Start-up Social Media For Medical Practices

Whether you have a communications/marketing department at the helm of your practice’s publicity or you’re doing it solo, it’s still smart for you, the practice administrator, to understand the reasons and motivation behind using social media. Having a clear-cut strategy will get everyone in the practice on the same page and promote consistency and professionalism online – even in a network like Facebook.

Follow these tips to develop a strategic social media plan that’s right for your healthcare organization.

 

As the practice administrator you should understand the reasons and motivation behind using social media.

Ask yourself: What’s your goal for using a social network?

  • Do you simply want to increase visibility and awareness of your practice in the community?
  • Are you looking for an easy way to bring staff and patient experiences together online?
  • Will you use these channels to advertise new services, physicians or changes to your organization, possibly replacing some of the costs of mailings?

Knowing why you want to engage potential customers online will help determine which platform you should choose. For example, Facebook is great for creating a community where you can post events, pictures and video, while Twitter is ideal for reaching news outlets and increasing the visibility of your practice’s services. Don’t forget recruitment: LinkedIn offers a credible way to browse job candidates and post openings.

Take an inventory of your organization’s Web site

How often is it updated and what type of information do you post? What do patients and staff use it for? Often, they would be just as likely to look for the same information on your social network.

If you already house most of your organization’s information on your Web site, consider using social media as a tease to drive traffic back to your site. Over time, you’ll notice your social networks will begin to show up as referrals in your Web site’s analytics.

Know your audience

Which social network do most of your patients use? Consider polling them, either on your Web site or in your office during an appointment. Remember that younger members are often more familiar and more likely to be on social networks. Enlist them as your champions by encouraging them to join.

Educate your patients about engaging with you in the social network

So you have 500 fans on your Facebook page, but nobody’s talking. Or maybe your patients don’t understand the value of connecting with you on Twitter. Communicate what they can expect to see when they join your networks – whether it’s office closures, notices about vaccines or party pics from your last community event. Great ways to promote the social media that you already use include: your Web site, e-mail communications and signs in your office (especially patient rooms!).

Think beyond text

Pictures, audio, video and presentations are compelling ways to communicate with members – especially on social networks. If your Web site doesn’t currently have that capability, all the better! Facebook has free video creation built-in, while both Facebook and LinkedIn have the SlideShare app, perfect for uploading and easily sharing health-focused PowerPoints online.

Urology San Antonio began creating YouTube videos about a year ago, and now its “Vasectomy. Get the Facts.” video with 10,500 views appears first whenever someone searches for “vasectomy” on YouTube. The video was spontaneously produced in an hour while the crew waited to record videos on robotic surgery in the operating room. Communications Director Abbey Forney says urology lends itself to social media.“We deal with so many awkward topics – bladder issues and sexual issues,” that patients are comfortable learning about in the privacy of their own homes, she says. “It’s been great for our practice, especially for the things where people have the time to research online.”

Post regularly and quickly

Smaller blurbs are more effective because users of social networks usually have short attention spans. For example, tweets have a shelf life of 24 hours. Content shouldn’t go through a long review process, but it also shouldn’t be posted without hitting spell check. Several medical practices have embraced Twitter because it takes only a few seconds to update throughout an employee’s otherwise packed schedule.

Urology San Antonio has also used Twitter to make quick connections in the community. On Twitter, Forney spotted a family practice doctor who had just opened his business in the area, so she assembled some of the practice’s physicians to visit and let him know they’d be happy to accept referrals.

The key to encouraging engagement in any of these social networks is to be informal and approachable. Think about a patient entering your office for the first time. What do you want your first impression to be? Your strategy will follow.

7 Reasons Social Media Is A No-Brainer For Passionate B2C Brands

 

Social media is fast becoming a standard element in the marketing mix of major consumer brands.  And with good reason: never before has such a creative landscape existed for people and the brands they love to interact, share stories and build relationships – in all directions.

With social media marketing spends predicted to grow at an annual rate of 34% according to a report from Forrester Research, analyst trends support these thoughts.  Yet, not all companies are sold, with many taking a “wait and see” approach as they believe the landscape to be risky and unproven.

Just the opposite is true – waiting may prove the riskiest move of all as brands who wait too long only succeed in yielding ground to agile competitors.  This may prove especially damaging in the B2C space.  When consumers pledge allegiance to favorite brands, they may stick with those brands indefinitely and outright ignore competitors.

