Social Media for Hospitals

The Next Big Thing: Marketing To Gen Z

The next big thing: Marketing to Gen Z.

Marketing to Gen Z Requires a Whole New Strategy

Remember when everyone was trying to figure out how to successfully market to millennials? That conundrum is yesterday’s news. The next big thing on the marketing horizon focuses on connecting with Gen Z. Many brands see connecting with a new generation as a daunting task. But, figuring out how to market to Gen Z is probably easier than you think and can generate impressive results.

Why should you want to market to Gen Z? Below, we cover 6 facts about Gen Z to help you understand this new audience.

Generation Z—Gen Z or Zoomers—includes anyone born between 1997 and 2012. Why the attention on ages 10–25? Look at Gen Z’s numbers:

  • Represent 40 percent of US consumers;
  • Set to outpace Millennials’ earnings by 2031 with over one quarter of global income;
  • 48 percent non-white; nearly 22 percent with at least one immigrant parent;
  • 1-in-5 identify as LGBTQ+;
  • On track to be the best-educated generation with 57 percent currently enrolled in college and 44 percent living with a college-educated parent.

Brands across all industries clamor for the attention of this influential group that is regarded as the “disruptive generation.” As the first completely digital generation, they rule video and audio. Whether producing TikTok videos and podcasts or curating audio playlists, they prefer creating their own content rather than consuming what others create.

How does your healthcare marketing strategy connect with Gen Z? By identifying their rules and playing in their digital playgrounds.

TikTok: The Clock is Running

Several months ago, we asked if TikTok should be a part of your strategy. If you’re marketing to Gen Z, then the answer is yes. Gen Z now makes up 60% of TikTok’s 80 million monthly active users in the United States. However, slow down to carefully define the strategy and goals before moving forward.

Marketing to Gen Z means being active on TikTok. Gen Z makes up 60% of TikTok's 80 million active users in the U.S. and spend an average of 95 minutes per day on the platform.

Part of TikTok’s rapid growth and success is attributed to the platform’s unique algorithm that quickly adapts to show content users find interesting or entertaining. Users decide what they want to watch, not who they friend or follow. When marketing to Gen Z on TikTok, it’s important that brands prioritize creating content that grabs attention within a few seconds. TikTok users spend an average of 95 minutes per day on the platform, but TikTok says the best performing content is between 21-34 seconds. (Note: This is up from 11-17 seconds in 2020).

Gen Z lives in a video world, with TikTok, Instagram and YouTube the most used social media apps  for networking, entertainment and product purchases. It’s clear video marketing resonates with Gen Z. The 2022 State of U.S. Consumer Trends report shows that over three months 28 percent of Gen Zs and Millennials bought products directly on social apps. That’s compared to 18 percent by Gen X and 4 percent by Boomers.

This opens the door for healthcare marketers to make much-needed connections for successfully marketing to Gen Z. While most TikTok videos tend to be fun and entertaining, be careful that content doesn’t backfire. Healthcare is serious, and patients don’t want #dancingdoctors or #dancingnurses in the hospital hallways when they are pressing the call button. However, a choreographed dance with nurses in pink scrubs calling attention to #BreastCancerAwareness can effectively remind women it’s time for annual mammograms. Gen Z is quick to call out marketing that feels gimmicky or inauthentic. Young consumers expect brands to engage in corporate responsibility, but doing so without a strategic plan could result in a viral disaster.

Gen Z Fandom: Nostalgic and Quirky

Lockdown also left Gen Z looking to the past for emotional connections. Their throwback searches resulted in nearly 19 billion views for #nostalgia on TikTok. A resurgence of nostalgic pop culture has inspired fandom for TV shows such as “Euphoria”and “Stranger Things” and propelled “Maverick: Top Gun” and “Elvis” to being the summer’s biggest box office hits.

Consider using nostalgia to appeal to emotions. But it doesn’t always have to induce tears; it can prompt laughter just as easily. Thoughtfully adding a bit of nostalgia to the content mix can strengthen the connection with the target audience.

To market to Gen Z, try using nostalgia to appeal to positive emotions. There are 19 billion views for #nostalgia on TikToK57% of Gen Z like it when brands participate in memes. 80% of Gen Z like it when brands connect with their different personalities.

Gen Z audiences like memes. More than half responded to a recent YouTube survey that they like when brands post memes. So, get creative and create memes that promote service lines or shares relevant information for this target demographic.

Another part of the Gen Z persona is their uniqueness. They don’t want to fit in; they want to stand out and are perfectly comfortable with being quirky. Some 80 percent of Gen Zs surveyed for Spotify’s Culture Next Global Trends Report say they like when brands connect with their different personalities.

