Written by Susan Solomon, Vice President, Marketing and Communications, St. Joseph Health

Over the years, social media has been described as everything from a marketing imperative to a shiny object with no proven return. The truth is, social media has the potential to be both. But like every other media format employed by marketers, it must be backed by a clear strategy for its usage and a strong methodology for measuring its effectiveness.

First, let’s talk strategy. Arthur Sturm, Jr., president of SRK, a Chicago-based healthcare consulting firm, brings tremendous clarity to healthcare marketing when he divides all activities into a four-slice strategic pie: growth, loyalty, branding and physician engagement. To some extent, social media can be a critical tool contributing to each of these elements of an effective marketing strategy.

Now let’s turn to the magic word — effective. One of the biggest questions I get about using social media is, “How do I know it’s effective?” The good news is there are thousands of metrics available to measure almost every aspect of social media. But it’s also tricky because all those measurements could send you tumbling deep into a rabbit hole. That’s why you need to marry the right strategy with the right metric. Here are some examples.

Social media and market growth
Attracting new customers through social media can be both interesting and effective. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter can be deployed to drive users to a landing page where they can sign up for a newsletter, reserve a spot at an event or some other interaction that will secure their contact information or result in an appointment. For our breast health campaign at St. Joseph Health, we included posts on our Facebook timeline that directed women to a landing page for securing a mammogram appointment. Other quick tactics include posting a QR code on Facebook or a blog that drives users to sign up for a compelling offer.

Metrics: Use Google Analytics tools to track referrals you’re getting from social media sites to your landing page. You can track the effectiveness of your social media program this way and, even better, if users are signing up for a service like a mammogram, you have a strong indication of your social media effort’s conversion power.

Building fans through social media loyalty tactics
Social media is perfect for interacting with your publics on a regular basis; over time, this kind of interaction builds loyalty. In order to be effective, you have to reward your fans and make the proposal interesting. Sherman Health in Illinois built strong fans by rewarding men who posted Facebook pictures of the mustaches they grew in support of prostate cancer awareness.

Of course, the reward does not have to be an actual prize. It can be an exclusive invitation to a seminar. Or, you can often build loyalty just by offering something as valuable as knowledge that can’t be accessed elsewhere.

Metrics: Easy loyalty measurements include number of comments and interactions, sign ups on social media sites, and the number of friends and followers. Individually, none of these items are enough to indicate lifetime loyalty, but looking at them collectively provides insights into where you can find your most loyal customers and the effectiveness of your efforts.

The number of people who are willing to be viral messengers for your organization is perhaps the most telling indication of loyalty. Users who re-tweet or share posts are not only showing their support, but also being very cost-effective brand managers (which leads to the next section).

Social media and reputation management
Social media can do wonders or extensive damage to a brand’s reputation. There are several basic steps to ensuring you remain on the “wondrous” side of the equation. For starters, make sure you have a strong, consistent voice and provide meaningful content that is not boastful or one-sided. Too often, healthcare organizations believe they can use social media to post self-congratulatory press releases. You can do that every once in a while, but take a look at the Facebook content generated by Boston Children’s Hospital, which posts pieces about patients, blogs from physicians and pediatric health tips. In fact, the exchange of comments is so upbeat, Boston Children’s makes use of the new Facebook tool that allows users to post recommendations for their programs or services.

Metrics: First, look at the comments. Are people generating positive comments on social media, especially blogs?

Then, explore ratings such as PeerIndex or Klout which measure your effectiveness in directing opinion on social media. Klout primarily uses Twitter and Facebook along with over 35 different variables to determine your score, which is an integration of true reach (extent of your audience, exclusive of spam accounts), amplification probability (your audience’s response to your messaging) and network influence (your engagement with social media influencers).

Social media and physician engagement
Just a few years ago, very few marketers would have proposed using social media to engage with physicians. However, a May 2011 report from Manhattan Research shows 81 percent of physicians use smart phones, and according to an August 2011 survey by QuantiaMD, nearly 90 percent of physicians reported that they used at least one social media site personally. At St. Joseph Health, we’ve been transitioning away from the paper medical staff bulletin for communicating with doctors and have created a Smartphone “app” that provides updates from the health system as well as links to databases often used by our medical staff. Some hospitals have even started recruiting physicians via social media with some success.

Metrics: To measure social media’s success in physician engagement, track response to physician-focused campaigns (recruitment efforts, for example), usage of physician-oriented communications tools (St. Joseph assiduously tracks App usage) and physician comments. It’s also a good idea to establish a user group of tech-inclined physicians who can offer valuable suggestions for continual improvement.

Although some healthcare organizations have chosen to slowly embrace social media, claiming, “There is no clear way to measure its effectiveness,” “It doesn’t fit our target audience” or “It’s not appropriate for healthcare,” these arguments are rapidly losing steam. Social media is as much a part of the healthcare marketer’s toolbox as traditional media. And there is little doubt it will overshadow many traditional tactics in the very near future.

Susan Solomon is vice president of marketing and public relations for St. Joseph Health, a 14-hospital health system serving California, West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. She has worked in healthcare marketing for more than 20 years, teaches at three Southern California universities and is a Fulbright scholar.

