Four Important Facebook Uses for Your Community Hospital
August 31, 2011
With social media on the rise, people are increasingly looking to it for health information. How can your community hospital benefit from this trend? Learn how to utilize your hospital’s Facebook page.
Some items that traditionally lived on your hospital’s home page should now be shifted to Facebook, according to a post from the Conduit blog.
Four Things to Move to Facebook:
- Fan Community – Though branding options are somewhat limited on Facebook, it is an ideal place for your fan base. Community members have the option to “like” your page and show their appreciation and loyalty. Everyone can interact by posting on and participating in your hospital’s wall discussions.
- Upload your logo to reinforce your brand!
- Post frequently. According to a study by Verasoni Worldwide and Simon Associates, only 40 percent of the hospitals surveyed posted daily.
- Advertise events and activities. In addition to using the standard methods (print ads, emails and direct mailers) for event promotions, try creating a Facebook event and promoting it on your page. Or, try Facebook advertising.
- Photos & Videos – Invite everyone to engage on a personal level by viewing uploaded photos and videos of your hospital and events. Give fans the power to upload their own pictures.
- Special Offers – Offer incentives for “liking” your Facebook page by giving followers exclusive promotions and offers.
- Polls & Surveys – Use Facebook Questions and polling to learn more about your community’s needs and how your community hospital can meet them. Learn about creating polls on Facebook.
According to a study by the National Research Corp., 41 percent of U.S. residents say they use social media as a healthcare resource, the majority of them turning to Facebook.
Common social media uses:
- To view health education videos
- For diet and exercise tips
- To learn about upcoming health events
- To study disease awareness
- For health statistics
- To connect with others with similar ailments
- For support groups
Successful Hospital Facebook Pages:
- CHOC Children’s - View Page: This California-based hospital has successfully acquired over 23,000 “fans” — and without adding any fancy customizations to the page. Frequent status updates, YouTube channel integration, photo uploads (over 16 albums!) and multiple link postings invite community engagement, so that community members have also uploaded many photos and videos.
- OSF St. Francis Medical Center - View Page: This medical center in Illinois has utilized the discussion board, event postings, image uploads and YouTube videos to invite community involvement. With nearly 3,000 fans, it is clear from the active wall postings that community members do not hesitate to interact with the fan page.
- Presbyterian Hospital – View Page: Located in North Carolina, Presbyterian Hospital integrates its YouTube channel as well as its Twitter feed. With frequent status updates and photo uploads, it encourages community engagement additionally through the use of a custom “Give Back” donation tab.
Optimizing Your Community Hospital’s Emails and Eblasts
August 16, 2011
Learn how to construct your emails and eblasts to get past spam blockers and display your content correctly. Efficiently communicate with your community hospital’s patient lists.
Follow the tips below to ensure proper delivery of your emails:
- Subject Line:
- Make your subject line both compelling and concise. Use an engaging description that can be read at a glance. You don’t want recipients driven off by an overly verbose title. Non-generic headlines will also help you get past spam filters.
- Keep it short. Most recipients will be using an email reader such as Outlook, which generally limit subject lines to 35 characters (including spaces) or less. Make your subject line less than 35 characters long to ensure that recipients see the entire headline.
- Avoid spam trigger words. Avoid using words tagged by spam filters, such as “cost,” “free,” “unsubscribe,” “sales,” etc. View this list of 100 spam trigger words and phrases to avoid.
- Eblast Design:
- Use fewer images. Spam filters check the image-to-text ratio, because often spammers use lots of images.
- Do NOT send image-only emails. For every graphic or image, include at least two lines of text (if not more).
- Many email readers block images, so be sure to set “alternate text” for each image (this text will display if the image is blocked). Make your headline and other important information text instead of embedding them into an image.
- Keep important content “above the fold.” If recipients open your eblast, they may not bother scrolling down, so keep the primary information at the top.
- Send a plain text version of your message. Most email marketing providers give you the option to send a plain text version of your eblast in case your stylized message is blocked.