Experiment with fresh marketing tactics to connect with Gen Z. Use contextual targeting to place educational messages on unexpected sites—info about fashion on a pizza website. Whatever the message or the channel, include audio. In the first quarter of this year, 18-to-24 year olds played more than 578 billion minutes of music on Spotify.

Shared Brand Values: Honesty, Authenticity, Transparency

In terms of values, Gen Zs do not stray far from other generations. Honesty ranks as the most important value they look for in a brand, followed closely by transparency and authenticity.

Whether on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube, video proves to be a useful tool for marketing to share values and personality while also promoting services and products. It is the ideal platform for storytelling that engages with the Gen Z audience.

Resonate with Gen Z by communicating honesty, transparency, and authenticity through video content.

In committing to short-form videos that connect with Gen Zs, remember that they see themselves as change makers ready to disrupt culture. Status quo doesn’t make the connection. Keep content meaningful, creative and different—just as if they created it themselves.

TotalCom is a full-service marketing agency helping brands like yours tell their story to the right audiences. Email Lori Moore or call TotalCom Marketing Communications at 205.345.7363 to see how TotalCom may be the right fit for you.

7 Ways to Make Your Hospital A Social Media Star

Featuring your state-of-the-art technology in your healthcare marketing helps educate your potential patients, but people relate to people. Featuring your staff in your hospital social media efforts is a sure bet to making your hospital a social media star.

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Favorite Sessions from SHSMD Connections ’18: How to Use Facebook Live for Your Hospital

Smiling businesswoman talking on camera - marketing your hospital on Facebook Live videoI realize there are many healthcare marketers that do not have the opportunity to attend SHSMD Connections (Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development annual conference). Sometimes it is budget, sometimes it is time away (and sometimes both). We are fortunate at TotalCom Marketing that we get to attend most years, so I thought I would share some of the highlights from several of the presentations at SHSMD Connections ‘18 held in Seattle this month. There were several that were really helpful, so this will be a multi-part series.

The first session I attended on day one was a “how to” for using Facebook Live. It was presented by the communications team at Virginia Commonwealth University Health System. They have been successfully using Facebook Live since it launched and offered some helpful insight for getting started or just doing it better.

About Facebook Live

Facebook Live is a marketing tool that can prove quite helpful in meeting your organization’s social media objectives (and more). It is immediate, authentic, interactive and a great way to connect and engage with your audience.

Reasons Why You Should Consider Using Facebook Live

  • For now, at least, the Facebook algorithm favors Facebook Live. We have all seen a decline in engagement with our posts, Facebook Live is a way to help overcome this. Facebook will even send your page followers a notification when start or schedule.
  • You don’t have to spend a lot of money to make Facebook Live work for your organization.
  • Facebook Live is another way to connect with patients where they are spending considerable amounts of time each day – on Facebook.

Get Started with Facebook Live

  • woman in headphones sat laptop - engaging with audience by answering Facebook live questionsYou don’t have to have a special video camera, an iPhone works great.
  • Polish up your efforts with a few extra items including a camera mount, tripod, lapel mics to isolate sound and simple lighting. Also, Mevo (“a tv studio in your pocket”) is an app (and more) that allows you to look like you’ve got multiple cameras, allows for on-the-fly editing, is easy to use, requires no video editing experience and can really take your live stream to the next level. Learn more at getmevo.com.

Tips for Best Results

  • Always have two people to manage the live stream as it is more than one person can do alone, especially if you get a lot of engagement on your video.
  • Make sure you have a strong internet connection. VERY IMPORTANT.
  • Promote your live stream in advance. Promote not only on Facebook but Instagram and any other social channels you use. Ask your audience to sign up for a reminder.
  • As per social media best practices, don’t use Facebook Live to sell, but rather to establish your organization or employee as a thought leader and a resource to the community you serve.
  • Keep your production authentic. It is ok that your Facebook Live stream is not Spielberg quality.
  • Strategy first and tactics next. Use Facebook Live for the benefit of the audience, not just because it is fun and cool.
  • Engage with your audience. If people comment questions, answer them in your live video. After the video is over, respond to all of the comment questions so others have the answers, too.
  • Have a lengthy event? Don’t just “set it and forget it”. Best to break up the event into manageable snippets, do interviews in between highlights. Remember to announce often where you are and what you are doing for those who tune in later.
  • Lunch is a good time to go live, as are evenings. However, the majority of the engagement is AFTER the fact.
  • Look outside of healthcare at organizations and brands that are successfully using Facebook Live. Here are a few brands effectively using Facebook Live.
  • Practice, practice, practice… Use Facebook Live personally to learn how. But no worries, you can change the settings for Facebook Live so no one else sees it, in the “Select Privacy” mode, choose “Only me”.
  • Be sure to use Facebook analytics to provide insight and learn how you can fine tune and improve your Facebook Live efforts.
  • Facebook also offers these tips for using Facebook Live

 

Ways to Use Facebook Live

  • Use in place of, or in addition to a press release. News departments are short staffed and they can’t always cover events. For media outlets not able to attend, send them a link to the stream. They can then use some of the footage and include your event in their news report.
  • Interview physicians or demonstrate new technology and procedures.
  • Boost the value of your sponsorships so that you get more than just your logo on a flyer or t-shirt.
  • Appeal to your audience’s curiosity. The examples the presenters gave was about taking a tour of the electrophysiology lab or showcase a renovation.
  • Promote events at your hospital. But always ask, “Is this important to our audience? Is it relevant?” Don’t go live just for the sake of it.

