As I see it we are too worried about numbers. Don't get me wrong numbers are important (and I will talk more about that in a minute), but being accessible is priority one.

Too many organizations want the most followers, friends, fans, etc... and are not focused on monitoring and content creation. The most important reason to be involved in social media is to connect with consumers of your brand. 

In a poll on Twitter I asked:

"What is the best use of Social Media in Hospitals?"

Here are the results (vote now):

Most Hospitals who use social media do a good job of automating news. We have done this for years with press releases and the fax button that sent our "news" to all relevant sources. The difference now is that the sources have changed, just as content creation has changed.

So numbers are important but the numbers I would encourage you to look at and measure are around interaction and use of content. Also use tools like Google Alerts, Google Insights, Facebook Insights, and Twitter search to figure out where the conversations are in your target areas and start listening/engaging/creating content for those audiences.

Thoughts?

- Reed

Some time back I posted a simple TwtPoll on my Twitter account asking:

"As a patient or family member what hospital representative do you want to see Tweets from most?"

Here are the results:

1. Show this data to your CEO and other senior staff members, and help educate them on why this is such an important communication medium.
2. Help them understand no one wants to hear from Marketing, and that you need to involve clinical staff.
3. Put together a list of potential content creators and then educate them on Twitter/social media.
4. After you have senior level buy-off and you have educated your staff of Tweeters use their input to develop an educational calendar.
5. Work your plan!

Become a project manager.

• You will still need to monitor the brand and on Twitter there are many tools to do this.
• Make sure you keep your content/editorial calendar in front of you and keep on your content creators to stay active.
• When questions and responses come in make sure they are answered/followed on in a timely fashion.
• Measure... show results of interactions to senior leaders and close the loop on why this was so important.

Just a few quick thoughts this morning... what advice would you offer on using Twitter?

- Reed

A lot has been made about Apple and how they handled "antenagate 2010." If you followed along you know the issues with the iPhone 4 and signal strength that comes from holding the phone a certain way. All of this can be fixed by using a case, etc, etc...

In the course of this I noticed a Business Week article that referenced posts by The iPhone Guru, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and CrunchGear telling readers to use a Livestrong yellow band as a fix.

So here is where Apple should have stepped in...

1. Apple should have reached out to Livestrong and collaborated on a yellow Apple Bumper Case with Livestrong branding like the bracelets.
2. Apple then should have announced they would give out (like they did with their current cases) free Livestrong Yellow Bumper Cases (One per customer, purchase extras).
3. For each one given away or sold a dollar (just like the bracelets) would go to Livestrong's global fight on cancer.

This would have accomplished two things...

1. Apple would have created a large sum of money for the cancer fight.
2. Apple would have had a much different story told in the media.

Apple is not use to having to deal with these types of scenarios but in this case (no pun intended) they had a great opportunity to make a positive out of a negative... I still think a Livestrong bumper case from Apple would be a great product regardless.

Click here to learn more about Livestrong and their mission

- Reed

[image source: Livestrong]

I was recently watching my 3 year old use my iPad. It was very interesting to see how he simply used it. No questions, no looking for the keyboard or mouse, just drawing, and playing games. Not once did he stop and ask...

"Hey where do I insert the DVD/CD" or "how do I right click?"

When I was his age there was really no such thing as a personal computer. And when I was in high school and even into college if you said 'cell phone' someone would hand you a bag.

In Sir Ken Robinson's Ted talk from a few years back he makes a good point that we are trying to educate kids now based on what we think the future will be. Scary thought...

So I am asking...

In the world of healthcare marketing, are we sticking our head in the sand? Are we looking far enough into the future to see what we need to start exploring? Right now I would argue we spend too much time worrying about...

• Yellow page advertising rather than looking at how to maximize our presence on Yelp.
• Print Advertising in a local publication rather thank looking at their new mobile application and how the hospital can benefit.
• Traditional outdoor branding rather than using that space in a new text campaign.
• The copy on our print ad instead of making sure our Facebook URL is included.