Congratulations to Dr. Anthony DeSalvo and the staff of OBGYN Associates of Warren for their use of social media to connect with their patients. www.warren-obgyn.com

Erik Sass, Sep 13, 2011 06:28 PM (The Social Graf)

Healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, administrators and I.T. managers for hospitals, are using social media for both personal and professional purposes, according to a survey carried out in April and May of this year by Frost & Sullivan in conjunction with QuantiaMD and the Institute for Health Technology Transformation. The new study based on the survey confirms social media’s applicability to the healthcare industry, but also highlights major obstacles to further adoption, including privacy, liability, and regulatory concerns.

(For the purposes of the survey, social media was defined as “not only social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, but also professional and patient networking communities specific to the medical field, blogs and sites such as YouTube”).

Overall 84% of respondents said they use social media for personal purposes, and a remarkable 75% said they use it for professional purposes within their institutions; 68% reported using it for both purposes. Over 65% of physicians said they use social media in some form for professional purposes, with much of this activity is taking place on online physician communities, used by 28% of physicians. Docs also say they think online patient communities are beneficial, especially for people with chronic illnesses, cancer, or rare disease — but warn that there is potential for spreading misinformation as well

Looking ahead, Frost & Sullivan identified several key areas of social media opportunity for the healthcare industry. One interesting suggestion: hospitals and other healthcare institutions (including, presumably, insurance companies and the like) can create and monitor social communities that strengthen the institution’s reputation, educate patients about healthcare options, and also allow close tracking of patient feedback. On that note, some of the most frequently-cited goals were marketing, building brand awareness, and business development.

Previously I wrote about an article in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Raina M. Merchant, an emergency physician and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Pearlman School of Medicine, titled “Integrating Social Media into Emergency-Preparedness Efforts,” in which Merchant notes the role played by social media for disseminating public health-related information in a variety of disaster or emergency situations. During the 2009 H1N1 flu epidemic, the Department of Health and Human Services hosted a “Mommycast” on YouTube (which could also be downloaded as an iTunes video podcast) which reached on million viewers with information about vaccinations. In Haiti, social media helped track a dangerous outbreak of cholera following the 2010 earthquake, which left some of the island nation’s water supply contaminated. Merchant also noted that waiting times for emergency rooms and clinics are already being publicized in some parts of the U.S. through mobile-phone applications, billboard RSS feeds, or hospital tweets.

I also wrote about a presentation to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta by Dr. Caitlin Reed of the LA County Department of Public Health, examining the role of social media in tracking an outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease which was traced back to the Playboy Mansion. Social media played a role almost from the beginning of the outbreak, with a “cluster of respiratory illness reported by attendees via social media.” Social media was also central to the follow-up, allowing the LACDPH to send an online survey to all 715 conference attendees.

There’s a lot of chatter about how public policy can influence doctors’ decisions about which new patients to see and which to turn away.

One big question: Does the squeeze on Medicare that has limited the program’s pay increases to doctors lead them to see fewer of those patients?

Some researchers decided to look at recent data for clues. And they found a slight drop — a little less than 3 percent in the proportion of doctors taking new Medicare patients between 2005 and 2008.

But that drop, which still left 93 percent of docs taking new Medicare patients, wasn’t much compared with the hit for patients with typical private insurance.

For those people, there was a 5.5 percentage point drop, leaving about 88 percent of physicians who would add them as new patients.

The greater decline in doctors accepting private insurance was “unexpected,” the researchers write in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, where the findings appear.

What’s going on? I asked lead author Dr. Tara Bishop, an internist and assistant professor of public health at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. She said there are a couple of possible reasons. Some doctors may be bucking the administrative hassles of private insurance, she said.

Medicare may not always pay top dollar, but it’s pretty reliable. And, she said, Medicare is still the largest payer, so it’s hard for doctors not to accept those patients.

For her part, Bishop sees patients with all kinds of insurance. But she said the findings are worrisome. “If these trends continue we may have problems getting care to patients in the ambulatory setting,” she said. “It’s possible patients might have health insurance but not be able to see a doctor.” [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio] by Scott Hensley June 27, 2011

Pediatricians Recommend A Media Diet For Kids To Fight Obesity
by Scott Hensley
- June 27, 2011

A quick stroll around the mall is all the reminder you need that an epidemic of childhood obesity is all around us. And the media, defined very broadly, is a big part of the big problem, according to a leading group of pediatricians. Kids don’t burn many calories sitting and watching TV or messing around on the computer or game console.

So the American Academy of Pediatrics is prescribing some changes to help kids stave off excess weight in a policy statement just published in the journal Pediatrics.

First, at each well-child visit, pediatricians should ask these two questions:
How much time are you spending in front of a screen each day?
Is there a TV or device with an Internet connection in your bedroom?
The answers can help guide a recommendation for health, including more active pursuits. Kids, the pediatricians say, shouldn’t spend more than 2 hours a day plopped down in front of the computer, TV or other glowing device. The littlest kids — those 2 and under — shouldn’t watch any TV at all.

A little extra time staring at a screen can add up to big weight gains before you know it. It’s also the case, the pediatricians say, that consuming media can mean consuming advertising messages for junky foods, another factor in the weight-gain formula. So another part of the prescription is neutralizing those ads. Parents should talk to kids about bad food ads and good nutritional habits.
And pediatricians should get active themselves when it comes to media policy, the policy statement says:
Ask Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission to implement a ban on junk-food advertising during programing that is viewed predominantly by young children.

Among the other things families can do to curb childhood obesity: eat meals together more regularly and make sure everyone gets enough sleep. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

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