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

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.
  ·F
    acebook: 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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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?
·W
  hat ancillary services are offered that would matter to patients? (For example, nutrition,
 genetic counseling, physical therapy and home care.)

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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.

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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:

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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:

·R
  eturn 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.
   ·V
     olume: 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

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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.

                                         Incorporating
            Volume                                                      Contribution
                                          Engagement
            Metrics                                                    Margin Amount
                                           Statistics

Return on time examples:
·O
  nline 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.
·E
  arned 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.

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Return on investment examples:
·S
  top 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.
·A
  llow online signup for seminar: Track these submissions and procedural conversions from
 the seminar to show ROI around online visitors.
·U
  se 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.

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