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.

In our last post, we talked about word clouds and their practical uses beyond the blog. This week, we’ll continue that discussion in lieu of our recent discoveries at SHSMD Connections 2011, an annual conference hosted by the Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development. The event was a meeting of the minds from all levels of hospital communications, and the word cloud was our way of learning more about what’s on their minds.

SHSMD attendees participated by entering today’s hot topics into our word cloud app. You can view the results here. But what do the results tell us about the directions and challenges hospital marketers face as we head into 2012?

The most commonly used phrase was “physician strategies,” with “social media” coming in close behind. Many hospital strategists are looking for effective ways to engage with physicians and patients. While social media continues to grow as a cost-effective way to expand reach and frequency, strategists are struggling with how to reconcile professional relationships with online social platforms—and even how to get people to “Like” or “Follow” their hospitals in the first place, let alone leverage that affinity. It’s a challenge many of today’s healthcare marketers must untangle, and clearly engagement is the name of the game.

Other issues taking center stage for healthcare marketers include:

• Direct marketing – promoting what works to grow market share.

• Brand building – on-target messaging in the midst of health reform and ACO debates.

• Market-driven plans (and plans that drives markets) – thinking strategically and delivering creatively.

• Better returns – demonstrating improved ROI and ROE as direct results of marketing efforts.

If your marketing initiatives don’t include solid strategic planning in the areas described above, you’re missing opportunities to enhance relationships, grow in volume, improve your brand and more.

What about you—what’s on your mind in healthcare marketing today? If you didn’t share with us at SHSMD, feel free to do so in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you.

In the wake of the earthquake that devastated Haiti on January 12, social media is proving once again to be a powerful tool for sharing information and raising funds in times of crisis.  Check out these stats:

• Three days after the earthquake, 3% of all blog posts were related to Haiti’s earthquake.
• By January 15, the American Red Cross’ Twitter account had gained more than 10,000 followers.
• By January 22, 42% of Facebook users in the United States had donated money or goods to aid Haiti relief  -  23% of these donors did so via text message.  
• More than $25 million has been raised for the American Red Cross’ relief effort in Haiti through $10-donations made by simply texting HAITI to 90999.

These figures help reinforce the belief that people turn to social media not just to consume information, but also to connect and engage in meaningful ways with organizations and each other.

While Twitter is hoping to find a way to monetize its operation in 2010, many people have already discovered how to use the microblogging site to raise funds for worthy causes.

Back in November, I blogged about a movement that used Twitter, Facebook and mustaches to raise awareness and money for men’s health.   Today, I stumbled upon another fantastic fundraising campaign: BlameDrewsCancer.

The story: When Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer last summer, he created the Twitter hashtag #blamedrewscancer and vowed that for every tweet blaming something on his cancer, he would raise one dollar for the Lance Armstrong Foundation LIVESTRONG.  Using this hashtag, Tweeters gave Drew’s cancer credit for closed coffee shops, working on holidays and global warming…and in the process, raised more than $15,000.

But Drew didn’t stop there.  With Twitter’s permission, he put his Twitter name, or “handle,”(@Drew) up for auction and caught the eye of Drew Carey (@DrewFromTV).  The Price Is Right host has since promised to donate one dollar for every person who follows him or @Livestrong, up to $1 million.  Pretty cool, huh?

Do you know of other organizations that are successfully using Twitter or other forms of social media to raise money and awareness?  Please leave your examples in a comment below!  And the next time you feel like complaining on Twitter, don’t forget to #blamedrewscancer.

Did you know that a man is 35% more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than a woman is to be diagnosed with breast cancer?   And while most of us know that October goes pink for breast cancer awareness, did you know that November grows mustaches for men’s health?

That’s right – November is now Movember (with “mo” being slang for mustache, of course).  
Here’s a quick synopsis from  the Movember Foundation:

The Movember Foundation challenges men to start Movember 1st (November 1st) clean shaven, then grow and groom their moustache for 30 days to raise awareness and funds to find a cure for prostate and testicular cancers.

I absolutely love this campaign!  What better way to get guys talking about their health than by pitting them in a friendly competition, doing something as “manly” as growing a ‘stache?! 

I first heard about Movember via Twitter a few weeks ago, and it has quickly blown up in the socialsphere:  A Facebook search for “movember” this morning yielded 77 Pages and about 4,200 Groups.  As this blog is posted, the MovemberUSA Facebook Page alone has 3,958 fans and counting, a gain of more than 350 members since Friday afternoon.  Men participating in Movember, or “Mo Bros” as they are called, are posting photos of their facial follicles on their “Mo Spaces,” and “Mo Sistas” are getting in on the act by recruiting more Mo Bros and helping raise funds, which will benefit the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation Livestrong.

Over the years, Susan G. Komen’s Race of the Cure, Pink October and many other events seeking to bring awareness to breast cancer have empowered the female population;  I hope Movember will do the same for our brothers, fathers, sons, boyfriends, and husbands, and succeed in its mission to “change the face of men’s health.”

Recently, brands like Sharpie, Volkswagon and Tropicana have created their own social-networking sites to complement their marketing efforts on mainstream sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  While I understand why companies would prefer social interaction on a more controlled, branded site, I have a hard time believing these sites will achieve much success after the initial glow wears off.  Personally, I would much rather interact with my favorite brands on a site where I have an established identity and a clear understanding of how the site operates (Facebook) than create an entirely new identity on a site I know little about.  Yes, Facebook Connect could make these third-party sites more appealing, but I’d prefer to interact with brands who come to me (in a non-pushy manner, of course) where I spend my time.  See how Adobe successfully engaged Facebookers in their “natural environment.”  I hope to see more brands take Adobe’s lead in the future.

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…)

Just came across a nice analysis of Twitter from our friend and Lotus Rock Star, Rob Novak. In “Three weeks of tweets for a Domino guy,” Rob likens Twitter to going to a cocktail party …

 Twitter and other social media are like going to a cocktail party … I expect to talk to lots of people, care about what some of them have to say, filter a lot of personal stuff that doesn’t affect me while looking interested (how rude!), and come away – if not inebriated – with a few nuggets of great information, some great new contacts, and an idea or two out of the social interaction we have in a group that size. This dynamic – and EVERY networking event you’ve ever attended – is very similar to consistent use of social media in a targeted fashion. Assuming you accept the premise that the cocktail party is like using Twitter…would you skip the cocktail party with your colleagues and new people you don’t know, because some of what you might hear is irrelevant to you? Aren’t the pieces of good information, “intel”, and new contacts worth the filtering you have to do? I personally believe it is, so will choose to close this blog entry and go tweet about it.

Great analogy, Rob. Now I’m gonna go Tweet about it. Wait, I’m not Tweeting yet. Is the @twitterrockstar name still available?