Throughout the years, health communicators have been challenged with how to use social networking in an effective and ethical manner. In recent years, social media has become a much more significant communication tool among healthcare professionals and organizations. Healthcare leaders in particular have used social media to connect with health professionals, engage patients and better communicate why certain decisions are being made for our community.
Here are best practices for social media tools for health marketing.
You still have to comply with HIPAA.
Always remember that to comply with HIPAA regulations, as well as medical ethics codes, you must protect the privacy of your patients at all times. Don’t share any information about patients, or information that could potentially identify patients, such as physical descriptions or mannerisms.
Give your organization a voice.
Healthcare companies can come across as a bit sterile, which is great when they’re talking about the cleanliness of the equipment but not so great when communicating with patients and the public. Here are some tips to liven your social media copy:
- Use social media as a way to interact and engage with your patients or customers.
- Show a bit of personality by choosing a specific tone and using language that provides levity.
- Humanize your organization by showing the faces behind the organization.
- Respond to all reviews and inquiries.
Educate your audience.
One interest most of your audience has in common is health and fitness, yet the human body is complex. Social media is a great way to inform individuals about health, reduce risky behavior, and help prevent or reduce the effects of disease and other health hazards.
Don’t solely create self-promotional posts when you can focus on ways that you can help your audience. Making your organization a rich resource establishes trust, which is great positioning once it’s time to find a healthcare provider.
Counteract misinformation.
There’s a lot of misinformation on the internet about health and fitness. In fact, a study in 2019 found that the top 50 viral news articles perpetuating fake health information earned more than 12 million shares, comments, and reactions. This free information age is largely a good thing, but it has led to serious issues with false narratives in healthcare, which can be extremely harmful. Think about ways in which your organization can combat this and use social media to positively impact patients and the public.
Share public health and crisis monitoring information.
According to Pew Research, social media outpaced print newspapers as a news source in mid-2016. In 2018, 20% of U.S. adults said they get their news from social media, making it a prime platform to distribute critical information. As a healthcare professional, you may find yourself in a unique position to provide information in times of breaking news or crisis. Just remember to keep the health and safety of your audience in mind.
When it does come time to promote your services, don’t be afraid to advertise.
Apparently, the average young American is projected to spend nearly 7 years on social media during their lifetime. It’s kind of a no brainer, then, that advertising online is a sustainable way to reach your audience now and in the future. On many platforms, sponsored content outpaces organic reach by a significant amount. On Facebook, for example, the organic reach of a post is just 6.4% of a page’s likes. This almost necessitates a pay-to-play strategy to expand your reach to new and existing audiences.
Your social media ads need to be relevant, well-written and accompanied by an image that will grab your audience’s attention. In addition, you must ensure that any content you produce and promote is HIPAA and FDA compliant (not to mention compliant with each platform’s terms of service regarding health content).
Take every opportunity to engage.
Instead of publishing into the void, ensure that you take the time to foster connections with those who engage with you. Responding to their comments, posting polls, and asking them open-ended questions related to your content are all ways to get social media users to stop and consider your content and your brand. A smaller engaged audience is much more valuable than a large unengaged audience. Fostering a relationship leads to trust, and as mentioned earlier, trust leads to business.
Share resources and support.
A section of your audience may very well include some of our community’s most vulnerable members or even individuals just looking for help. As you choose to produce content that serves a purpose for your audience and helps them, you might want to include promoting awareness for support and resources.
For example, your organization may have resources already in place that you can promote such as free or low-cost classes, seminars, or webinars around related topics. You can also consider boosting local charity organizations or support communities. As some individuals may be dealing with stress related to their health situation, having access to this information may be a source of relief and have a positive impact that they won’t forget.
Give your audience content they can’t get elsewhere.
The sky is the limit here: video tutorials for how to use at-home healthcare monitoring devices, product demos for equipment that you’re selling to hospitals, and infographics with tips and fitness exercises for wheelchair-bound patients are all great examples of helpful content.
No matter which industry segment your healthcare organization is in, whether it’s patient-facing or B2B, whether you’re a company selling state-of-the-art stethoscopes or a hospital performing cutting-edge surgeries, you have something unique to offer your audience. When it comes down to it, this is what will get you shares, likes, retweets and favorites.
Social media isn’t so scary once you get started. If it helps, monitor other healthcare companies on social for a month or two first, and see what they post. Make notes of what resonates with you and their audience. From there, you can build your own voice and start engaging with your audience on social media.