Are you using Facebook Live for your hospital or healthcare organization? We would love to see how you are doing it. Share with us, won’t you?

Blog post written by Lori Moore, Senior Account Manager for TotalCom Marketing Communications. Reach Lori Moore by email or phone at 205.345.7363.

iPhone X Facial Recognition

Could the iPhone X Change Digital Advertising?

You took the plunge about the iPhone X and you’re not even sure if you’re supposed to say iPhone X or iPhone ten.

But what’s the big difference between this model and the one you had before collecting a new monthly payment added to your stack of bills?

Facial recognition is the big difference. Are you unlocking your phone or is it unlocking you? This could bring in a new era for marketers. Since the announcement of the iPhone X, facial recognition has quickly become the topic of dinner conversations everywhere. Facial recognition used to be reserved for top secret labs or something you saw the President use in a movie. But now we have access to it as well (celebrities, they’re just like us!)

While this feature is marketed as a security function for unlocking your phone, a consumer device used by the masses is a seriously powerful technology.

It is said 90% of personal communications is nonverbal. Every day there are instances where we don’t understand the nonverbal cues of the person on the other end of our screens. We use emojis and GIFs to try and share emotion within our digital interactions.

For all of us in the communications business, we know good experiences lead to trust and loyalty while bad experiences lead to brand rejection. So what could we do as marketers if we were able to obtain real-time reactions from a consumers? Imagine a world where we have access to consumer’s facial expressions and emotional cues in reaction to products and brands?

If we could access the facial cues from patients waiting for an extended time in the emergency room? The excitement on someone’s face when they try out a restaurant’s new dish. Or the skepticism on your face when you’re indulging in a purchase you shouldn’t be.

Currently, Apple is keeping detailed facial recognition data local on the phone and not storing it on its servers. App makers can use the iPhone X, with the user’s permission, to read a rough map of a stream of facial expressions. While Apple may never store this information for public use, it’s interesting to think about a world where we design advertisements based on the most unique human feature. This technology would tell us more about our consumers than we’ve ever known before.

Digital advertising can be hard to keep up with, let us do the work for you. Contact TotalCom today.

Healthcare Marketing: Men are Cheap!

It’s costs less to reach men on Facebook than women.

101891266Women dominate Facebook.  They are the ones constantly posting and engaging in social activity on Facebook.  So it makes sense to use the social network to reach women.  But although it makes sense, maybe we should wait a minute.

Against common thought, men cost less to reach on Facebook and respond better.  Noreen O’Leary reported in Adweek  that the surprising conclusion comes from an analysis of 65 billion Facebook ad impressions and 20 million ad clicks in a 12 month study conducted by Resolution Media.   While 58% of Facebook users are women, men see and click through more ads than women. 58% of men see Facebook ads compared to only 42% of women who notice them.  And men have a click volume of 60% compared to 40%b for women.

The study concluded that men are more focused on their activities when interacting on Facebook while women do more browsing, sharing and communicating.  And men have shorter attention spans on Facebook, which means they are more easily distracted and more likely to be persuaded by relevant advertising messages.  As a result, men click on Facebook ads at a higher rate than women.

So the cost-per-thousand impressions for men was 16 cents compared to 20 cents for women while cost per click for men was 51 cents compared to 68 cents for women.

Many healthcare marketers use Facebook advertising as a means to reach women.  And it can certainly be effective.  But this research shows we shouldn’t discount men on Facebook.  They are there, and although in lower numbers that are more likely to see our ads and even click on them.   So it’s true after all.  Women are right. Men are cheap!!!

Healthcare Marketing: 10 Time Savers for Social Media

Social media is a time suck!  But there are ways to be more efficient and minimize the distraction.

One of the major issues about social media for healthcare marketers is the time it requires.  Social media may be comparatively inexpensive but it requires a major investment of time to do it well.  And what healthcare marketer has time?

But Corey Eridon posted on HubSpot ways to make social media more efficient.  Things to do to keep the demands of social media from paralyzing you.  Here’s a summary of some of the suggestions he posted.