At this point, the rewards far outweigh the risks, especially for brands following a social media roadmap, something which sets themselves up for success.

Still questioning the value?  The following are 7 reasons engaging in social media marketing is a no-brainer for any passionate B2C brand:

1.  Take your communications directly to consumer

While traditional media is shrinking and digital media continues to experience growth, huge opportunities are afforded to companies embracing the direct to consumer model for their communications.  For a stunning example of this at scale, consider that if the Official Google blog was a newspaper, its subscriber numbers would put it in the top 10 for daily circulation right between the Houston Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune (hat tip to Noah Brier for the observation).  Google not only delivers content directly to consumer, but as a by-product of that their messages resonate beyond other blogs and frequently into tech, trade and mainstream media.

2.  Avoid a negative groundswell

By being active in social media and having your finger on the pulse of what the world is saying about your brand, you may be able to hedge negativity before it spirals out of control.  We’ve all heard the stories about negative brand experiences from consumers which resonated in the social web, but we didn’t hear about a backlash against Priceline.  That’s because Priceline was paying attention and able to respond to a potential groundswell by alleviating the situation before it could spread.  David Armano noted the details but the consumer’s reaction in her own words speaks volumes:

“I opened Aaron’s email around 12:00PM PST I posted a Blog on Google describing the events and then sent a Tweet Blast around 2 if my tweets are logging PST, which is possible as I have no sense of time.  Then I specifically re-tweeted to people with larger follows to help make sure I was heard. Aaron called me at 4 PM PST which is 7 in North Carolina and said that,  “Priceline had called about an hour ago and offered to refund the money!”

The old saying of satisfied customers tell three friends, angry customers tell everyone becomes exponentially more potent in social media.  Shouldn’t you be there to concurrently help your customers and practice digital reputation management?

3.  Own your presence in popular platforms

Your brand may not be active in platform-specific networks such as Facebook or Twitter at the corporate level, but make no mistake that your biggest fans are already doing this on your behalf.  International Dairy Queen had an interest in getting involved in Facebook (and social media as a whole) and upon digging into the situation they discovered hundreds of others had already created Facebook fan pages on behalf of the brand to share their love of an American classic.

DQ was able to analyze what fans were doing and strategically establish their DQ corporate Facebook presence right alongside fan pages, where it has quickly grown to six-figures organically and become the major hub for the brand in that network.  With hundreds of comments and likes on each post engaging with DQ’s blog content and promotions, it is an active, vibrant digital asset (full disclosure:  DQ was previously a client I worked on at my former employer).

4.  Truly understand your demographic

Social media presents the ultimate focus group because you can naturally observe how people behave and interact – specifically the demographic you’re interested in reaching.  But it goes beyond merely watching.  By engaging with your demographic directly through social communications tools, you will learn details about them you may have not previously considered.

It is risky to miss the mark in a connected world, as witnessed by the Motrin Moms fiasco last year.  Had they been actively involved in a dialog with their target demographic, they may have created a promotion which resonated positively, instead of something still getting referenced for rubbing their consumers the wrong way.  The web as a medium isextremely referential, so you will live with the good and bad.  By having an understanding your chances of being known for something positive increase exponentially.

5.  Social media / SEO intersection

As Online Marketing Blog readers are well aware, there is a clear intersection of search and social media.  As we discuss this intersection quite frequently, I’ll sum this point up quickly with a quote from one of Lee’s posts on Mashable:

By involving SEO insight in a social media marketing effort and vice versa, marketers, public relations professionals and advertisers can extend the value of their investment. Well optimized social media content marketing efforts can attract new network participants via search. News content that experiences distribution via social news and bookmarking channels can facilitate links to company website content directly and indirectly. Advertisers that fund social media campaigns can continue to realize the traffic benefit from keyword-optimized interactive content long after the campaign has ended.

6.  Real-time market research

Once you’re active in social media and begin to attract a following for your brand, your opportunities for engagement and to gain actionable data from your audience will become limited only by your creativity.  You can crowdsource new product ideas directly to those most interested in purchasing, get feedback on making current products better and work to find out what it is your consumers really want.  Focus groups in controlled settings are out, real-time data “in the wild” is in.

