who have more experience.  That’s why these tips can be very valuable to healthcare marketers.

Healthcare Marketing: 5 Ways to Cultivate Your Hospital’s Brand with Social Media

Your brand must be an integral part of your social media strategy.

More healthcare marketers are adopting social media as a component of their marketing efforts.  But it must reflect our brand.  Social media provides the opportunity to humanize the brand and empower it. 

Heidi Cohen identified five tactics for using social media to cultivate a brand and expand its reach.  Her comments appeared in SmartBlog on Social Media.

1.    Give your brand a human voice (or other sounds) on social media.

A brand can be humanized by how it sounds.  Corporate speak doesn’t resonate with consumers. Instead, consider your brand’s language, accent and other noises.  Sound like a human.

2.    Enhance the visual signals associated wit your brand.

Carefully consider colors, images, icons, type and photographs to make sure they enhance your brand and communicate the brand’s personality.

3.    Tell your brand’s story.

Brands aren’t a collection of facts or products or services.  They’re about stories.  Stories of the company, employees and customers told in a human voice.  Give your brand a personality.  Create with stories.

4.    Develop and incorporate a culture into your brand.

A unique corporate culture is important to community building.  Create a special language, actions and attributes to set your brand apart from the competition.

5.    Brand your employees.

Brands need real people to represent their organization.  It provides a human face.  It builds trust and sincerity. Brand employees and let employees project the brand.

Social media can be very useful to hospital marketers.  And it’s important to let your brand shine through in those social media efforts.  Social media is a unique opportunity to humanize your brand, to create a brand personality and to connect your brand to your consumers.

 

 

Healthcare Marketing: 6 Recommendations for a Social Media Policy

The National Labor Relations Board issues guidelines for social media in the workplace. 

The NLRB may not be the ultimate authority on social media for healthcare marketers but their recommendations can be very helpful.  After reviewing social media policies of businesses, they discovered that many businesses were risking infringing on employee free speech and labor rights and issued guidelines and recommendations.

Mikal Belicove reported some of the agency’s findings in an article for Entrepreneur.  Here are six recommendations that should guide a hospital’s social media policy.

1.    Know and follow the rules. 

Employees should be encouraged to read and understand the social media policy.  The policy should clearly indicate what is not appropriate and what will not be tolerated in regard to the use of social media.

2.    Be respectful.

The policy should state that employees are expected to be “fair and courteous to fellow associates, customers, members, suppliers or people who work on behalf of the employer.”

3.    Be honest and accurate.

Never post anything based on rumor or assumption.  Make sure all posts are accurate and true.

4.    Post only appropriate and respectful content

Always be respectful and maintain confidentiality.  Never represent yourself as a company spokesperson or speak for the company unless specifically authorized.

5.    Use social media at work for only work related activities.

Don’t use company equipment and time for personal messaging.

6.    Don’t engage the press.

Don’t speak to the press or engage the press in any social media activity without prior approval.

Certainly this is not an exhaustive list for a social media policy but it’s helpful in regard to what’s permissible without restricting employees’ work-related rights.

Healthcare Marketing: Social Media… “Take my advice.”

The number one piece of advice offered by marketers about social media is “Build relationships.”

As healthcare marketers continue to engage consumers with social media, it’s always good to heed the advice of others.   Regina Wood conducted an online poll on LinkedIn of 300 marketers and asked what’s the most important piece of advice they had for social media.  The results were published in Healthcare Communication News.

The results were:

  • Build relationships with your followers (57 percent)
  • Have a personality (20 percent)
  • You can’t control your message (7 percent)
  • Have a crisis plan in place (6 percent)
  • Other (9 percent)

And some other pieces of helpful advice the respondents shared:

1. “If you don’t have anything valuable and positive to say, don’t.”

2. “You can never take it back!”

3. “Be consistent—don’t just tweet or post for a couple of days and then decide it doesn’t work for you!”