This is going to sound like a broken record but it is simply about community. We have to alter the way we communicate from tell everyone about us to asking everyone about us then having conversations.

Back to the iPad... Kids now will grow up and never know what it is like to not see/have iPads... computers have and are continuing to become more personal shouldn't marketing?

Thoughts?

-Reed

[image source: Flickr: blakespot]

I have been reading a bit about Google's latest update to their search algorithm. Google constantly changes the way search works to avoid sites "gaming" the system and to try and highlight relevant content.

With that said their latest update, named "May Day," has mostly flown under the radar but here are my take-a-ways:

• Google is looking for incoming links to direct visitors to specific content within the site not just the home page. This will continue to promote those who garner traffic organically vs. paid.
• The more traffic is spread across the site the better... the more entry points to the site vs everyone hitting the home page as their point of entry Google sees as relevant.

What does this mean to hospitals?... Blog more...

The more content that is created the better. We can do this with Blogs and news releases. Taking the specific URLs where this content resides and replicating it to Facebook, Twitter, etc... will push more incoming links out onto the net that will in turn create more inbound links to specific pages on the site not just the home page.

We do this with the new releases now but think how we can start blogging more on each facilities specific blog... A blog can be a picture and caption, video, a bulleted list, a response to a national article, etc... the goal is new content on a consistent basis. Ideas:

• Employee of the Month
• Employee Awards or Certifications
• Picture from Community Event
• Facility Event Picture with Caption
• New Employee Orientation Picture/Blurb
• MD response on national story/article
• Picture and caption from seminar/class with info on the next one
• A list of tips on a topic
• Expert article from clinical staff

So in the end it seems simple right? Create GOOD content on a regular basis... 

Believe me I am not an SEO expert so I am interested in others thoughts on the subject...

- Reed

~ Policy, Purpose, People, and Plan ~

Today I am wrapping up my four part series on the ‘4 P’s of Social Media.’ You can read the first three here: - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 -

If you have taken the time to develop your internal and external policy, outlined your purpose for using these tools and identified/educated your content creators, it is now time to put all that together in creating your Plan.

There are three steps, as I see it, to a social media plan... 

...Listen, Engage, Measure...

Listen

Before you start inserting yourself into the world of tweets, status updates, and comments listen to what is going on. See who is talking about your brand and it’s leaders. There are a couple of ways to do this:

• Google Alerts - Probably the best free way to monitor keyword mentions about your hospital and it’s leaders
• Radian6 - A paid solution that is very, very robust. If you go this route I recommend you dedicate someone as a listening expert. This tool is very complex and to gain the benefit it produces someone needs to become and expert with it uses.
• Update Listings - Visit sites like Yelp, Google Places, Yahoo Local, etc... See what listings/comments are out there for your brand and make sure they are correct. I have seen many hospital listings that have the women’s services number as the main number and then negative comments about the number being wrong. Dive in and learn how to correct and “own” the listings on these platforms (More on this will come in a future blog post).

Engage

Now that you have an idea of what is being said about your brand feel free to start contributing. Figure our who the influencers are in your space and connect with them, read their blogs, and comment. This will help build your credibility around a topic. Once you have gained some equity then you can start to introduce your two cents.

Do some research on the topic you want to connect on. If you have a well know heart program and want to talk about Atrial Fibrillation do some searches and see what is being talked about. In one quick search on A-Fib I found that the Twitter hashtag #afib is an active community.

In the end you may not need to create a community but simply leverage the communities that have been built. Look for these based on topic and geography.

Measure

After listening and engaging be sure to take the time to measure you successes. Over time you will learn what goals to set but in the beginning identify some key metrics to watch so you will know what engagement strategies worked and which ones did not.

It is fair it want to track total numbers of fans, followers, etc... But I lean more to tracking interactions. How many comments, likes, re-tweets, and direct messages did you receive over a defined period? It is easy to grow the total number but the key is growing the total number with people who are in your target market not residents of Bulgaria.

