Last week I attended a social media panel discussion moderated by Carol Dobies at the KCHCS Fall Conference. The three panelists, who represented two hospitals and a local firm that monitors, measures and analyzes digital content, shared their experiences and expertise with online patient interaction. Together they provided some important takeaways for healthcare organizations looking to expand their online presence. Highlights include:

Listening should be a key part of your social media strategy, and your efforts should go beyond the content you generate. It’s easy to know what people say directly to you online, but are you also watching what they say about you? “Sites like Facebook and Twitter are great for engagement, but that’s not where Google searches send people,” according to panelist Aaron Weber of Spiral16. “It’s critical to know where people land and what language they encounter when you come up in a search.” A valid point, considering 92% of adults online use search engines, and nearly 60% report using them daily, according to recent research by Pew Internet.

Healthcare-specialized SEO and marketing firms understand that patients search and read content from multiple sources (Yelp, YellowPages.com, Wikipedia, etc.) in addition to the messages you’re putting out there. The key to establishing meaningful patient engagement online is an effective mix of SEO tactics, highly targeted direct marketing and social media strategies that encompass your entire digital presence. Read more about the importance of listening to patient comments from HealthLeaders.

Back up your strategy with social media policies. Social media policies govern your use of social media, from employee access to procedures for triaging patient comments (negative and positive). Front-line employees are the face of your organization, so if you’re comfortable letting them post and interact with patients online, it’s your choice to allow it. In order to protect your brand image and ensure total compliance with all patient-privacy laws, however, usage policies should be clearly articulated and enforced.

In fact, panelist Shawn Arni of Children’s Mercy Hospital advises two separate policy documents: one for page admins/hospital use and another for employee use. For example, staff members are not allowed to post or share anything during work hours. Regardless of how well-intended any given post may be, if it’s made by patient-facing staff in the middle of a shift, it can be perceived as interfering with patient care.

Needless to say, there are many factors to consider when developing social media use policies, but having the right rules in place is well worth the effort. Panelist Belinda Rehmer of Lawrence Memorial Hospital (LMH), agrees. As the hospital’s Community Relations Social Media Lead, she speaks from experience, and LMH’s social media policy has been used as a best practice example by many other hospitals in Kansas.

Studies show that people with the low levels of social interaction have high rates of mortality. With so many networking tools now available online, the obvious question for healthcare providers is how can we use social media to engage patients in ways that improve health? We welcome all input on the topic, so if you have insight to share about patient engagement and social media, let us hear from you!

Later this week, I will moderate an interactive panel for Kansas City Healthcare Communicators Society.The topic: How to Deploy Social Media to Improve Patient Engagement. With expert input spanning a wide range of social networking tools and best practices from our healthcare marketing panelists, the session promises to provide an eye-opening look at what it takes to continuously engage patients online.

Here are highlights from colleagues in the healthcare social media field:

Two-fifths of adult internet users in the U.S. have read someone else’s online commentary about health. Many thanks to Susannah Fox and her colleagues at Pew Internet & American Life Project, who published a report earlier this year revealing that 80% of internet users search online for health information, and a growing number rely on the internet to connect peer-to-peer. Among the findings:

• Symptoms and treatments dominate health searches (66% and 56% respectively).
• 44% of internet users look online for information about doctors or other health professionals.
• 25% of adult web users look online for people with a chronic illness.
• 24% have consulted online rankings of doctors and hospitals.
• 20% look online for people with similar health issues.

There are 140 uses for your 140 characters if your healthcare organization tweets. Phil Baumann, a social media strategist and advisory board member for Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, studied the challenges and opportunities available for providers via Twitter. In the end, he identified 140 different healthcare uses for Twitter – an oldie but goodie for those in need of ideas when it comes to tweeting for and about health.

More than 1,200 U.S. hospitals are now actively using social media sites. And that number is climbing every day. Thanks to Ed Bennett, web operations manager at the University of Maryland Medical Center (and also an advisory board member for Mayo Clinic social media), we have better insight into the scope of social media use among hospitals. Here’s the latest breakdown of the number of hospital accounts/pages per social networking site:

• Facebook: 1,068
• Foursquare: 946
• Twitter: 814
• YouTube: 575
• LinkedIn: 566
• Blogs: 149

If so many healthcare providers are putting it out there on so many sites, it must be simple, right? Wrong. We all know representing an organization via social media is much more complex than managing personal accounts, so it’s important to know what you’re doing behind the scenes. Fortunately, help is out there, like this list of 20 Excellent Social Media Networking Resources for Health Professionals, compiled recently by HealthWorks Collective.

