MONITORING NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE INCIDENTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA. The Benefits of Real-Time Response for Healthcare Providers

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1 MONITORING NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE INCIDENTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA The Benefits of Real-Time Response for Healthcare Providers

2 In a crowded and increasingly competitive marketplace, social media mentions of your brand can shape and shift customer and stakeholder sentiment almost instantaneously. For brands, it s never been more important to mine, monitor and measure the content of those conversations. Understanding online perceptions of your brand in real time can help you craft a data-driven strategy for responding to both negative and positive incidents. Amid negative incidents, that data can help your brand craft an intelligent counter-offensive effort when necessary, minimizing damage. Amid positive incidents, it can help you amplify and leverage social media mentions to boost your brand. Surprisingly, though, these data-rich opportunities to shape sentiment often go underutilized if used at all. A 2012 study by Stanford University s Rock Center for Corporate Governance of 180 top C-level and senior executives found that a mere 32 percent of companies monitor social media for negative mentions, while only 14 percent use it to gauge brand performance. 1 In the increasingly competitive healthcare space, just 42 percent of U.S. hospitals with 400 or more beds report even a basic use of social media. 2 Among hospitals of between 100 and 400 beds, that figure declined to 26 percent. 42% of U.S. hospitals with 400 or more beds report even a basic use of social media. For healthcare providers, measuring net negative and positive sentiment on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and traditional online media sites can yield significant insights into your brand s performance, cutting through the clatter of social media noise and giving you a clear picture of next steps. Following are case studies of how this robust social media monitoring can help healthcare providers focus on what only they can do: deliver high-quality, sustainable care to their patients. 1 Larcker, D; Larcker S; Tayan B. What Do Corporate Directors and Senior Managers Know about Social Media? Stanford University and The Conference Board Thaker S; Nowacki A; Mehta N; and Edwards, A. How US Hospitals Use Social Media. Annals of Internal Medicine. 154:10, May 17, 2011.

3 Popularity by Media This represents popularity for the query over time. In this case, our monitoring showed that while news mentions were up dramatically, actual user conversation around the topic was relatively quiet, prompting no change in the response strategy. Blogs Forums News Twitter Negative Events For a large university health system hospital, an event such as a reported gas leak or outbreak of bedbugs has the potential to spawn negative social media chatter for days on end, generating negative media coverage among local and even national outlets, while weakening patient and public confidence. For a health system s public relations department, such an event could consume hundreds of hours, as it scrambles to mount an offense that silences negative coverage. Used wisely, though, strategic monitoring of relevant social channels can show whether such an outsized response is even warranted. Retained by healthcare clients who found themselves in similar situations, Raidious found that negative social sentiment often occurred at a much lower volume than expected, and was frequently limited to a non-influential, non-local cross-section of consumers who posted their comments on Facebook. Additionally, the negative incidents also garnered only two headlines in Raidious monitored hostile conversations about the healthcare provider, working alongside the brand s legal team to manage the blowback.

4 Twitter Reach 190,177 estimated impressions from 123 Twitter mentions by 96 users Top Hashtags Top 10 hashtags used in Tweets with estimated number of mentions Authority Breakdown Low (4 or less) Med (5 to 8) 43% High (more than 8) 1% 56% #calebskidney #hscm 31 mentions #kidney 20 mentions #donatelife 12 mentions 99.42% 1,726 mentions 1.79% #checkitout <1% #radwednesday <1% 6 mentions 1.15% #transplant <1% #nwindiana <1% 5 mentions <1% #organdonation <1% #indiana <1% traditional media outlets, helping the healthcare provider to realize that no response from them was necessary. In more volatile incidences, when social interactions and local and national media coverage amplified potentially damaging stories around hospital employees being fired, for example, Raidious worked with a client to track and respond to these stories. Over a period of several days, Raidious monitored hostile conversations about the healthcare provider, working alongside the brand s legal team to manage the blowback. Tracking relevant analytics such as total mentions and average response times, Raidious measured social sentiment and provided recommendations for the client to minimize brand damage. At the same time, Raidious flagged stories, posts and mentions that were inaccurate, giving the health system the ability to correct misrepresented information, if appropriate ate, before it spread all in real time, and all because Raidious and the brand were listening. Armed with this kind of data, the healthcare client crafted an intelligent response proportionate to the minimal social chatter and controlled the negative stories all while keeping its focus on providing quality patient care. Any negative sentiment wasn t actually representative of the community healthcare providers served. But these meaningful insights wouldn t be available or actionable without tracking social media sentiment. For a healthcare brand, the benefit of real-time analytics amid negative incidents can t be overstated. Positive Events Listening and measuring conversations around positive events connected to your healthcare organization can boost your brand. An event such as a high-profile individual receiving treatment at your facility, for example, can create positive sentiment that you can amplify to bolster your brand s image but only if you re dialed into that conversation.

5 Listening and measuring conversations around positive events connected to your healthcare organization can boost your brand. In one such instance, Raidious tracked a story of a vulnerable patient receiving an organ transplant at a hospital. As the university health team responded to questions online, the Raidious Social Team captured social mentions using relevant hashtags and Twitter handles. As the story gained traction on Twitter and through coverage by traditional media outlets, Raidious quantified the buzz by tracking tweets, Facebook posts and articles, giving our client a clear picture of how its efforts were being received. The resulting analytics gave our client the ability to see the scope of the positive sentiment the brand was generating online. Are You Listening? In general, data shows that this powerful capability of monitoring social media sentiment is one healthcare brands too often fail to harness. When they do harness it, however, their responses shape and shift brands perceptions in a positive way. In both negative and positive incidences, knowing who is saying what, and knowing when and when not to engage can make all the difference for your brand. Are you listening to what people are saying about your brand online?

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