Most platforms have some analytics built so start there and as your program grows then you can justify the cost of a platform like Radian6 and start identifying key influencers and sentiment of mentions.

I hope this series has been useful. I have enjoyed thinking though each of these steps and it has allowed me to identify some areas to touch on in upcoming post. I would love to hear your thoughts.

-Reed

Social Marketing Mix - the Four P's of Social Media by Reed Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The iPad (you know: "A magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price...") is becoming more and more part of my daily work flow. I find myself not needing my laptop as much while on the go. The iPad has allowed me to have access (through many of these apps) to so much more information on the fly than before. I am sure over the next six months we will see apps continue to mature on the iPad and make the device even more useful. But for now here are my 9 iPad Apps I use everyday.

SkyGrid (free)- Great news app for the way I like to read what is happening. Simple interface that includes social integration.

ESV Bible HD (free) - I have downloaded and tried many Bible applications and this is one of my favorite. I love the way the navigation is set and the ability to search, bookmark, notate, and share verses via email or Twitter.

Evernote (free) - Many have written about the advantage and usefulness of Evernote so I wont go on and on, but this is my go to application for meeting notes and keeping track of action items that come from those meetings. 

Reeder ($4.99) - So far this is the best RSS reader I have found for the iPad. I like the UI and the ability to share post socially, email a link or save the post for later. Plus I like the way they spell their name!

Osfoora HD ($3.99) - I have tried probably all the Twitter apps for the iPad and I just have not gotten all that excited about any of them. Osforra HD is probably the closest to what I like. The UI is very clean, it has threaded discussions for the DMs, and feels feature rich. Everyone has their favorite I am sure but this one just works the way I feel it should.

iWork for iPad ($9.99/ea) - I have not downloaded Numbers but do use Keynote and Pages. As you would imagine these are very well done and will handle 95% of what you need on the go. I am not sure I would create many documents from Pages but it is great to edit and adjust on the go. Keynote is surprisingly easy to use on the iPad and if I was in a pinch I could see myself creating a few quick slides.

GoodReader ($0.99) - Good app for keeping documents your iPad. Very hand in opening up email attachments at which point it will keep the attachment in GoodReader. The best part is being able to access files from services like: Google Docs, Dropbox, box.net, iDisk, or even a simple FTP server.

Dropbox (free) - while GoodReader is very helpful Dropbox is more of a service, like Evernote, that allows me to have a bulk of documents live on all my platforms. I keep commonly used files in Dropbox so they sync and are ready to access from my iMac, Macbook Pro, iPhone, or iPad. Very useful. 

So there you have it... 9 applications I use daily on my iPad. What others do you suggest?

-Reed

(image credit: Flickr : bfishadow)

~ Policy, Purpose, People, and Plan ~

In part one of the series I talked about the first ‘P’ - Policy. Developing a strong internal and external policy sets forth the ground work and foundation for what is to come. In part two I talked about the second ‘P’ - Purpose. Just like any other medium it is important to understand and know your purpose for using these technologies. Sounds logical but many skip this step.

Today in part three I am going to cover the third ‘P’ - People

This is your most important resource. When looking at how you will Tweet, Post, Capture, etc... be sure to review what you already have in place. In your organization you have hundred, sometimes thousands, of content creators. The goal is figuring how to capitalize.

Identify

Review the organizational chart of the hospital and look at who within your organization people will want to hear from. Much of this depends on the audience, but for consumers I will give you a hint ... it is not anyone with marketing or communications in their title!

Here is a basic rule of thumb of who audiences want to hear from:

• consumers - clinical staff, hospital leadership occasionally
• physicians - other physicians, hospital leaders, clinical staff
• employees - hospital leaders, each other

Once you identify who within your organization people want to hear from look at what content they are currently creating. Much of your clinical staff probably writes articles for industry publications and/or maybe you have a dietician that is regularly on the local news talking about diet tips.

After you know who needs to create content and what they are currently creating make a spreadsheet so you can see at a glance not only who and what but frequency and where.

