Connecting Hospitals With Their Doctors Through Social Media

Throughout my years advertising for hospitals and healthcare systems, I continually hear of the challenge of including the doctors in the hospital’s advertising.  I believe this to be one of the marketing department’s greatest ongoing challenges.   You would like to incorporate your medical professionals in your ads, billboards and commercials but you can’t very well cover all of them and their individual specialties. An ideal way you can play “everyone wins” is utilizing your social media to allow your doctors to engage both you and your patrons.  Creating a social media program that creates a synergy between your hospital and that doctor on various social media outlets empowers them to feel included and share their voice.  The beauty of offering a range of social media options to your doctors to engage you provides them the ability to partake in the marketing and advertising as much or as little as they may like.

Utilization of Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, You Tube and blogging gives the hospital a number of opportunities to exchange information with its doctors and have them help grow your social media footprint and their recognition with your hospital. By doing so you create the “marketing trifecta” as I like to call it. You are tackling recruitment, doctor outreach and community awareness. It’s a virtual slam-dunk!

Forums are a great way for people to come to your website, but if you just want to make it so that you can show other professionals what best practices are at your hospital or how your doctor’s work through challenges that they face as a group, online social communities offer a great outlet for this.  Your social media site becomes not just a posting board, but a resource and guide for other healthcare professionals.  You are inadvertently aiding the medical community in creating forum of learning what protocols work for your organization’s doctors and how you are participating with the doctors you have. Through Facebook, blogging or even through Linked In you can create social communities with your docs within your own hospital or system.  Doctors can begin to identify each other outside the cafeteria and understand research, new techniques or best practices that their colleagues are using. 

Creating social media sites that have information geared towards doctors also aids your recruitment efforts.  You have a great venue to share your accomplishments and accreditations with doctors who may be in the area, but not informed of the strides your staff and hospital are making.  Sharing the experiences your MDs have at your hospital via YouTube as well as through Linked In discussions can also show in real time the benefits of being a doctor at your facility. 

Twitter is a great resource to assist you in your communication with not only doctors but also healthcare professionals as a community.  When followers re-Tweet your information this garners attention a very diverse demographic of potential clients and healthcare professionals. By engaging your doctors on this platform, they can have their patient base get access to information from your sites, through your doctor.  This is a great way for the patients to link the great docs you have, to your hospital. Via Twitter you can engage MDs around the country and even the world. Imagine what that can do for your recruitment efforts to get the best and brightest in their field!

A Linked in strategy imparts itself very well to the recruitment process.  Joining MD groups, healthcare recruitment groups and medical career groups give you access those who are not only looking for jobs, but who may just want to know just a bit more to get them interested in your facility.  You can also search professionals easily with the criteria you are looking for and what the candidate offers. By having an active presence on Linked In you don’t let those great candidates get away.

 Another great attribute of social media is that the doctors can be responsive as much or as little as they would like.  They can re-Tweet you to their followers, comment on your Facebook wall, find like-minded professionals on your Linked In group, guest blog or even tag a YouTube video they created linking their practice to your hospital.  This approach establishes an ongoing relationship with them where traditional media may be more of a challenge.  By the same token, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and You Tube keeps them up to date on events, new programs, new hospital protocols, new technology and foundation pushes. I find that even sharing foundation donation dollars earned, where they are appropriated and plans for additions or renovations via social media is a great way to get your doctors excited and talking about your hospital.

Once you have social media plan of attack for your doctors in place the last steps are probably them most important. Before you embark on this journey you want to make sure you have the compass and the light for the trip; a dedicated resource to man the social media sites and their responses and a social media policy for all doctors and staff.  When you author a social media policy you want to make sure, like with your workplace code of conduct, the employees know what your expectations are of their use of social media as it applies to your organization, facility and patients.  You will also want to Google your hospital and the doctors you work with just to see what is coming up in the queue. This activity helps build for great benchmarks to see how your social media is growing and where you can maximize your reach.

In the great spirit of reciprocity, you also want to set up Google Alerts for the doctors so you can so you can see what they are doing in the community that you can share on your social media sites.  This allows you to share their research, charitable giving and new therapies and shows that you are supporting your doctors through diverse media outlets.

It is not an overwhelming challenge to impart these social media outlets to your marketing and advertising program.  If you have a good strategy, set benchmarks, devote a resource and are willing to get to know those in your network, you are only strengthening your social media outreach. If you also take the time to educate your doctors on the social media avenues that you are pursuing you make them more savvy and get an even greater return on your social media presence.

- Chris Manzella, ceo, Social Matrix Marketing

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@SavySocialChris

Tearing Down the Walls Around Social Media

I don’t know how many of you have moved when you were a child. I did. And boy was it interesting.  My parents moved us out of a fairly urban area into what they thought was suburban, and we thought was the woods.  I felt a bit like fish out of water.  We were new to the town, new to the school and totally new to the concept that the school was shooting for. 

The elementary school had been built in the 70’s (Not that the orange ribbed carpet wasn’t a dead give away).  The concept of the school was that there were to be no barriers between the classrooms.  There were floor to ceiling perimeter walls between the classrooms and the elements outside but, in each of the classrooms, merely a two or even three-foot wall existed.  Each student could not only peer into the class next to his or her’s, but they could see clear what the next grade was doing! This revolutionary idea didn’t seem to take off with my sister and me immediately. How on Earth, after 5 grades of school learning in a virtual box could I possibly ever get used to this? It was ludicrous! I thought I was being cheated out my education. The classes were harder here and now they are going to add the challenge of not listening to the 80 other voices around me? Good grief.  

The first few weeks were a challenge but as time went on, I noticed what was going on in the classes next to me. I even began to be focus on just what I was learning, as opposed to wondering what was in store for me in the upcoming grade. Well, needless to say, after a few weeks, I was surprised that a change of perspective occured. It was if the walls had never been there.  In the end the biggest barrier to adjusting to this new environment was merely mental barriers I had in conceptualizing this new set up. It was clearly working for the kids I went to school with.  They were all able to work, listen and focus... soon enough I was able as well.

As I went on to college and then into the work force, I have to say that school has been more beneficial then I could ever imagine. I can sit in Grand Central Station at rush hour and read books, write documents and conduct research all as if a symphony is playing in the background.  The noise that I hear in crowded places never affects my work in a negative manner. Strangely, I enjoy going to places with Wi-Fi that are loud and lively just to have that stimuli back. I guess you can call me a convert.

I look at social media in the same way. When I meet with clients there always a curiosity into learning of how it works, but skepticism and doubt because marketing hasn’t really been done this way before. It’s a totally new concept. Up until just a few years ago, marketing never existed like this. It is sometimes best to look at social media brand prevalence and acknowledgement sort of like looking at a Picasso. You could put a price on it, but are you sure it’s accurate? Social media allows you a reach as no other media could before. The incredibly unique users, groups, influencers and champions you can garner through social media couldn’t be bought with a spokesperson deal, a TV commercial or a radio ad.  What does it cost you as a company to get onboard with a revolutionary idea that is clearly working for others? How do you can you concisely valuate a media that has reach to nearly 60 million people?

Much like the self-actualization I had about school, it’s possible that just because it’s not the “way we have always done it” doesn’t mean it doesn’t have legs. The statistics that you see in daily articles and the stats that we post weekly on the Social Matrix Marketing facebook page show a definite trend in social media growing and becoming an accepted part of a holistic marketing program. Each day more and more brands are making strides in converting those online users to offline purchasers.  

We are moving towards a flat world with no walls and a view of the future.  It may be a bit strange at first, but if you let it grow on you, you'll see the future of your marketing can be even better than you thought it could be.