- Deploying your eblast:
- Send your eblast at logical times. Set your eblast to deploy during normal working hours, preferably between Tuesday and Thursday. Send late morning to early afternoon to account for differences in time zones (if some of your recipients are in varied locations).
- Don’t deploy too rarely OR too frequently. Try to send an eblast at least once per month but not more than once per week. You want your community hospital to be in the minds of your recipients, but you don’t want to overwhelm them. See this article.
- Comply with the CAN-SPAM Act:
- If your email’s primary purpose is “the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” then comply with the following guidelines:
- Don’t use false or misleading header information
- Don’t use deceptive subject lines
- Identify the message as an ad
- Tell recipients where you’re located
- Tell recipients how to opt-out of receiving future email from you
- Honor opt-out request promptly
- Monitor what others are doing on your behalf
- Eblast Campaign:
- The Email Experience Council blog, which draws on expertise from various contributors to offer insight and advice about email marketing, discusses the real cost of building an email solution. The eec recommends outsourcing your email marketing to ensure your campaign is built in a timely manner, that it’s up-to-date and that your deliverability rate is kept high.
- Another post from the eec debates “best practices” in email marketing. The eec suggests that one cookie-cutter solution of how and when to send emails does NOT work for every company. Instead, the eec recommends determining your email strategy from concept to production: Test, Optimize, Execute.
- Are you capable of developing the process discipline necessary to execute the vision for your community hospital’s email campaigns? A little bit of work in planning and teamwork will pay dividends each and every time you launch a campaign.
Using Interactive Maps for Your Community Hospital
July 6, 2011
A great resource for helping patients become oriented and familiar with your new or already-existing community hospital is an online interactive map. Help patients understand your hospital’s layout, features and services through this creative and engaging tool.
An interactive map could be a floor plan, aerial map or other creative representation of your hospital that users can click on and interact with to access more information. When developing this resource, think about your intention. What are you trying to show? Check out these hospitals’ successful maps for ideas:
Examples of Hospitals’ Interactive Maps:
- Phoenix Children’s Hospital: To accompany the opening of this new and elaborate children’s hospital, Phoenix Children’s Hospital also provides an intuitive and informative interactive map offering a breakdown of the sections of the hospital, complete with pictures and descriptions.
- Shands at the University of Florida: This interactive map gives users a thorough look at each floor of the Shands Cancer Hospital and Medical Center. Users can navigate either by floor or service and click on the interactive floor plans for more information and videos.
- Cleveland Clinic: This more simplistic approach shows an aerial map of the hospital’s campus. Users can click on the buildings for more information.
How do I build an interactive map?
If you have access to a designer and Adobe Flash, you can utilize your resources to develop a custom, interactive map. However, for the rest of us, there is online software to facilitate easy map making (without having to code anything). There are plenty of resources available online, but for a few ideas, try the following:
- MapsAlive advertises “interactive maps, floor plans and diagrams for your website.” There is also a free 30-day trial to test out the software, which is available on the MapsAlive website.
- iMapBuilder advertises “build interactive flash maps in minutes with no coding.” You can download a free trial or the actual software and browse a variety of example maps on the iMapBuilder website. Though there are examples of traditional country maps and Google maps, there are also more creative “virtual graphic” and “floor plan image” maps, which could be useful for your community hospital.
- Floor Planner offers “the easiest way to create floor plans.” You can view demos or sign up for the software on the Floor Planner website.
Tips for map making:
- Consider your audience. Will this map be for adults or children? If it’s an interactive map/game for children, then design everything (fonts, colors, layout) with them in mind. If it’s for adults, then likewise design accordingly.
- Consider the needs of the learner. The complexity and the amount of information presented should suit the needs of the learner. Don’t include superfluous information, but be thorough. Present data in an easy-to-manage and easy-to-understand format. Don’t use large blocks of copy or excessive descriptions. Use simple headings, labels and bullet points. If you must include lots of copy, use scrollbars on text boxes for maximum use of space. Read more about interactive multimedia and learning through this article.
- Be accurate. This may seem like a no-brainer, but make sure your map accurately depicts the hospital, from proportion to size and location. If your hospital is new and you are working from blueprints, check to see that you have up-to-date versions.
