Social Media an Effective Way to Promote Clinical Services

In February 2009, St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was about to embark on a social media campaign. Laura Rainey, the hospital’s marketing communications director, was asking herself, “Does my target customer, my audience, really want to hear from us via social media?” She was particularly skeptical about the use of Twitter as an outreach mechanism. “I thought, ‘Who’s really going to start a conversation when they are limited to only 140 characters?’” Ms. Rainey told occupational health professionals at RYAN Associates’ 26th annual national conference in October during a session on marketing in health care. Ms. Rainey put her doubts aside and gradually introduced social media to the Cedar Rapids community. She soon saw positive results. For example, the hospital scored national media coverage when it used Twitter to showcase a new surgical protocol. Meanwhile, it has been able to consistently build and maintain impressive online traffic. “I am committed to using social media as one of many tools in my marketing communications toolbox,” she said.

WHY SOCIAL MEDIA?

Business and marketing applications are a logical extension of social media for personal use. Millions of Americans are connected online and are accustomed to using social media to communicate with friends, family members, colleagues, and commercial enterprises.

The social media sites St. Luke’s uses most frequently are Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

A good way to get started is by creating a Facebook fan page and posting links to photos and information about health events. Other easy-to-implement suggestions include Tweets about free events and classes and sharing links to health and safety news and regulatory agency sites.

From a marketing perspective, Ms. Rainey said it’s important to invite people to join a conversation, listen, learn, and share. It is not about direct sales or promotion of products and services. “You will lose people and your traffic will decline if you use social media to hawk your product,” she warned the audience of occupational health professionals.

To hone its social media strategy, St. Luke’s marketing communications team looked for health care-oriented sites they thought made effective use of social media. Cleveland Clinic and Henry Ford were among organizations on their list.

They also did research to determine why people visit St. Luke’s website and learned that the top four reasons are to:

• find a doctor
• check on appointment wait times
• get maps and directions to St. Luke’s facilities
• watch YouTube health-focused informational videos and patient testimonials

Ms. Rainey said social media can be used in myriad ways to forge closer ties with clients and customers, employees, and other stakeholders. St. Luke’s has built a number of targeted social media services and sites to reach specific demographic groups as well as more general-purpose sites such as its YouTube channel, which features short health-focused videos. The hospital also uses social media to post helpful resources and facilitate connections among patients with similar needs or interests, such as expectant mothers and recovering cancer patients.

St. Luke’s staff monitors comments three times a day, including weekends, and is on the lookout for “inflammatory remarks, swear words or dissing,” Ms. Rainey said.

“You cannot control the conversations, but you can respond to comments. The sooner you can respond the better, especially if it is negative because negative comments can do a lot of PR damage.”

However, the hospital finds that positive comments and helpful information exchange far outweigh any potential downsides associated with the use of social media.

RESOURCES:

• Twitter Guidebook
• Twitter 101
• Facebook Pages Product Guide
• Starting Your Social Media Case
• E. Bennett’s Social Media Policy

Social Media Do’s and Don’ts

DO’S:

• Monitor conversations and respond quickly when appropriate.
• Facilitate the use of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, iPads).
• Establish a social media policy for responses to posts and for your employees.
• Keep your social media services active and current to encourage repeat visits.
• Make it easier for visitors to find your sites using keyword search.
• Focus on consistent communication.
• Track a few useful data points such as visitors’ age ranges and the search engine they use.

DON’TS:

• Avoid getting caught up in obsessive tracking of irrelevant data.
• Overtly hawking or advertising your products and services puts your organization at risk of losing site traffic and earning “likes.”
• Never share personal health information in an online public forum.
• Once you start a social media service, don’t abandon it for days or weeks; keep it fresh.