6 Secrets of Social Media Superstars in Healthcare: Best Practices for your Hospital s Social Media and Community Engagement Programs

6 Secrets of Social Media Superstars in Healthcare: Best Practices for your Hospital s Social Media and Community Engagement Programs

Introduction According to the Health Care Social Media List, more than 1,500 hospitals across the United States use social media to communicate with their audiences: patients, families, visitors, referring physicians and greater communities. A tremendous amount of effort goes into creating a successful social media program. To keep your program running efficiently and consistently, you need talented individuals who understand your organization s goals. You also need: Content Relevant, valuable content to distribute on different channels, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Foursquare Channels Which channels does your audience use to engage with your brand? Executive Buy-In Organize all your analytics so you can articulate the story you want to tell in order to convince your C-suite to give you the budget you need Logistics Coordinating all the day-to-day juggling that goes into a social media program requires crisp execution and the ability to look ahead at tomorrow s possible crises How do you do all of the above and still manage all your other marketing priorities? 1

About Us Reed Smith is a consulting strategist and thought leader focused on the integration of social computing into hospitals. Much of his work focuses on incorporating interactive elements into current online strategies within hospitals and health care organizations. E : reed@graydigitalgroup.com : @reedsmith Ahava Leibtag has been creating health care content and content strategies for seven years. Her clients include major academic medical centers, community hospitals and health care systems across the United States. E : ahava@ahamediagroup.com : @ahaval Together, with a combined 20 years of experience, we understand the unique challenges health care marketers face in today s marketplace. We know there are certain best practices health care systems and hospitals must follow to reach social media success. The purpose of this ebook is to share those with you today. 2

What is social media success? To us, social media success is about creating a brand community. In a recent e-mail newsletter, Ahava argued that social media is simply a set of communication technologies that allows us, as marketers, to interact directly with our customers. Focus on building a brand community, rather than on channels, technology or deployment. Therefore, instead of calling our efforts social media, we should move toward building brand communities through social media technologies. While it may seem like splitting hairs, our point is that it s not about a Facebook strategy or a Twitter strategy, but rather about an engagement strategy using content and various social networking platforms. Even more than building a brand community, the fundamental goal of using social media is to create trust. Understanding the rules of engagement in social media will help your health care organization build trust within the communities where you interact. 3

6 Best Practices for Healthcare Social Media Success Follow these best practices to build community engagement through social media technologies and channels: 1. Understand the audience on different channels 2. Focus on the content 3. Follow the rule of 70 listen/20 share/10 self-promote 4. Manage in teams for cross collaboration 5. Include stakeholders often 6. Measure analytics to validate time, energy and effort Ready for the six secrets of social media superstars? 4

1. Understand the audience on different channels Knowing what pops and what doesn t on different channels helps you avoid worthless hours trying to create engagement where your audience just isn t spending their time. If you re using Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, you know that different types of content get various responses and engagement. This could be for two reasons: Different audiences spend time on the various channels, OR; Different types of content work best on different channels All communicators want their content to provoke shares and comments. Those reactions help you measure engagement. Are people reacting to your content? Or are they scrolling by your brand in their news feed? On Facebook, most marketers have noticed that pictures and short forms of content, like 30-second videos, receive the most comments and shares. However, you may notice that on YouTube, longer form video content works. That s because audiences go to YouTube to learn more about a health care subject of interest. You can draw certain conclusions if you carefully follow your measurement analytics for engagement. Most hospitals and health care systems have a variety of personas they use in order to understand their different consumer segments: expectant mothers, senior citizens, people worried about their heart health, diabetics in search of support groups, referring physicians looking for specialists, and so on. Based on those different audience segments, you should be able to tell which social media channels they frequent and how often. If your target audience spends more time on Facebook and like or share certain types of posts, you now hold important information about what works for your brand community on Facebook. 5

2. Focus on the content Content is the fuel of your social media and community engagement efforts. Nothing runs without it. You can have the greatest social media pages with the most wonderful graphics, logos and introductions and not have any engagement. You need to tend to your garden of content so it engages, excites and attracts your brand community. If you don t, it will turn into a barren desert no one will ever visit. Content is simply information transformed by a content type into a marketing product. Think about your blog: You write information and construct it into a blog post. Maybe you attach photos that nicely illustrate the story. What is the real goal of that content? It s not just to market the services of the hospital. It s also to inform and teach your audiences, so they can use the information. More importantly, you want them to share it with others who might find it valuable. As a health care marketer, you need to decide what level of effort each piece of content takes to produce in comparison to the amount of engagement it receives. Let s say you already have a staff of writers who are cranking out written content. Those articles receive views and comments. It may not make sense to spend $5,000 to produce a video when you ve found that video doesn t really resonate with your audience. On the other hand, if you are trying to reach a certain segment that you know has higher engagement with videos, it makes sense to invest in that project. 6