Diversify Your Channel Mix Beyond Facebook and Twitter
Our research found that hospitals post on Instagram less than once every two days, but publish to Twitter and Facebook at least twice per day on each channel. Based on posting frequency, Instagram and YouTube are as secondary channels, despite these audiences being more engaged.Hospitals post on Instagram less than once every two days, but publish to Twitter and Facebook at least twice per day on each channel.CLICK TO TWEET
In addition, thirty of the hospitals reviewed have Pinterest accounts — but only half of those pinned anything in the first three months of 2019. Northwestern Medicine and Norton Healthcare are the two hospitals actively using Pinterest to promote content from their websites.
Social Media Channel Breakdown for Hospitals: By Network and Engagement
Vary Your Content Mix to Optimize Audience Actions
More than half of the best-performing posts included photos of people. Twenty-seven of the best 50 posts clearly showed the faces of people or babies. The number of people in photos does not appear to impact engagement — 18 images had a single person, and 18 images had 2 or more people.
More than 50% of the top 50 most-engaging posts included photos of people.
Boost Top Performing Posts Organic Posts
While engagement is trending down across social media as a whole, brands are circumventing declining organic reach by spending money to ensure their content is getting seen. In fact, 5.5% of all hospital Facebook posts we analyzed are signaled as “likely-boosted”, according to Rival IQ. Of those likely-boosted Facebook posts, the engagement rate per post was 177% higher than the non-boosted posts.
Connect with Niche Communities
While Facebook Brand Pages continue to be used by patients and hospitals, some hospitals are beginning to leverage Facebook Groups and Messenger to create deeper connections with audiences.
In fact, 30% of the top U.S. hospitals are making Groups part of their Facebook strategy. Twelve of the 54 hospitals (22%) are currently or have recently used Groups as part of their Facebook outreach. Four hospitals are in the pre-launch or initial-launch phase of deploying Groups. 
Cleveland Clinic moderates many Groups connected to its main Brand Page.
Groups managed or moderated by hospital Facebook Pages are created for a variety of communities, including employees, graduates, general wellness and specific healthcare support (NICU families, transplant recipients, breastfeeding mothers etc.). More than one hospital told us specifically they do not manage Groups for patients due to HIPPA laws and patient privacy.
That is just a small portion of the best practices, stats and research from our 20-page report, “Beyond the Newsfeed”. I urge you to download the full report now. Questions? Feedback? Email us. We can’t wait to hear what you think about the research!
Connect the Dots
Every healthcare organization has a series of mission-critical communities, including patients, caregivers and employees, as well as local, state and national stakeholders and leaders. Each community has its own unique infrastructure and culture. The active support of these mission-critical communities is fundamental to every organization’s long-term success.
The relationship between these communities and healthcare organizations is shifting. Each person may belong to many communities. Each considers him- or herself unique and will resist being treated as part of an “audience.” To garner the loyalty of these people whose active support is vital, organizations must engage with them on their terms and with their agreement.
It’s important to recognize that these communities overlap. For example, in delivery systems, nurses and doctors can become patients. Patients may be donors. Caregivers may play community leadership roles. For managed care organizations, as well as for pharma and device manufacturers, patients may learn of organizations through their physicians or a wide array of patient-focused third-party organizations. Social media quickly exposes any disconnects in what these overlapping communities are hearing. Therefore, it’s crucial to have one cohesive social media strategy to protect against delivering mixed messages to mission-critical communities.
Have a Plan
Design a campaign to engage the hearts and minds of mission-critical communities. Develop a message platform that is the core theme of your organization’s mission. In a political context, it was compassionate conservatism for President Bush, hope and change for President Obama. For healthcare organizations, it can be trust, quality, convenience or mission focus.
Many organizations develop their message platforms using a simple two-by-two box of us versus them. How would we describe ourselves? How would we describe our competition or our mission-critical communities? How does our mission-critical community describe itself? And how does that mission-critical community view us? This approach is fundamental to developing a message platform for social media because ultimately it becomes the guidepost to engaging in conversation with mission-critical communities.
We recommend forming a multistakeholder governance approach to developing a social media strategy across various communities. When creating a message platform, make sure to include all parts of the organization. The goal is to engage people, not audiences. Therefore, it’s very important to understand what’s happening from the outside in among your communities.
Tell a Story
The best campaigns are stories. Social media users are engaged in a continuous conversation with their networks of self-identified friends and relationships. Most folks are just listening. Some are posting to the community, looking to share something they found. Others react to the conversation, commenting on a post or a tweet. But whether listening, talking or reacting, social media is a conversation, not a message. If organizations simply view social media as a place to deliver a message—a different version of a newspaper or magazine—they won’t last long.