This will help you visualize what holes need to be filled.

Educate

So you have identified who within your organization is currently creating content and what holes you still need filled. Now it is time to take those you have recruited and convinced to be “experts” and educate them on what you need.

• Variety - I would argue that variety is one of the most important things when creating content. Make sure when you say “blog post” they don’t hear “2500 word dissertation on (fill in topic here).” Make sure they understand that a blog post could be a couple of pictures with captions, a bulleted list, a response to a national article, etc...
• Guidelines - Make up a list of guide lines in the form of a pdf document you can hand or email any of your content creators. This will help them understand the importance of a creative title, keywords, etc...

(View my blogging guidelines :: I created this one from looking at others around the web, so feel free to use it as you please)

Monitor

At first all your content creators are new. Be very hands on and even review all content prior to publishing. Check against your guidelines so you can maximize each post. A couple of ideas to help in the process:

• Use a calendar so you have an accurate visualization of what your upcoming posts look like. This will help avoid redundancy and scrambling last minute.
• Make sure you take advantage of tying your networks together so you maximize your content. (i.e. Post on Blog flows to Facebook which is automatically Tweeted out)
• Have the content creators help identify keywords/phrases.
• Monitor: mentions, likes, comments, etc... then gage why one received more than others. Was it content, time it was posted, etc...

Doing all these things will help you create great content. In the end that is what will make your efforts successful. Consumers will return if the content is good.

Next time I will wrap up with the fourth ‘P’ - Plan.

I am interested to hear your thoughts and tips I may have missed

- Reed

Social Marketing Mix - the Four P's of Social Media by Reed Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A quick review: Many of use who spent time in business school learned the “4 P’s of Marketing.” In this four part series I am covering what I call the “4 P’s of Social Media.”

~ Policy, Purpose, People, and Plan ~

In part one of this series I talked a bit about Policy, the first ‘P’, and things to keep in mind as you develop and roll out your social media policy and terms of use.

Today in part two will will look at the second ‘P’ - Purpose.

So many hospitals seem to launch their social media presence without a strategy, or understanding of how this channel fits into their overall communication plan. I am the first to say much of this can not be understood unless you jump in and play around, but be sure you know your end goal.

Be sure to ask yourself... Why? Why do we want to launch this Twitter/Facebook/YouTube/Flickr account?

1. Education - The first reason maybe simply to educate yourself. It is important to know how these platforms work so you can effectively add these mediums to existing marketing and communication efforts.
   1. A good resource for educating yourself on each of these platforms is Lee Aase’s Social Media University Global. Lee has done a great job creating a simple curriculum type learning environment for free.
   2. For Twitter specifically check out: Twitter 101 for Business.
   3. Finally be sure to check out YouTube for videos on how to use specific features of all these technologies.
2. Monitor - The second reason would be for brand monitoring. Even if you are unsure of how you plan to use these channels to market, it is important to be visible in the space and see what others are saying about you.
   1. A simple way to do this is by using Google Alerts. Be sure to monitor uses of all your brand names, the CEO’s name, board members, key physicians, etc...
   2. Twitter has great search functionality so take advantage of Twitter’s search page to monitor as well.
   3. In addition their are many paid search tools that are very robust. Make sure you exhaust the free channels first to better understand what you need to monitor and where the gaps are.
3. Connect Internally - Many of these avenues (read: Facebook) are places your employees spend a great deal of time. Having a presence on these platforms allows you one more communication channel.
   1. Use Facebook to create a private group for current employees. This will give them an avenue to connect with senior leaders in a new way.
   2. Use a service like FormSpring to encourage questions and dialogue.

Depending on your audience you many have different reasons for using each of these platforms. Make sure you think through how they connect with your traditional marketing/communication efforts and that you can articulate why you are using/rolling out each the way you are.

I look forward to your feedback on Purpose. In part three I will share my thoughts on People.

- Reed

Social Marketing Mix - the Four P's of Social Media by Reed Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.