- Ensure intuitive navigation. Make it easy for users to figure out how to interact with your map. Use a “start here” to initiate interaction or include instructions in an obvious place.
- Make it mobile friendly. More and more people are using their Smartphones to access web content quickly. Note that Flash projects are often incompatible with iPhones and iPads, so consider using a software that provides an alternative script for mobile users. (MapsAlive advertises this capability). This article from Fierce Mobile Healthcare explains how a mobile application’s success is highly dependent on its easy functionality and interactivity.
It’s likely that a vast majority of your employees are already using social media, so why not use social media to promote your brand?!
Encourage your employees to talk about your community hospital and its related issues via social platforms, but be sure to follow some important guidelines.
Assess Who’s Using What
First determine what social media outlets are being used:
- MySpace
- Flickr
- Blogs
Ways to Take Action
Target the particularly active social media participants to lead initiatives:
- Write a blog post related to your community hospital. The topics could range from an explanation of a common procedure to a description of the new hospital wing – anything goes! Your patients will feel more connected to your hospital by having the inside scoop.
- Create a LinkedIn group to bring unity and act as a resource. Employees will be professionally linked to one another, making it easy for patients to skim their profiles and view their qualifications.
- Post on Twitter or Facebook about hospital events and happenings or related medical topics. Encourage interaction from the fellow hospital employees as well as patients.
Promote!
The only way for your community hospital’s voice to be heard through social media is if you promote your efforts!
- Feature an employee’s blog post on your community hospital’s web page.
- “Retweet” and repost employee’s comments and notes on Twitter and Facebook.
- Participate in status updates on LinkedIn, and encourage employees to include a link to the hospital’s website on their profiles.
The Dos
- Create a social media policy to set standards for your employees. For a comprehensive list of good practices, check out this article.
- Act respectfully. Be careful to refrain from making offensive remarks about competitor hospitals. Be politically correct. You don’t want obscenities and insults to be associated with your community hospital!
- Always identify yourself! Employees should not pose as patients in order to boost your hospital’s image. They should ALWAYS identify their affiliation with the hospital. This will keep discussions open and honest.
- Monitor your employees’ social media activity. They are representing YOUR hospital! Designate some “social media police” to ensure employees are protecting your hospital’s interest. And be sure they AREN’T doing any of the following.
The Don’ts
- Don’t violate privacy: In a hospital setting, a lot of specific details about medical cases and issues are confidential. Be sure your employees follow HIPAA and other medical standards when engaging in social media.
- Don’t engage in conflicts of interest: Prohibit employees from identifying or referencing business partners or clients without permission. This could result in serious legal ramifications.
- No “astroturfing” — don’t disguise your efforts! This goes along with always openly identifying your affiliation with the hospital. Warn your employees against having hidden personal agendas as they engage the community through social media.
Three Innovative Marketing Techniques to Celebrate the Opening of Your New Community Hospital
June 20, 2011
Introducing a new hospital to your community can be a daunting task. Making a memorable first impression is essential.
Jump-start your hospital’s success by mass-promoting it in a new and creative way. Tailor some of the following ideas to fit your budget constraints:
(1) FLASH MOB – Leaving a Lasting Impression
- A flash mob is a group of people who spontaneously gather in a public place and perform a random or unusual act and then disperse. One of the more well-known flash mobs is Frozen Grand Central Station in New York, where 207 individuals randomly froze for five minutes in Grand Central Station.
- Use a flash mob to creatively promote your new hospital. Other businesses have used flash mobs as a way to gather interest. For example, American Airlines organized a flash mob of 40 dancers in downtown Los Angeles to promote the launch of an expansion to their services.
- Be sure to follow best practices for holding a flash mob (yes, guidelines do exist!):
- Choose a public place where there will be a lot of foot-traffic.
- Because you will be representing your community hospital, gather appropriate permissions for use of the space as well as consent from participants in case a recording is published online.
- Capture the event with plenty of images and videos; post them on your website or social media pages to capitalize on the publicity.