4. “Use social media for professional purposes only. Keep personal specifics to a minimum so you’re never embarrassed by anything on internet.”

5. “Good manners will serve you well in your interactions.”

6. “If your post has any potential to embarrass you at all—no matter how infinitesimal—it will; the Internet is forever.”

7. “Set a time limit.”

8. “Don’t venture out until you’ve tidied your room. In other words, your company website needs to be in good enough shape so that when you’re out there drumming up attention for yourself on social media and people come looking, your site gives them a reason to stay.”

All of these are handy pieces of advice.  Let the wise take notice.

Healthcare Marketing: Five More Social Media Mistakes

Social media mistakes damage reputations and brands.  Learn from the mistakes of others.

Although not specifically directed to healthcare and hospital marketers, an article written by A.J Ghergich, CEO of Authority Domains, and appearing in SmartBlogs from SmartBrief offers some very helpful comments about mistakes brands involved in social media should avoid.  The article is repeated here in its entirety.

Imagine you built up a vast social media following — but because of one small oversight, your reputation started to crumble right before your eyes. Sadly, this scenario is not that farfetched, because some businesses leap into the social media arena without understanding how to maintain a relationship with their customers while avoiding some obvious pitfalls.

By studying some mistakes by other companies that have resulted in negative exposure, you can learn how your business can avoid a similar fate. Here are five easy-to-avoid mistakes.

  • Being crass about current events. Last year, designer Kenneth Cole used the publicity of an international crisis in Cairo to post about his products. He even used the hashtag #Cairo to try to build buzz and reach others who were searching for tweets on the crisis. The reaction was so strong that you won’t find Kenneth Cole’s old Twitter account anymore. It has been replaced. Reacting to current events can be plus for your brand, but consider how some people might react if it looks like you’re trying to capitalize on a very serious situation. Be respectful and tread lightly when talking about current events. Take a minute to put yourself in another person’s shoes and ask how your post could be perceived. It’s possible that if Kenneth Cole had taken a few extra minutes to think through his tweet, he may have decided not to publish it.
  • Getting too personal. Be careful when posting personal content, whether or not you feel it is valuable. Your customers consider your social accounts the face of your brand. Bob Parsons, Go Daddy founder, posted a video of his trip to Zimbabwe on his blog. In the video, Parsons told the audience how he kills elephants because they damage crops, which endangers the lives of the starving locals. After Parsons published the video, the media outlets ran with the story, and some customers boycotted Go Daddy and its services. Though Parsons explained the story in more detail, the damage had already been done. Regardless of whether Parsons was doing a good deed, this type of personal content is not appropriate for customers. Occasional personal content is effective for creating connections with your customers, but keep it light and don’t antagonize people.
  • Being spammy. Resist the temptation to capitalize on the popularity of another company to promote your products. Habitat UK tried to take advantage of the trending topics #Apple, #iPhone and others to acquire some traffic. Unfortunately, the strategy backfired because the tweets had nothing to do with Apple computers or any of its products. Tweeters posted negative messages to Habitat UK’s account, complaining about its “spammy” behavior. Your customers are not stupid. They know when you are trying to manipulate the system. Stay genuine, and don’t piggyback on other companies’ successes. It will only make you look desperate.
  • Putting your account in the wrong hands. The people who tweet or posts on your company’s behalf have the fate of your company’s image in their hands. What they post could potentially damage your reputation. Invest enough resources into finding the right people who will put their opinions aside and prioritize the integrity of your company. Ensure your social media managers understand the essence of your company culture and how you want your brand portrayed.
  • Pretending your mistake didn’t happen. If you ever make a mistake, own up to it and apologize. Your customers will respect you for admitting your mistakes and you can save your brand from any negative backlash. People forgive transparent mistakes much more than they excuse complete denial.

Like all marketers, those in healthcare would be wise to learn from the types of mistakes mentioned and not repeat them.