Healthcare: The Social Element
Social Media – for some, these two words bring the same level of groaning and eye-rolling as a couple of other words headlining most conversations these days: healthcare reform. Whether you love social media, hate it, or are apathetic towards it, you have to admit the social media movement is radically changing the way business is done, and the way in which organizations operate. On the same note, most would agree that today’s healthcare system is broken, and some level of reform is needed.
So is social media the answer, the silver bullet that will solve all of our problems? Of course not. But maybe, just maybe, if we were to implement a few strategic social initiatives into our healthcare system, we might be better off for it. In this article we’ll look at some of the problems facing our healthcare system today and how social media strategies can help solve those issues.
A Two-Way Street
Gary Vaynerchuk – a successful entrepreneur and self-proclaimed “social media sommelier” – doesn’t like the term social media, and I tend to agree with him. According to Vaynerchuk, social media isn’t just a new form of media, it’s the new form of media. And certainly, while social media hasn’t replaced other foundational forms of media such as television or print, no one can argue that the paradigm is changing.
Think of this change as a street. What once was a one-way conversation between brands and consumers has now become a two-way dialogue – in the same way that a one-way street is widened and made into a thoroughfare. It’s not enough to simply “put” information out there, like most businesses have done for years. Now businesses must continue to offer relevant content that consumers care about in a way that keeps those consumers coming back for more. The whole “social” side of media simply means that brands are no longer completely in control of what’s being said about them – therefore it’s more important than ever to monitor and maintain your brand identity, while also interacting with your user-base.
A Needy Healthcare System
The healthcare industry, in large part, has been sheltered from dramatic shifts in the market. Healthcare providers have only recently begun to embrace technology that has been around for a while – for example, electronic medical records – and providers are now starting to utilize best practices on the internet. It’s no wonder then that the majority of healthcare providers aren’t embracing social media strategies – but instead of this being a slam on the healthcare industry, I prefer to look at it as an opportunity for savvy companies to capture a very valuable position.
I believe there are three primary elements to an effective social media strategy, and we’ll use these to outline three primary issues in the healthcare industry. I call these elements the “Three C’s of Social Media”.
1. Care
The backbone of any social media strategy has to be care – care for your customers, users, employees, and listeners. In the healthcare industry, it’s patients and staff. Social media platforms allow organizations to extend, and at times literally brand, care. Never before have organizations had the ability to interact with their user-base in real time with virtually no boundaries. Instead of a phone call or email. Now a conversation can start with a Tweet, a chat, a DM, or a Skype.
For a healthcare provider this is revolutionary. Patient care can literally be redefined – it doesn’t have to take place within the four walls of an office, an exam room, or on an operating table. Patient care can be distributed 360 degrees, 24hrs a day, 7 days a week. One of the major issues in healthcare today is a lack of care – patients wait for hours in a waiting room, they fill out mountains of paper work, they see a doctor for 15 seconds, and the only thing they walk away with is a prescription.
There is a huge opportunity to leverage the power of social media to provide a new level of care to patients. Here are just a couple of general ideas for how this might work:
- Better Information – We don’t need another WebMD. Patients don’t need more information, they need optimized information. What if you could target information to patients based on their medical needs or condition. What if they didn’t have to search through pages and pages of irrelevant medical jargon, but could simply open an email, access a profile, or receive a link to relevant information tailored to them? This is a way to extend care by providing better information, not simply more information.
- Personal Touch – The best way care can be extended is through a personal touch. But the beauty of today’s world is that a personal touch doesn’t necessarily need to be in person. At times patients can feel like they are being cycled through a system, particularly in large healthcare networks. You could have a huge impact on individual patients just by extending a personal touch throughout the process. This can be done through a patient portal, individual profiles, video channels, etc. The goal is to let patients know they you are listening, and that you are interacting.
2. Community
As human beings we were designed to live in community. No one likes being or feeling isolated. Additionally, we typically trust and believe in “people like us”. It’s hard to relate to individuals who aren’t in our sphere of reference. This is one of the reasons why Amazon puts so much emphasis on its customer reviews, and why product review websites are so popular – because consumers feel comfortable making decisions when “people like them” have made similar decisions.
There is a direct correlation to healthcare. Patients can relate to others with similar conditions, injuries, or symptoms. Patients enjoy interacting with others who are in a similar life state. Now certainly there is a difference between buying a vacuum and undergoing a serious medical procedure – privacy laws and other roadblocks are an important factor to consider, but nevertheless the principle can and should still be implemented.
Here are a couple of ideas for how leveraging the power of social media to build community might work:
- Patient / Staff Portal – Utilizing technology and best practices on the web, healthcare providers could create a portal where incoming and current patients could maintain a profile and receive relevant information, resources, and updates throughout their experience. Additionally, communities don’t just have to be for customers – a staff portal could provide the same level of care and positive experience for employees and the sharing of information and resources could also be optimized.
- Support Groups – The Mayo Clinic has implemented this strategy on their website and have met with large success. Patients can interact with other individuals with similar experiences, and care can be delivered through a variety of means. This could be especially powerful in certain situations such as terminal illness, cancer, or pediatric care – families could bond with other families, and individuals with other individuals to help comfort and cope.
3. Conversation
Finally, a healthcare provider is, after all, a business. In addition to providing care and building community with your patients, it’s also important to manage a consistent conversation about your brand to potential patients and to the general public. Remember we talked about the two-way street before, and this is a practical application of that principle. Users want to dialogue and interact, and are searching for trust, openness and honesty.
Furthermore, users will talk about you with or without your help. This is perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of the social media movement. After a recent re-design of their orange juice packaging, Tropicana Foods experienced a large amount of negative feedback on Twitter and other platforms. As a result, Tropicana went back to their old packaging designs because of popular opinion. There are also many stories about the same thing happening to other brands, who were unfortunately not listening – and as a result, their brand image was significantly hurt in the eyes of their customers.
It’s important to not only build a conversation around your organization, but to also monitor and manage the conversation coming from others. Even if the conversation is negative, an organization that is actively interacting with its users will produce a stronger brand image than if it alternatively doesn’t interact.
Here are a couple of ways the healthcare industry can build and manage conversation:
- Build a Social Media System – A social media system is the combined media platforms for a brand. This could be a Twitter profile (or several), a Facebook page, a YouTube channel (to present patient testimonials, announcements, etc), various blogs, and even a back-end patient portal. All of these platforms should be connected, and should point to a central hub – most likely the organization’s main website. The goal is to build a system made up of many platforms through which the key messages can be communicated.
- Develop Conversation Champions – In addition to building a system for “pushing” information out to your user-base, you must also monitor the conversation going on within this user-base. An effective initiative is to place individuals in key positions to monitor the dialogue and interact with user on an ongoing basis. These individuals would “champion” the core messages and goals of the healthcare company and would interact with users on social platforms in this way. Additionally these individuals could also interact with new and current patients through the patient portal as they go through a healthcare system.
Social Media Matters
Social Media isn’t the end-all-be-all for the healthcare industry, or any business. Just because you employ social media strategies doesn’t mean you’ll be successful. The key is defining who your audience is (who you want to reach, and who you want to interact with), and what your objectives are with each audience.
The bottom line is every organization no matter how large or small needs to connect with their user-base. There is no excuse to have a one-sided communications strategy anymore. The day is here where your customers and potential customers are ready to interact with you and your brand – the question is will you connect with them?
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