- Encourage your new hospital employees to participate. You don’t have to choreograph an intricate and difficult dance routine. Think simple, like the Frozen Grand Central Station flash mob. Involving your own employees will keep costs down and create a fun, unifying event for the new hospital staff.
- For more tips, check out this blog post from ShellyStone Marketing.
(2) FOURSQUARE – A Fun Way for Patients to “Check In”
- Foursquare is a location-based social networking site available to users with GPS-enabled mobile devices. It is primarily a tool for letting friends know where you are and figuring out where they are. The Foursquare application allows users to “check in” at venues using text messaging or a mobile website. Each “check in” earns the user points, prize “badges” and eventually coupons.
- How can I use Foursquare for my community hospital? Give patients an incentive to use your hospital’s services by offering them Foursquare points or coupons for “checking in” to your hospital. Many companies are using Foursquare as a tool to increase public awareness about their businesses and services. Patients also have the option of leaving tips and comments about your hospital for others to see. If a person sees that many of his peers are “checking in” to your hospital and praising your promotions, maybe he will think twice next time he’s choosing a healthcare provider.
- Be aware that Foursquare limits its promotions to “places where people meet, socialize and linger.” Your hospital may not technically fall into that category, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use Foursquare! You can set up promotions outside of Foursquare and still advertise them therein. Check out this blog, which talks about the potential benefits of location-based social networks for the healthcare industry.
- What kind of promotions can you offer? Check out these 8 Foursquare Promotion Ideas, including ideas such as offering an incentive for first-time visitors (discount rate for visitors’ first check-up, free consultation, etc.)
(3) OPENING EVENT – Creating a Fun-Filled Day
- Bring your community together to celebrate your new hospital’s opening by making it a community event. Consider festivities such as live music, games, food, prizes or other entertainment.
- More than 3,000 people celebrated the opening of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles through an event that had everything from a 5k walk to a light show and special guests of a supermodel and actress. Although such an involved event is out of most hospital’s budgets, a simplified event can be equally fun and successful in promoting your hospital.
- Advertise your grand opening through traditional methods such as print ads and press releases as well as through social media and your hospital’s website.
- For more ideas on marketing your grand opening, check out this article.
It’s important to recognize the need to fund, support and promote primary care physicians. Learn what your hospital and your marketing team can do to recruit the right physicians for your community hospital.
The Problem
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years. With physicians in high demand, your community hospital’s ability to attract good doctors will remain crucial over the next few years.
The Solution
- Primary care needs to be made a more appealing field by increasing pay and offering incentives.
- As a nation, we need more funding for residency programs to open up spots to train new physicians.
- Your marketing team should work closely with your hospital’s recruiters to communicate the hospital’s key benefits to potential physicians.
How You Can Help
- Reach out to medical schools in your community – offer to talk about primary care or send a PCP to speak with students about the field.
- Push for reform within your community hospital by recruiting hospitalists.
Tips for Recruiting Physicians
Because of this shortage of physicians, it is growing increasingly critical for your hospital to have a strong physician recruiter.
- Know your strengths: Your community hospital’s marketing team should communicate clearly with the physician recruiter so that he understands what makes your hospital unique. When competing against larger corporations, it is essential to highlight what makes your community hospital a great place to work.
- Know your needs: It’s equally important to know what types of physicians work best in your community hospital’s environment. Search for physicians who are a good “match” for your hospital, from their personality types to their medical knowledge and expertise.
- Use your key players: Don’t overlook the authorities within your community hospital. When possible, involve your department chiefs and ask about the position you’re trying to fill – what will this position offer the candidate? What will be his/her role within the hospital?
- Use your connections for referrals: See if any of your physicians or connections can refer you to a potential candidate. Healthcare guru Lori Ramirez says she doesn’t even talk to candidates unless her physicians have inquired about them or someone has referred them.
- Stay flexible and up-to-date: If you hear of new techniques or websites for finding candidates, don’t brush them off. Keep your strategies current by maintaining your presence on the web and constantly updating your website and social media to fit with the times. A strong web presence makes it easier for physicians to seek you out, too.
For more ideas on how to compete for the best physicians, check out Shawn Kessler’s article.