3. Follow the rule of 70 listen/20 share/10 self-promote The initial course of action for social media newcomers is to talk about what they know. This seems innocent enough, but it quickly turns to self-promotion. Nothing stunts your growth in the social media world like focusing on yourself. Find a way to identify communities of interest and participate; do not promote yourself. Think of the overeager student who always raises her hand first. Don t fall into the trap of thinking that raising your hand again and again will garner positive attention. It won t. Part I: How to Identify Communities of Interest Understanding how, where and when to insert yourself should be your number one priority when developing a strategy to connect around a new topic or service. Here are some examples of finding communities of interest across some of the major platforms: Twitter: Use the Healthcare Hashtag Project to find communities of interest. Hashtag communities and chats are one of the quickest and easiest ways to get involved in social media. LinkedIn: Use LinkedIn to search for organizations within your expertise or interest. Another way to find valuable groups is to search the Answers portion of LinkedIn; find those individuals who have provided the most best answers within a category. Backtrack to find other groups these potential contacts belong to as members. Facebook: Many of the news and membership-based organizations in health care also have groups within Facebook. Seek these out and join. Another search tip is to look for groups with specific keywords that fit your interest. Through interacting on these platforms, you will start to make connections and shape your understanding of who successfully manages social media. From there you can examine where and how they spend their time. Use that information to continually shape your online engagement into your own voice. 7

Part II: The Rule of 70/20/10 Once you have found communities and topics of interest, you need to understand how to interact. The time equation of 70/20/10 should inform your interactions. For every hour, you should spend: 42 12 6 42 minutes to listen and research 12 minutes to share what you find 6 minutes to promote relevant knowledge you have The 70: The First 42 It is amazing what you can find and learn if you just try. Listening provides the most value in social media. A solid listening strategy can provide: Market intelligence Identification of best practices and trends New connections Answers to questions A custom news feed Examples of ways to listen: Google alerts Search.Twitter.com Twitter hashtags Twitter lists RSS feeds 8

The 20: The Second 12 Sharing is a natural way to introduce yourself to a community. What expertise or resources can you share with the larger community? When you share, it should be no strings attached content. Remember: The more you give, the more you get. Sharing could consist of: A retweet or modified tweet Sharing on Facebook Commenting on a blog A repin on Pinterest Posting to groups on both Facebook and LinkedIn Commenting on Facebook and LinkedIn updates/questions The 10: The Final 6 There are times the content you have to offer/promote is relevant and valuable to your communities. When you spend time with the 70 and the 20, you build relationships that can affect your hospital s reputation. Once you have that trust, you will find additional value in sharing your content than if you had promoted your brand from your first day. People do business with those they trust. Build trust first. 9

4. Manage in teams for cross collaboration Having teams of specialists who are experts in different parts of how your health care systems works will prove invaluable for your social media efforts. As a health care marketer, you have probably heard the term multidisciplinary enough times to know exactly what it means. So too, you need a multidisciplinary team for your social media efforts (believe it or not)! As we said above, social media is mostly about listening. But, you still need answers when your audience asks questions. Coordinate teams that utilize all the different information creation structures of the organization: marketing, PR, customer service, crisis communications and emergency response. Work with other people in those departments. Ensure you are delivering the best possible experience for your customers as they engage with your brand using these technologies. Create and distribute a social media manual and guidelines to all employees. Those employees who monitor the social media channels should have in-depth training, during which you run different drills on commonplace and even rare occurrences. For example, as we are writing this, Hurricane Sandy is tormenting the East Coast. Your social media teams should know how to handle a full range of possibilities, so they are prepared for any types of questions or engagement (even the negative type) that might occur. 10

5. Include stakeholders early and often Find the subject matter experts who can give you the details your audience craves. Build relationships with them to make the content creation experience delightful. Content creation tends to invoke anxiety for anyone involved in a digital marketing project, especially in a health care organization. Why? Remember the adage Too many cooks in the kitchen? There are so many stakeholders within hospitals, including doctors, administrators and marketing managers. Content development becomes a nightmare because so many people with differing opinions on the best content approach want their opinion to override the marketing department. However, content need not invoke zombie-type images of fear and fright. It can be an easier process if you involve stakeholders in the process early and often. Build relationships with stakeholders. Learn who the people are that will champion your efforts. Also, identify the bottlenecks those who will consistently put up blockades no matter what you recommend or suggest. For those who are eager to engage, get their input on the details of what they know the audience wants. Ask them: What are the questions patients ask on a regular basis? What information seems to comfort families and visitors? Can you recommend a consistent contact within the department? What ancillary services are offered that would matter to patients? (For example, nutrition, genetic counseling, physical therapy and home care.) 11