7.  It’s nearly 2010 – consumers expect it

Last but not least, our world is quickly moving to a society where digital media is the dominant player.  A study by PEW confirms this:  more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers, and nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online.  Also, the percentage of people younger than 30 citing television as a main news source has declined from 68% in September 2007 to 59% in 2008.  Digital media share of voice is only going to continue climbing while other channels lose ground.

Can you really afford to ignore the new medium of choice for consumers?

Still Contemplating Using Social Media To Grow Your Business?

Why is social media still a tough sell?

Big companies have moved cautiously for eons. While many are corporations are making forays into social media, very, very few are taking huge risks.

Instead of jumping in, they’re still standing on the edge of the pool, diipping a toe in the water.

As a result, getting companies to add social media into the marketing mix is still a hard sell. Here are three of the top reasons why.

1- Consultants make social media sound scary.
Consultants, eager to prove the viability of social media in the marketing mix, are overwhelming stodgy companies by making social media sound more complex than it is.

A lot of consultants make what they do sound like a cross between vodoo magic and rocket science. The goal, I guess, is to make potential clients feel there is no way they could do whatever is being sold on their own.

But social media is not rocket science. And even if it was, making it easy to understand will win every time. The best professor I ever had in college taught physics. He could break rocket science down into simple terms. Do that for management and they’ll love you.

2- The magic word is “sales”
All most companies care about is whether they can make their numbers for the next quarter. Coolness may be the cherry on top, but it’s not the goal for most publicly held companies.

Social media becomes strategically viable when – blasphemous as this may sound to many SM gurus – the goal of its integration into the marketing mix is to go beyond cool and actually help to sell products and services.

3- Companies worry that cutting edge consultants won’t fit the corporate culture.
Changing the status quo can cause quite an upheaval in a company that has been dealing with silos for decades. Consultants need to prove to management that they will not make them look or feel inadequate because they can’t change quickly.

Consultants worry too much about making themselves look good and proving how smart they are.
The role of a smart consultant is to focus on making the client look smart for hiring you.

Why You Can’t MAKE Marketing Go Viral!

This post first ran in What’s Next Blog in 2010, but an email received this morning about a newly launched “viral” made us want to run it again, lightly updated.

If I hear one more client ask for “a viral” or one more agency promise one, I’ll scream.

I got three email pitches yesterday about new viral marketing campaigns. One was from an agency that said it “provides complete viral services”.  Another was for a brand’s (embargoed) new viral video campaign” that will launch on Monday. (Hint: a campaign that has not launched yet is not viral.) And the third was from a friend, who saw something she thought I’d love and forwarded me a link. Guess which one I clicked on.

First let’s define viral marketing:
I define viral marketing as content passed from one person to another, including images, videos, links, applications, games, stories, emails, documents or virtually any other type of digital content that one person passes to another via email, IM, text messaging, or social network like Twitter, Friend Feed, etc or content sharing sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, etc.
What kind of creative is likely to go viral?
o Knockout creative that’s funny, shocking, intriguing or surprising:
o An idea customers can relate to and care about
o A clear cut message so people are able to pass it on with one descriptive sentence
o An easy way to pass it on – a link, embedding code, “share this” button, email to a friend, etc.
o A concept that builds relationships with customers by getting them to interact with others
o Measurable outcomes – as in: what is this campaign hoping to accomplish and how will be measure it.
Top two reasons you can’t force marketing to go viral:
1- It’s not viral because you say it is.
Viral is what happens when something people see delights, intrigues, informs, or teaches people something they find interesting or amusing enough to want to send it to their friends.
2- Viral is a reward, not an intent.

 

What doesn’t (ever) make a campaign go viral:

o sending out an advance press release about your “latest viral”
o an email that says “we’re launching this viral campaign tomorrow”.

Playing Catch-up with Pepsi, Coca-Cola Unveils Social Media Strategy Thru 2020

 

Coca-Cola’s VP, Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence, Jonathan Mildenhall, explains the company’s content plan until the year 2020 in this fascinating video. Another of the world’s biggest companies is moving beyond the myth of message control, into the realm of consumer reality. Hurrah!

“Through the stories we tell,” Mildenhall says, “we will provoke conversations and earn a disproportionate share of popular culture.” The brand theme is “Live Positively.” The brand storytelling, he says, must be based on a commitment to making the world a better place, something everyone in the company must live every day and which must be baked into all aspects of the company operations.