Your repertoire among local physicians greatly dictates your community hospital’s ability to gather a client base. Learn how to tailor your services and marketing campaign to increase your physician referrals.
It may be helpful to dedicate one individual to act as the face of your community hospital when reaching out to other physician practices. A personal relationship is the key to successfully obtaining physician referrals, because physicians will refer to a practice that they trust and respect.
Build A Network
- Assess the physician practices and primary care doctors in your area. Reach out by sending a letter of introduction or inviting the physicians to visit your hospital or attend a seminar.
- Involve your own physicians. Their interest and involvement is crucial to developing a referral strategy. They may have insights into local physicians and practices with whom you can connect.
- Cultivate relationships with existing referrals and potential referrals using the following techniques:
Cost-Effective Marketing
- Establish a presence on the web: Keep your website up-to-date with information for both referring physicians and patients. Ensure your web content is compatible with mobile devices, as recent studies have shown that 80 to 90 percent of doctors have a smartphone.
- Utilize social media: Use sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to keep in frequent contact with patients and physicians. Use “tweets” and “status updates” as a way to briefly but frequently touch base with other physicians. Show your physicians to be both personable with patients and knowledgeable about medicine.
- Email marketing: Send out business-to-business emails systematically and share the latest news about your programs and services.
- Advertising in physician-only networking sites: Register with a physician-only networking site such as Sermo (largest MD-only online community), iMEdExchange or Ozmosis.
- On-site/in-person marketing: Just because almost everything is moving online does not mean you have to abandon traditional marketing techniques. When time permits, have a representative visit local practices and spread the word and reputation of your hospital.
Provide Optimal Customer Service
This post from Rx MD Marketing Solutions suggests how to “make it easy to work with you and your office”:
- Report back quickly to the referring physicians about their patients. Do all that you can to assist them with paperwork or prescriptions related to their patient.
- Refer back to the physicians who have referred you. If you see a patient who needs a primary care doctor or a specialist service that you don’t offer, refer him to a local practice that has referred you.
- Demonstrate good customer service by treating the referring offices with respect. Be prompt with their calls and requests, and consider sending a thank-you note to the physicians who have recommended you.
QR Codes – or Quick Response Codes – bridge your hospital’s traditional advertising with ease into web rich content. Follow these five tips to best utilize the QR Codes for your community hospital’s marketing campaign.
Go mobile
Get your mobile site ready for all the attention it will be getting! Or at least get popular sections of your web site ready to direct your audience to.
- Motivate
Build responses by letting your audience know what’s in it for them. Scanning a code does require a few extra steps, so adding value to your campaign will make a huge difference.
- Know your audience
Your new QR Code audience is more tech-savvy than average. When making your first QR Code campaign, don’t hide the QR Code, make the code icon the centerpiece of the campaign. But for other audiences just learning about QR Codes, the QR Code might be included next to the contact information along with a simple explanation of how to scan the code. Finally, with 81 percent of doctors owning a smartphone, your next campaign targeting physicians can breath new life!
- Test
Work with a web specialist to ensure that the page your QR Code directs recipients to is displayed correctly on commonly-used platforms (Blackberry, iPhone and Android, etc).
- Be savvy
QR Codes are new territory and exciting innovation to enhance print communication. Encourage activity across different media, consider multiple types of information that you can deliver and think of unique applications to apply QR Codes to.
“That’s GREAT!” blog post offers 101 Uses for QR codes, including use on business cards, books and other published literature, billboards and even clothing. Look to other campaigns for inspiration to spice up your community hospital’s campaign.
Mobile-tagging, or QR Codes, provide immediate response for return on marketing investment and simplify the marketing challenge of integrating social media with your ongoing community hospital marketing efforts. Best of all, it is practically FREE!
What is a QR Code?
QR Codes – or “Quick Response” Codes – are small, scannable, 2D barcodes that can link to a multitude of digital content. These little square modules may be read by any smartphone or mobile phone with a camera, and they instantly connect users to additional encoded content such as text, videos or specific web site URLs.
