“Social Media” is more than just a marketing buzzword; as the Internet increasingly becomes the medium of choice for researching health information social media has become a valuable channel for improving the patient experience.
In addition to looking for health information online, patients are also using social media to discuss their doctors, medications, treatment plans, insurance, and medical devices, as well as track and share symptoms. In many cases, social media even influences the choice of a doctor, hospital, or medical treatment.
While social media can have a direct impact on the ability of health organizations to attract and retain new patients, it can also deliver a human touch to the patient experience at scale. Healthcare professionals can connect more meaningfully with patients through social media at every stage of their health journey.
The social media revolution has changed the face of health care, and professionals cannot afford to remain reactive to it. Nevertheless, while it’s tempting to jump straight into social media, a more thoughtful and planned approach is ]called for. There is more to social media marketing than just creating accounts and posting updates occasionally. Nor is it merely a digital tool to broadcast updates. A strategic approach is crucial to making social media an effective means of reaching patients.
Sharpening Your Digital Axe
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
To help you sharpen your digital axe, this article guides you through ten questions that you should ask – and answer – to assist you in developing a social media plan. Whether you are a beginner, or you have been using social media for some time, answering these key questions will help drive your strategy towards success.
#1 What Do You Want To Achieve With Social Media?
Answering this question is a critical first step. Without a clear goal in mind, your social media marketing will remain unfocused.
Would you like to attract more patients? Improve communication with existing patients? Create and maintain an online reputation? There is a good chance that you’d like to accomplish all of these things, but it’s better to focus first on the two to three goals that are most important to you.
Regardless of the goal you wish to achieve, be as detailed and specific as you can. The more trackable your goal is, the easier it will be to see if it has been achieved in a few months.
Take Action: Set S.M.A.R.T. social media goals, i.e. goals that are specific, measurable, and achievable within a defined timeframe. For example, instead of saying you want to grow your number of Twitter followers, set a numerical value and a deadline, such as “grow our Twitter followers by 25 percent by the end of the first quarter.”
#2 Who Do You Want To Reach With Social Media?
It is crucial to understand the people you’re interacting with online so that you can tailor an experience that is relevant to them. Identify your audience, where they go online for research, what issues they care about, and which communities inform or influence them.
Take Action: Start by finding data on your existing audience. Use the Demographics and Interests sections of Google Analytics and the audience analytics features contained within Facebook Insights and Twitter to help you.
#3 Which Social Media Sites Should You Use?
The short answer to this question is to go where your patients already are. While the trifecta of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are extremely popular, newer platforms such as Pinterest, Snapchat and Instagram have gained enormously in popularity in recent times. This doesn’t mean that you have to be everywhere at once. Not all platforms will serve your particular goals and target audience. This is why it’s essential you answer questions #1 and #2 before you decide to invest your time in a particular social platform.
Take Action: Match your audience demographics to their social use.
#4 What Is Your Budget?
The perception that social media is free is misguided. The days you could make an impact with a few tweets or Facebook posts are long gone. Running a social presence now requires an investment of resources. You may need to buy-in services such as SEO (search engine optimization), analytics software, content or creative support.
Time is also a cost factor. Look at what takes you the most time to do. Can you spend money to make these processes more efficient? You will also need to budget for paid advertising, particularly if you want to make an impact on Facebook, where organic reach has steadily declined over the past few years.
Take Action: Set a realistic budget and create a digital marketing strategy that works within it. Whatever you decide to spend money or time on, be sure to track how your content performs on social media relative to the amount of time and money you put against it. This is your social media return of investment (ROI) and it is closely linked to the goals you set at step #1.
#5 What Style and Tone of Voice Should You Use?
How do you wish to communicate on social media? Do you wish to be seen as authoritative, inspiring, friendly, approachable, or helpful? What values does your organization stand for? What unique qualities make you stand out? Answering these questions will help you develop your own identifiable style and tone of voice.
Take Action: Be human and relatable. Use social media to communicate the “who” and “why” of your practice. Authentic communication and engagement are highly valued traits online as much as offline. Look to build and strengthen trust and credibility in all your online interactions.
#6 What Kind of Content Should You Create?
If patients are searching for health information online you need to be creating and sharing what they are searching for. Tune into the health stories patients are reading about and be ready to provide context, counter misinformation and dispel myths with medically factual information. Keep in mind the content that works best on the social platforms you have chosen to use. Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest require high quality visuals to stand out. A blog on the other hand is better suited to long-form thought pieces. Think about how you can vary your message delivery to complement how people like to consume online information. Alternate between written content, video, infographics, and podcasts to match your audience’s preferences.
Take Action: Create content that truly resonates with your patients. Generally speaking, patients are less interested in your brand, your physicians or your technology, than they are in how you can help them solve their problems. Great content is not about you, but about what you can do for your patients to improve their quality of life.
#7 What Are Your Peers Doing Online?
You can learn a lot by observing what your peers are doing online. Which social platforms do they use? What type of content do they share? How often do they share it? How does their audience respond to them? How have they chosen to use images and videos?
Take Action: Compare your peers and competitors’ digital footprint against your own. What are they doing really well? How might you do it better? What aren’t they currently doing that you could do well?
#8 Who Will Be Responsible For Social Media?
You may wish to take full responsibility for maintaining your social media presence, but if you are giving the task to someone in your organization, or hiring outside help, you need to ensure they are the right person for the job.
Take Action: There are many different roles which make up a social media marketing job (for example content creation, e-mail marketing, social media management, etc.). Clearly define the roles and outline the responsibilities of this position for your ideal candidate.
#9 How Will You Monitor Social Media?
It’s important to monitor social media on a regular basis to keep on top of what people are saying about you, your organization, or topical health issues. From a marketing perspective, social media monitoring will help you determine the impact you are making, and if required, make adjustments to your strategy.
Take Action: One of the main keys to social media success is listening and responding in a timely way. Responding in real time strengthens public perception that your focus is strongly centered on patient satisfaction.
There are many free and paid monitoring tools which vary in scope and range across a number of sites, real-time or delayed searching, sophistication of analytics, flexibility of data presentation, integration with other applications, and cost. Which one you choose will depend on your budget and the level of analytics you wish to achieve. Even setting up a simple Google Alert (email updates of the latest relevant Google results based on your queries) with relevant keywords is a good place to start.
#10 How Will You Measure Results?
How do you know if all the time you’re investing in social media is paying off? A “spray and pray” approach will not help you determine your return on investment. By tying your social media goals to your metrics you will be able to track and measure your activities more strategically. A good way to think about ROI is to measure desired outcomes. For example, if your goal is to attract new patients, think about how you will track the conversion rate from social media.
Take Action: Go beyond vanity metrics such as likes, shares, or retweets to measure reach, audience engagement, sign-ups and conversions. Use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixels (a piece of code that placed on your website that allows you to track conversions from Facebook ads), and UTM parameters (short text codes added to a URL to track important data about website visitors and traffic sources) to track website traffic, conversions, and sign-ups from social media activity.
Conclusion
Social media is a dynamic environment in which new networks emerge, old networks evolve, and user bases continue to grow exponentially. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by this rapidly moving landscape and unsure of your progress. By building your social media strategy on a solid foundation you are less likely to become distracted by shiny new tools, and more likely to see results over the long-term. Your strategy starts with answering these ten questions; your answers will provide focus for your efforts, grow the reputation of your health experts, attract prospective patients, and ultimately improve the patient experience.
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