With the intention of doubling sales by 2020, Mildenall says engagement through storytelling is the root of the strategy. The brand will need to react to consumer conversations 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

Technology enables brilliant creativity
Bigger thinking must be at the heart of everything the brand does. Content, he implores, must be “ruthlessly edited to avoid just creating noise.”

“We must integrate technologists into the core creative team,” he says, because technology can enable brilliant creativity. He cites other brands that have created deeper emotional connections through storytelling, including Dell, Nike and Ikea, and aims to make the Coca-Cola brand part of consumers’ lives, not just the soda they drink.

He notably left out Pepsi, whose marketing has long been focused on the idea that the brand has to be a lifestyle choice, and a force for good in the world.

What will it take to make all brands wake up?
Watching the video, I couldn’t help but wonder how there could still be companies on the planet that are just starting to put their toes in the social media water. Here are some of the most enormous, unwieldy, and traditional biggest brands in the world, fully embracing the value of not just monitoring conversations, but actually conversing with consumers. What will it take before every company gets the message?

Pepsi got the social media message very early on, and raised the bar for brands in 2010 with their global optimism project. It was part of Pepsi’s Refresh Project, which gave away a total of $20 million for ideas that can help advance society in six different categories.

Hats off to the brands that look for enduring engagement
Coke’s come a long way from 2006 when a Fantasia-esque amateur video went viral with two guys from Maine dropping Mentos mints into bottles of Diet Coke to create a musical geyser with cascading streams of beautiful goop. Mentos got $10 million worth of free publicity by embracing the videos. Coke’s grumpy dinosaur marketing people said “we want people to drink Coca-Cola, not play with it”.

Hats off to Coke, Pepsi, and the tiny number of companies looking beyond the shiny objects of the moment to an enduring brand message that can still have impact and cause positive change 10 years from now.

And the rest of you: wake the hell up! You can’t keep doing things the way you’ve always done them.

Why CEO’s Shouldn’t Fear Social Media

 

I’m late on this one, but find it still worth noting. Jerry Bowles, in “Why CEOs Are Afraid of Social Media”, a post at Enterprise Web 2.0, noted:

“They have already seen ordinary angry citizens armed only with blogs bring down Trent Lott, Dan Rather, and Joe Lieberman. They have seen powerful newspapers and magazines and TV networks forced to back down on stories because there are now millions of fact checkers out there. They have seen famous authors busted for plagiarism.”
In my experience, most leaders do not want to operate their organizations as experiments in democracy or collective intelligence. Not even our Presidents and Congresspeople want to do that. That’s why resistance to Enterprise Web 2.0 technologies is likely to be understated, but fierce, at the upper levels.”

Resistance also is futile. Look at Dell. They ignored the great hue and cry about their customer service for years. Meanwhile, the online commentary grew to a tsunami. When Dell finally launched a blog, they still tried to play by the old rules and push their message out while ignoring the elephant in the room.
A week or so later, when the Dell battery recall was mounted, the company already had a way to communicate with customers, and that forum made it clear that they were trying. Looking back, I’m sure they’re wondering why they were so afraid of customers. Dell’s problems are far from solved, but, in the long run, I think they’ll gain, not lose, customers as a result of their participation in social media. And they could have gained even more if they’d gotten into the conversation a year sooner.

Why Pay Attention to Social Media? Because companies Have No Choice

 

With YouTube doubling its traffic monthly, and facebook now more popular than Google and Yahoo, big companies and their agencies are struggling to understand the implications of social media. I’m sure more than one CMO is wondering, “are the inmates really taking over the asylum?”

In a thoughtful article, Robert Young explains why media companies need to ebrace social integration. His advice also is poignant for corporations large and small, from giants like Dell to a small company trying to spread its name with viral marketing:

“… why should media companies even think of embracing social integration? Because they have no choice… social media will continue to take market share away from traditional media, regardless of whether the media companies participate or not.”

Social integration is indeed the key to the new media revolution. When companies accept the fact that customers have to tools to make their voices heard, they can begin to look at the opportunities that including customers’ voices in the marketing mix present.
How can companies participate in social media without giving up total control?

Here are just a few baby step ways to begin:
– When customers complain, it’s usually because something needs to be changed. Make the changes, over-deliver on improvements. Thank your customers for caring.

– When customers like a product enough to make their own commercials about it, a smart company will link to those commercials.

– Don’t fight em, join em, partner with a social media outlet.

Integrating marketing with social media is smart, effective, and, when you come right down to it, necessary.