The challenge is to enter the conversation and begin to shape it gradually and consistently with the values of the people on the other end in a way that mirrors the organization’s message platform. It’s critical to frame the conversation in an authentic voice that mirrors how people actually talk to one another.
Use the rule of thirds. A third of the time, talk across platforms about brand awareness. A third of the time, focus on the community’s interests. And last, a third of the time, engage individuals in that community on a more personal level.
Answer the Question
Answer any questions. Don’t simply send a link or direct people to another page. Make it easy for people to find a doctor, make an appointment or learn about a treatment.
Get in Shape
Engaging mission-critical communities in conversation is a new skill. Get teams in shape. There’s no substitute for practice. Anyone playing an active role in social media strategy needs to have a hands-on appreciation for social media. This is not something that can be delegated. Each person on the team needs to listen through these new channels.
You gain credibility when senior leadership is actively engaged. Research shows that 82% of consumers are more likely to trust a company whose CEO is on social media—yet only 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs are on social media.
Take a Risk
Making the leap from the old world of messages delivered to audiences to engaging in conversation is a big jump. But it’s critical to start. Because as risky as social media can be, the bigger risk is not to engage.
Trust the Team
As organizations develop or redesign their social media, they need to trust their digital natives. The most compelling conversation-based strategies will come from colleagues who grew up with podcasts, posts and tweets.
Organizations should recruit their social media teams from their current staff. Employees know their organization’s culture, products and services better than anyone. Every organization has a lot of social media users among its employees with a deep understanding of the new environment. But don’t give them the keys to the car without reminding them of traffic rules. Have explicit social media policies in place, and ensure they are well understood and widely disseminated.
Listen and Learn
A critical part of any state-of-the-art social media strategy is the combined art of listening and learning. It’s important that your strategy includes continuously scanning the environment. Best-in-class organizations have established formal listening posts. Listen to what people are saying to learn how to engage in the conversation—and, more importantly, determine needed changes in business processes.
In addition, watch what people are searching for on Google. That’s just one of the diagnostic tools that can give organizations a heads-up they can use to refine and reshape conversations. It’s good to get “likes” on homepages and retweets of tweets, but it may be more important to engage with communities on their terms and in their networks.
It’s also critical to consider the value of participation and outward engagement. Don’t make community members always come to you. Engage them in conversations about their choice of hospitals, health plans and products. Consider the experience of the Mayo Clinic. The average number of listeners to Mayo’s podcasts jumped by 76,000 in a single month after it started using social media.
It’s important to remember that listening alone isn’t enough. Organizations need to be prepared to change based on what they learn. For example, a hospital in the Midwest picked up repeated complaints being retweeted about long wait times. The administrator was able to not only identify the issue but to resolve it. On the other side of the coin, organizations need to find ways to reinforce the positive feedback they hear on social media.
Seize the Day
To be an authentic voice in the conversation, organizations must be present in the constant focus groups that are being conducted online. There’s no room for delay.
Consider the time the lights went out during the Super Bowl a few years ago. A team of people at Oreo reacted in the moment and tweeted out the message that “You can still dunk in the dark.” It immediately got 15,000 retweets and 20,000 likes on Facebook. That’s just one example of how an organization reacting quickly to a change in circumstance can bring its brand to the forefront.
UCLA Health’s live-tweeting and Vining an entire brain surgery while the patient played guitar is another great example. The event formed an incredibly positive impression on many levels. People came away perceiving UCLA Health as technology-savvy, committed to its artist patient and medically sophisticated.
The key thing to remember is that time is the enemy in social media. Just 18 minutes after an initial tweet, half the retweets are done. The half-life for Facebook is 30 minutes and for YouTube is 7.4 hours. Organizations that can’t act in the moment get lost in the conversation.
Guard Your Flank
Social media is not a risk-free environment. Don’t assume that because a tweet’s half-life is 7 minutes, it’s gone from the record after that. It’s there forever. Use the coffee shop test. Anything not appropriate to talk about in a conversation over a cup of coffee in the hospital cafeteria or corporate lunchroom shouldn’t be talked about online.
There will be things that can’t be anticipated—from data breaches to malicious comments. Have a tested crisis management plan in place, and retest it quarterly, so people don’t fall out of practice.
Revise, Revise, Revise
Social media plans are good for about three months before either technology or the conversations being monitored significantly change. Failing to adapt plans will mean conversations get stale, understanding of the prevalent technology becomes out of date and organizations lose the credibility they gained over time.
Conclusion
The increased use of social media within the healthcare industry has created a need for health organizations to become more social-media savvy. They are realizing that online tools and resources can be part of an overall healthcare campaign and will be an important element of the communications toolbox for years to come.