I’m looking forward to a thought-provoking discussion by our panelists this week. We will update you with the biggest takeaways and lessons learned next week.

Earlier this year, I showed how online engagement after the earthquake in Haiti helped prove that people are using social media to connect with others in meaningful ways.  Today, I bring you yet another example, this time in relation to healthcare.

A new study reports that 40% of online consumers are turning to social media for health information.  And they’re not just talking about medical conditions, diagnoses, treatments and news.  The study found the primary reason for using social media was emotional:

“…many healthcare social media users want reassurance, support, and a sense of intimacy from people who are going through a similar experience.”

But according to a recent New York Times article and Pew Research report, this won’t come as a surprise to the many Americans affected by chronic illnesses.  Over the last few years, social networking has become a lifeline for many who are living with a chronic disease or life-changing condition.  By blogging, chatting and engaging with others on social networking sites like PatientsLikeMe, Diabetic Connect and CureTogether, they are able to share advice, war stories and empathy with others in similar situations.  Best of all, this can all happen from the comfort of home, a great advantage for those whose illness has left them homebound.

As social media continues to grow, look for more hospitals and physician practices to better connect with patients (and ultimately improve the patient experience) by complementing their informational Web content with virtual support groups and online forums.

This summer, Coleman, the outdoor-equipment giant, dubbed its campsite “the Original Social Networking Site.”  More than a cute marketing concept, this claim practically lays down a challenge to our Facebook-Twitter-YouTube-obsessed culture to put down the computers and cell phones and get back to “real” social networking – the kind where people actually do things…together…in person.

So this past weekend, I took Coleman’s challenge: I grabbed some friends and went camping in Middle-of-Nowhere, Mo., where cell phone/Wi-Fi service was nonexistent.  For a full 48 hours, I was unable to check my email, update my Facebook status, send a text or even make a phone call…and to my great relief, I was okay. 

Perhaps it was because I was too preoccupied with activities like building a fire so I could, you know, EAT, but I didn’t once feel the urge to post “Gathering kindling and hoping the rain stops soon” as my Facebook status.  And I didn’t wonder who had emailed me or if I was missing an important text message.   As it turns out, I CAN live sans social networks or cell service (at least for a few days, anyway)!

I take pride in this personal victory considering the New York Times article I ran across last week that revealed many Americans are hopping online soon after, if not before, hopping out of bed each morning.  Whether it’s texting over toast or social networking instead of reading the morning newspaper, this is a trend with which I am all too familiar; I check my email, Facebook and Twitter account via my Palm Pre before my head is even off my pillow every morning. 

But after this weekend of “roughing it,” I can at least take comfort in knowing my morning Internet craving can be overcome.  And you can be sure I’ll keep visiting the “original social networking site” in the future to keep my online habits in check.

I have a dumbphone.  I’m not trying to be insulting;  I’m just saying my cell is not what they call “smart.”  That is, I have a plain, ol’ run-of-the-mill cell phone that lets me call and text…and that’s about it.  Which is fine, I guess.  I mean, do I really need to have access to my Facebook account 24/7?  Do I really need to be able to Google something anytime I want?  Do I really need to tweet a photo of what I’m doing while I’m doing it?  The answer is yes.  Yes, I do.  I really, really do. 

Why?  Because having on-the-go, hand-held access to the Internet (and thus social networking sites) has quickly become the best way to maintain one’s online presence.  In addition to being able to interact with online communities at a moment’s notice, mobile social networkers are able to update their accounts more often with more relevant/timely content than those with “stationary” access.  And it’s this constant stream of rich, fresh content that makes these sites all the more useful, informative and fun – for the user and for his/her friends and followers.  Simply put, mobile access takes social networking to the next level.

Which is why I wasn’t surprised to see a new study that found that more than half of U.S. wireless customers access content on their mobile phones, and of those people, most spend more time on social networking sites than, say, looking up news and weather.  So as people like me start shopping around to replace their dumbphones with smarter ones, the number of mobile social networkers will only increase…which will improve the quality of content on social networks….therefore making social networks all the more popular.  So for those of you hoping sites like Facebook are just a fad, think again.  Mobile access is just pushing these sites to new heights.

A couple questions for all you smartphone users:  What content do you access via your phone?  And what smartphones do you find cater to social networks the best?  (I have my eye on the new Palm Pre…)