1) Compose your updates in advance. It’s time to update your social media posts…Facebook and Twitter.  Do you click around trying to find content to power those updates?  If you do, you will spend an inordinate amount of time researching and posting.  It’s better to bookmark information as you stumble across it.  Or if you need to do research, do it in advance and bookmark the information.

Use a social media publishing schedule– an Excel template (or something similar) that lets you input all of your social media status updates for each social network, organized by the date and time you’d like to publish them.

You can set aside an hour and input all of your social media updates for the following work week. That way you’re not left scrambling to find enough compelling content for all of the social networks you need to manage.

2) Maintain a content repository. To craft a week’s worth of social media updates you should use a content repository. Here’s what it looks like:

Basically, this is the place that you can keep all the content you’d like to promote and resurface in social media — because the more content you create, the harder it will be for you to keep track of all of it. So put in your ebooks, your blog posts, your infographics, everything you will want to re-promote at a later date in social media. Then you’ll be able to jump over to this tab and quickly find content to promote! Just be sure to include an expiration date so you don’t accidentally promote something that has already taken place.  And you will be less likely to let things fall between the cracks.

No more pulling content out of thin air, marketers!

3) Use a collaborative tool to share your schedule. Social media content can come from more than just you! Take the burden off of yourself and make your social media presence richer by including other people in crafting social updates. You can share the days and times when you’ll be publishing updates and it makes it easy for everyone to see what slots are available for promotion. You can even block off certain slots as “Reserved” for your own updates to ensure the content you need to promote doesn’t get swallowed up by other people’s updates.

Just make sure you communicate three notes about this collaborative approach to social media content creation: Establish a deadline for  content for the following week; communicate that the spreadsheet is first come, first serve; and make it clear that the social media manager has authority to veto updates that aren’t appropriate or not consisitent with the brand.

4) Schedule your updates to auto-publish. With content ready, use automation to make your life easier.

Now, not every social network makes it easy to auto-publish, so you’ll have to do some manual updating (on LinkedIn, for example). But you can still automate a good chunk of your publishing using a tool like HootSuite.

5) Set up social media monitoring. While creating your content in advance is a serious boon to productivity, healthcare marketers should still be leaving room for timely updates, too. What if a news story breaks? Or someone covers your company in their publication? Or someone publishes an excellent blog post you’d like to share with your network? That real-time content is critical, and you can set up monitoring to ensure you see it coming through. Use Google Alerts to keep up to date on information you can use.

6) Establish your company’s social media policy. If you know exactly what you should and should not do on social media, it becomes much more natural to create content and respond to fans and followers. If your company has a social media policy that details exactly what you should and should not say in social media and the tone you want your company to convey, it’s way easier to quickly create content and interact with your fans … because that kind of detail and forethought gives your company an actual personality. It’s much easier to be social when you have a personality.

7) Leverage networks’ admin features. Sometimes, more hands are better than one… Sometimes.

It can get a little scary for marketing managers, though, when too many people are involved in social media marketing. Specifically, if they all have administrative access to the accounts. Because while you know the nooks and crannies of each network, not everyone is as knowledgeable as you. So how do you leverage the help of your fellow co-workers without having them have a free-for-all?

Make use of the admin features on social networks. On Facebook, for example, you can now assign specific roles for users that limit their ability to do things like create posts, respond as the brand in comments, or create ads:

LinkedIn and Google+ let you assign admin roles, too, but you’re out of luck with Twitter. So either keep your brand’s Twitter login credentials under wraps, or give some serious training to anyone you give those credentials to!

8) Pre-schedule your checkins throughout the day. Even with a monitoring tool set up, you’ll have to check in to each of your social networks throughout the day to respond to comments and interact with fans and followers. Some marketers feel like they need to respond to everyone on social media immediately. While immediacy is great, your network also understands that you aren’t glued to your computer screen at all times. It’s alright (and important for your productivity if you don’t have an employee dedicated only to social media monitoring) to set aside specific times during the day for social media monitoring.

10) Use tools to create visual content. You know you should be creating visual content to share on social media, but you’re not a graphic designer. What do you do? Leverage some of the visual content creation tools that make the task easy. If you have a Smartphone, you should have no trouble finding apps that make you look like a visual content creation genius. There is, of course, the much-loved Instagram to take your photos from blah to beautiful. And there’s a new favorite of many marketers, Over , that lets you overlay text over photos for that kind of content that will get you seriously high engagement.

10) Eliminate the clutter in your analytics. Social media is one of those channels that marketers have simultaneously too much data to analyze, and not enough. Don’t get bogged down in the abundance of data! Spend less time looking at the fluffy metrics that really mean nothing to your overall marketing success, and just focus on a few core metrics.

Utilize these time saving techniques to relieve the burden of social media and to improve efficiency.  It will make social media more effective, less of a time suck and it will give you more control over the process.  Don’t let social media control you.  Instead, you control it.

 

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.