How can our social media marketers help your healthcare practice, clinic or hospital?

You don’t buy social media results – you earn social media results. It’s hard work.

This is great news, because any marketing practice that is really hard means that there is a competitive advantage to doing it well. This is especially true in an industry that abhors the new.

Social media are web or mobile-based technologies used for social interaction. Social media marketing is the use of social media as a platform to market products and services.

According to wikipedia (a social networking website itself) “a social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software“.

Healthcare and social media

Social media is a relatively new marketing channel and its use in mainstream healthcare, while limited, is growing faster than almost any other media channel.

[pullquote_right]Social media is not silver bullet, but it is an extremely important and relatively low cost touch point that has a direct impact on sales and word of mouth[/pullquote_right]We believe that social media is an extremely important and relatively low cost touch point that has a direct impact on sales and word of mouth. However, whilst social media has a very low barrier to entry, we usually advise our clients to establish and optimise other marketing channels (like developing a website that converts, search engine optimisation, paid search, email marketing, telephone sales training, consultation skills training, and customer service training) before investing significantly in social media.

Examples of social media marketing platforms

The biggest names social networks at the moment are

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube

Blogging, can also be considered social media.

Why healthcare marketers need to start considering social media as an important marketing channel

Here are a few statistics that would interest any healthcare marketer:

• Internet users spend 3x more minutes on blogs & social networks than on email (1)
• Nearly 2/3 of internet users regularly use a social network (2)
• Social networking is practiced by 82% of 25-34 year olds, 72% of 35-44 year olds, 60% of 45-54 year olds, 52% of 44-64 year olds and 31% of those 65 and older (3)
• 39% of people are most influenced by online friends and 26% are most influenced by bloggers (4)
• 63% of companies using social media say it has increased marketing effectiveness – among other benefits (5)
• 70% of US local small to medium businesses are actively using Facebook to promote their business, 58% are using LinkedIn, 40% are using Twitter, and 27% are using YouTube (6)
• 61% of US marketers use social media to increase lead generation (7)

When is the right time for your healthcare business to get involved in social media?

When the world wide web was emerged as a serious marketing channel, it became imperative for businesses to claim their domain names – even if they had no short-term plans for developing a website. Social media is similar today. You do not need to commit to social media to acquire brand name accounts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

If you’re ready to commit to social media engagement, we can help you

1. Determine your purpose. It can be used to increase your marketing effectiveness, increase customer satisfaction, reduce marketing costs, reduce support costs, and more. The best social media strategies have a clear purpose before they are initiated.
2. Speak with your target audience. This is not the place for perfected, committee approved marketing messages. Rather, it’s a place for open and honest, common-sense communication with your community, not at your community.
3. Generate consistently valuable content. People want access to your articles, images, videos, charts, tools, and polls. You can either create this content to be shared exclusively in social media, or you can repurpose existing online or offline content.
4. Engage your community. This is not a one-to-many medium, it’s a many-to-many medium. The most successful social media channels are the most open. You should feel comfortable with your community commenting on your posts, sharing their own views, uploading photos or videos, connecting with other members in discussion boards.
5. Keep your accounts active. Steady updates will keep your accounts fresh and free of out-of-date content. Remember that your community will not engage on your schedule, but theirs. So you’ll need to stay on top of things, especially when people ask questions or make comments you’d like to address.
6. Measure your outcomes. This relates back to your purpose. You’ll lose interest in social media quickly if you cannot justify the time and resources spent on it. Evaluating your social media outcomes are as important as any other marketing evaluation. Measure your outcomes and track your results.

1. The Neilsen Company, November 2010
2. Emarketer, February 2011
3. Emarketer, February 2o11
4. Emarketer, May 2010
5. Mckinsey Global Institute, December 2010
6. Merchant Circle, February 2011
7. R2Integrated, April 2010