healthcare marketing firm

Hospital Social Media Strategy Checklist

Are you satisfied with your hospital’s social media efforts?  It might be time to revisit your social media strategy. Here, we delve into some crucial DOs and DON’Ts tailored for healthcare marketers.

Common Mistakes in Healthcare Social Media Marketing Strategy

Before diving into the right approach, understanding what not to do is crucial. Here are some don’ts for your hospital social media strategy:

  • Vague Initial Planning. Merely thinking, “We should be on Facebook,” isn’t sufficient. Hence, it’s imperative to define your goals, objectives, and metrics for evaluation. Recognizing the benchmark for success is pivotal.
  • Absence of a Content Calendar. Constructing a content calendar is vital. This calendar should harmonize with other hospital communication initiatives, local happenings, and even seasonal shifts.
  • Irregular Posting Schedule. Avoid sporadic posting. Instead, disseminate content systematically and during prime hours.
  • Exclusivity to the Marketing Team. Social media marketing strategy for hospitals demands engagement across the board. Engage service line managers, physicians, HR, and department leaders for a holistic approach.
  • Lack of a Response Protocol. With patients and the community aiming to connect with your hospital online, ensure you have a proactive system to manage these interactions.

Essential Elements of an Effective Healthcare Social Media Strategy

Your social media strategy should address these pivotal questions:

  • What is our end goal?
  • How will we define and measure success?
  • Who is responsible? Who is part of the team?
  • What are the priorities?
  • Who are the target audiences?
  • Where will we source our content and how will we archive it?
  • How can we actively involve physicians and other experts in social media?
  • What is the posting schedule?
  • Who will oversee community interactions and respond to comments?
  • What level of integration will there be with other communication efforts and channels?
  • Will we utilize boosted posts? If yes, what’s our budget?

In sum, if you’re aiming to bolster your hospital’s online presence, revisiting the foundational elements of a social media strategy for healthcare can be transformative. Avoid common mistakes healthcare marketers make by sticking to this guide.

ABOUT JIMMY WARREN
Early to bed, early to rise, work like crazy and advertise! Jimmy Warren is president of TotalCom Marketing Communications and has over 30 years experience helping many kinds of businesses build a strong brand. A large portion of that experience has been helping hospitals and healthcare organizations. He loves the ‘weird’, interesting and extremely talented people he gets to work with every day – that includes co-workers and clients. Outside of work he enjoys his grand kids, traveling and any kind of good ole fashion Alabama sports. Roll Tide!

Healthcare Marketing Management: 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses

80621090The best managers have a fundamentally different understanding of workplace, company, and team dynamics. See what they get right.

This blog usually addresses marketing issues or ideas relevant to healthcare and hospital marketers.  But realizing that most healthcare marketers also supervise others I think the thoughts here can be very helpful.  Because being a great boss is just as important as understanding marketing strategy and principles.  To be the best you can be, to get the most out of those you supervise and to create an environment of excellence, you must also know what qualities are required to be an outstanding boss.

So I share this article written by Geoffrey James for Inc Magazine

A few years back, I interviewed some of the most successful CEOs in the world in order to discover their management secrets. I learned that the “best of the best” tend to share the following eight core beliefs.

1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.

Average bosses see business as a conflict between companies, departments and groups. They build huge armies of “troops” to order about, demonize competitors as “enemies,” and treat customers as “territory” to be conquered.

Extraordinary bosses see business as a symbiosis where the most diverse firm is most likely to survive and thrive. They naturally create teams that adapt easily to new markets and can quickly form partnerships with other companies, customers … and even competitors.

2. A company is a community, not a machine.

Average bosses consider their company to be a machine with employees as cogs. They create rigid structures with rigid rules and then try to maintain control by “pulling levers” and “steering the ship.”

Extraordinary bosses see their company as a collection of individual hopes and dreams, all connected to a higher purpose. They inspire employees to dedicate themselves to the success of their peers and therefore to the community–and company–at large.

3. Management is service, not control.

Average bosses want employees to do exactly what they’re told. They’re hyper-aware of anything that smacks of insubordination and create environments where individual initiative is squelched by the “wait and see what the boss says” mentality.