6. Measure analytics to validate time, energy and effort If you want to continue spending time and valuable budget dollars on social media and new technologies, you will have to demonstrate with cold, hard data that it s worth the effort. Social media is still a new and ever-transforming practice (particularly to those in the C-suite). Think of yourself as the tour guide on a brand new journey; not only are you going to direct their attention to new and wondrous places, but you re also going to show them the value of why they ve even bothered to take the trip. In three simple steps you will be better equipped to speak to the value of your social media efforts: 1. Identify the consumer pathway To start, ask yourself how visitors will find you online. Here are a few examples: Google search Facebook page Yelp review Online news stories LinkedIn Once you understand all the entry paths to your organization s online presence, ask where those paths should lead and what information your audience gathers along the way. In a best-case scenario, capturing that information would be the job of an automated technology like a database to CRM software. However, you may not have that luxurious tool in your Batcave. Still, try to capture as much data and information about your audience and their content consumption patterns as you can. Once you have a database in place, you can ask people for information online (through forms or email signups) or you can map data into the database from existing forms and scheduling tools. 12

We encourage you to map how online traffic finds its way to your CRM tool, so you can track and better communicate with those individuals. Once you do this, you can spot any breakdowns and traffic bottlenecks along the way. In this simple example (but a real issue), you can see how traffic coming from Google finds its way into the CRM. The problem comes when one of the most popular calls to action cannot map data into the CRM: 13

2. Identify what to measure Once you have a clear picture of how your consumers are finding you, then it is time to identify and understand what to measure. There are a few types of measurement: Return on Investment (ROI): ROI is finance metric only. To accurately state a case of social media ROI, you would track actual dollars coming in or dollars saved. If you cannot show actual money changing hands, then you are not measuring ROI. However, you can demonstrate that social media promotes your brand s products and services. Volume: Measuring volume helps you shape your C-suite s understanding of how social media promotes your brand online. You are most likely doing this with Web analytics, including metrics like: Number of visitors Time on site Number of fans Number of followers Page views Impressions Engagement: This is somewhere between the first two metric categories. A consumer is interacting with you but is not yet spending any money. This includes numbers like: Retweets Repins Comments Likes on posts Form completion Seminar registration Review submission 14

3. Show the value Once you have identified how people interact with your brand online and what metrics you can measure, then it is time to show a return. This could be a return on investment or a return on your time. In either case, be clear about which data you present. Your goal is to move the needle on the data you share with your C-suite. Right now, you may only be able to demonstrate volume metrics. Your next goal is to incorporate engagement statistics. Once you ve conquered those two data points, you want to show the amount of contribution margin you provided via an online effort. Volume Metrics Incorporating Engagement Statistics Contribution Margin Amount Return on time examples: Online issue resolution: Consumers come to your Facebook page to voice a concern and your organization is able to address the issue (online or offline). Increasing engagement: By consistently engaging as well as creating and sharing relevant meaningful content, you will see your engagement metrics rise. Earned media: Being active on social media and connecting to local news reporters transforms you into a trusted source for information. You will be the first call when they need content. 15

Return on investment examples: Stop printing newsletters (both internal and external): Instead, use a blog or enews to distribute the same information. The cost savings from print and postage provides ample evidence of ROI. Allow online signup for seminar: Track these submissions and procedural conversions from the seminar to show ROI around online visitors. Use your CRM tool: Calculate the value of online visitors by earmarking individual users online. Show downstream revenue from those visitors. These capture points could include: Contact us forms enews signups Event registration Affinity group signups Online health risk assessments Online patient reviews Online seminars Virtual support groups (like a Facebook group) In Summary: In order to use social media to increase community engagement and build a brand community, you need the same tools that you use for all of digital strategy: Time A commitment to an iterative process Learning from experts Creating collaborative teams across disciplines We hope the above six best practices give you the starting set you need to build your own fabulous toolbox. Helping people is what we do in health care marketing. Today, with all of the technologies we have, it s easier than ever to share and promote content. Use social media channels wisely, and they will reward you with greater revenue, the respect and trust of your C-suite, and a knowledgeable and grateful brand community. 16