QR Codes may be placed in newspaper ads, magazines, billboards, posters, direct mailers, email messages, web sites, blogs and just about any other medium, offering consumers simple and convenient information retrieval.
Your healthcare audience will be able to quickly access additional content, while you will be able to immediately measure the effectiveness of your campaign (by tracking the QR Code interactions).
FREE QR Code How To’s
- Generating: Marketers can create free codes from one of the many QR Code generators such as delivr , myQR or Kaywa.
- Tracking: For additional services such as tracking or analytic dashboards, registration or premium versions of programs may be required. myQR offers free QR tracking.
- You can also use Google Analytics to track the code.
- Scanning: To scan QR Codes, users need a QR scanner application on their mobile devices. Check out this comprehensive list of QR Code readers.
- Click here for more information on QR Apps.
Healthcare Marketer Uses of QR Codes
Partner and Simmons Healthcare Blog makes a few suggestions for how QR codes may be used by healthcare marketers:
- Use a QR Code to link an ad to a video or product page, offering more detailed information about the advertised product or service
- Initiate a call with a doctor’s office or to a find-a-doctor tool
- Solicit opt-ins for your email newsletter
- Offer quick access to an event web site or live polling
- Collect contest registrations
- Provide event or health seminar information, maps and RSVP forms
On the “Manage My Practice” blog, Mary Pat Whaley’s article tells “22 Ways You Will use QR (Quick Response) Codes in Healthcare in the Future (If You’re Smart),” adding ideas such as using the codes in television ads for pharmaceuticals or using them on food and medication products.
Real-Life Examples
- One hospital, TriStar Health System in Nashville, recently announced that it will begin incorporating a QR Code in its Fast ER Wait Times campaign to link consumers to information about the average emergency room wait times at hospitals in Middle Tennessee. This puts real-time information in people’s fingertips when time matters most.
- Children’s Hospital Boston tried QR Codes for the first time in its Winter 2011 newsletter, Dream, and reported more than 125 scans within the first few days of its drop.
- Patient stories are the hero of the cardiac campaign for Memorial Health Care System in Tennessee. Every part of the multi-media effort (including QR Codes) leads to a custom microsite where the community can further engage in each story, conduct an online risk assessment and find out how to choose a cardiologist.
Check out our five important tips for using QR codes at your community hospital.
Facebook Upgrade: Five Changes to Your Community Hospital Page
February 21, 2011
Facebook recently announced a number of changes to its Pages, effective March 10, bringing the Pages to look and feel more like Profile Pages.
Use the changes to your advantage – learn how to utilize the upgraded Facebook Page to market and manage your community hospital brand.
Five Noteworthy Changes
- Profile Picture: Reduced to 180×540 pixels.
- Tabs Moved: Instead of being across the top, tabs will be listed on the left panel; a maximum of six tabs display above the fold.
- Photo Strip: The new photo strip, located above the page wall, displays five photos uploaded by the page. Any image could default to the strip — to remove an image, hover over it and click the “x.” Another positive feature is that images uploaded by fans will NOT be displayed.
- Wall Filter: Choose to see posts by “Everyone” or by only your page.
- Use Facebook as a Page: You now have the option to interact with other Pages on Facebook through your page. See details below.
Note: You can preview the new Facebook Page, but once you upgrade, you can’t revert back to the original. All pages will upgrade automatically March 10.
How to Use Facebook as a Page
The new Facebook page is a welcome improvement for community hospital Facebook administrators. Pages allow you to monitor and provide greater control over your brand!
- Receive notifications when other people interact with your page.
- “Like” other pages and post comments through your page.
- See Facebook’s recommendations for pages to “like” based on pages your fans like.
- View Newsfeed just for your page, and keep up with pages you’ve “liked.”
- Manually list terms to block by going to the “Manage Permissions” tab and entering words into the “blocklist.”
Note: Activate your community hospital page by going to “Account” and hitting “Use as Page.”
The Benefit
These new changes allow your community hospital to function the way individual users do on Facebook. Increased interactivity will encourage more page views, promoting your community hospital page.
Resources
- Read the new Facebook policy guidelines.
- Check out The Social Penguin blog’s run through page changes.