Extraordinary bosses set a general direction and then commit themselves to obtaining the resources that their employees need to get the job done. They push decision making downward, allowing teams form their own rules and intervening only in emergencies.

4. My employees are my peers, not my children.

Average bosses see employees as inferior, immature beings who simply can’t be trusted if not overseen by a patriarchal management. Employees take their cues from this attitude, expend energy on looking busy and covering their behinds.

Extraordinary bosses treat every employee as if he or she were the most important person in the firm. Excellence is expected everywhere, from the loading dock to the boardroom. As a result, employees at all levels take charge of their own destinies.

5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.

Average bosses see fear–of getting fired, of ridicule, of loss of privilege–as a crucial way to motivate people.  As a result, employees and managers alike become paralyzed and unable to make risky decisions.

Extraordinary bosses inspire people to see a better future and how they’ll be a part of it.  As a result, employees work harder because they believe in the organization’s goals, truly enjoy what they’re doing and (of course) know they’ll share in the rewards.

6. Change equals growth, not pain.

Average bosses see change as both complicated and threatening, something to be endured only when a firm is in desperate shape. They subconsciously torpedo change … until it’s too late.

Extraordinary bosses see change as an inevitable part of life. While they don’t value change for its own sake, they know that success is only possible if employees and organization embrace new ideas and new ways of doing business.

7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation.

Average bosses adhere to the old IT-centric view that technology is primarily a way to strengthen management control and increase predictability. They install centralized computer systems that dehumanize and antagonize employees.

Extraordinary bosses see technology as a way to free human beings to be creative and to build better relationships. They adapt their back-office systems to the tools, like smartphones and tablets, that people actually want to use.

8. Work should be fun, not mere toil.

Average bosses buy into the notion that work is, at best, a necessary evil. They fully expect employees to resent having to work, and therefore tend to subconsciously define themselves as oppressors and their employees as victims. Everyone then behaves accordingly.

Extraordinary bosses see work as something that should be inherently enjoyable–and believe therefore that the most important job of manager is, as far as possible, to put people in jobs that can and will make them truly happy.

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Which ones should you address? Which one is priority? What action steps will get you there?

Healthcare Marketing: Traditional Marketing Dead?

Many pundits are declaring the demise and even death of traditional advertising.  They are premature.  They are wrong.

Traditional AdvertisingI just read an article by Bill Lee in the Harvard Business Review.  In the article he declared, “Traditional marketing – including advertising, public relations, branding and corporate communications – is dead. Many people in traditional marketing roles and organizations may not realize they’re operating within a dead paradigm. But they are. The evidence is clear.”

Lee gives three pieces of evidence for the death of marketing.  First, buyers are no longer paying much attention. Several studies have confirmed that in the “buyer’s decision journey,” traditional marketing communications just aren’t relevant.

Second, CEOs have lost all patience. In a devastating 2011 study of 600 CEOs and decision makers by the London-based Fournaise Marketing Group, 73% of them said that CMOs lack business credibility and the ability to generate sufficient business growth.

Third, in today’s increasingly social media-infused environment, traditional marketing and sales not only doesn’t work so well, it doesn’t make sense. In fact, this last is a bit of a red herring, because traditional marketing isn’t really working anywhere.

There are others who have made similar predictions.  But I will say, it’s not true!  True, marketing is changing.  True, social media and relationship marketing is playing a more significant role in the marketing process.  And true, consumers have more control and more power.  But none of that means traditional marketing is dead.

I could go on and on and on with success stories of brands that are effective using traditional marketing.  Traditional marketing is still such a dominant and influential force in our culture.  Brands are being made and enhanced everyday using traditional marketing methods.

On a personal level, our agency does work every day using traditional marketing methods that render sales growth and increases in market share.

And traditional marketing works in healthcare.  Yes it’s changing.  Building authentic customer relationships is of supreme importance.  And healthcare marketers must always be open to change.  They must be willing to experiment with new strategies.  But it’s not time to abandon traditional strategies and tactics.  And for those who say marketing is dead, aren’t looking in the same places I am.