Archive for the ‘Benchmarking’ Category

Curling for Social Media

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Over the last week and a half during the Vancouver Olympics, several of my colleagues here at Greystone and I have been held hostage during our lunch hour watching the unique and exciting sport of curling. If you’ve never watched curling, the sport is very similar to shuffleboard on ice, but with a few interesting wrinkles. A thrower from each team alternates sliding cement “rocks” down the ice, as two people with brooms follow along and try to steer it to the correct place by vigorously sweeping. Teams battle back and forth trying to be the closest to the center, knocking each others’ rocks out of the way in the process. With sliding, screaming, sweeping, and smashing, curling simply makes for great theater.

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The Sky was Falling

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

At the height of last year’s financial struggles, Greystone.Net sent out a survey to its current and former customers about their budget outlook for the coming year. We certainly struck a chord with our hospital and health system audience, who at the time were wondering if the sky truly was falling. We received a tremendous response, with more than 170 hospitals or health systems submitting a survey. The study yielded some interesting findings. The biggest revelation was that despite 40 percent of hospitals/health systems experiencing some sort of budget cut, 68 percent said funding is stable or increasing for the Web. Based on the findings, Greystone.Net cut back on some of its events that require travel. We also added a new category to our annual Best in Class awards for successful Web initiatives amidst severe budget constraints.

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More on Social Media results

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Our recent study on social media has generated a lot of buzz from healthcare bloggers. The high level of response is really encouraging, and Greystone.Net will continue to do this type of research in the future. There seems to be a tremendous demand from healthcare marketers for information on current industry topics.

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New Numbers on Social Media

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

According to our just released research, 9 in 10 hospitals or health systems are currently involved to some degree with Social Media. Other key results from the study:

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The person behind that user session

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Recently, Greystone.Net was helping a client hospital with a business plan for its Web site. As part of the arrangement, we designed, launched and managed a web satisfaction study for them. This is something that we are doing more and more these days, as organizations seek to add customer input into their redesign efforts. My background is in research, so I am usually heavily involved with these engagements.

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Help! My brain is full.

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

This was an extremely common refrain at the 13th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference. I can’t tell you how many times I heard some version of this expression during conversations in the hallways or during concurrent sessions. With so many first-time Conference attendees this year (in fact, this was our best-attended conference ever!), I am not sure how many were prepared for three days full of case studies by peers, speeches by industry visionaries, and networking with some of the most successful hospital Web site managers in the country.

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A Tale of Two Web Sites

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Dickens penned those immortal words a century and a half ago, comparing the cities of London and Paris. These days, things are seldom that cut and dry – especially when it comes to Web Analytics. It is very difficult to compare two Web sites and get a clear picture. Take the following example:

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More reasons to build a mobile-friendly Web site

Monday, August 24th, 2009

One of the things that we have blogged about consistently on this site is the need to set up a version of your Web site for visitors using mobile devices. Since this is such a hot topic in the industry right now, we decided to do a little research. Ultimately, we found that only 1 in 5 hospital / health system Web sites currently have a mobile-friendly version of their Web site. The most popular reasons cited for not creating such a site are “not enough of a priority” (55%) and “shortage of time and/or FTEs” (45%).

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A New Home for Benchmarking

Friday, July 10th, 2009

For those of you not familiar with Greystone.Net Benchmarking, this is a service I manage that allows customers to anonymously compare performance with other hospitals on key Web areas such as Web utilization and number of FTEs. Recently, I surveyed existing Greystone.Net Benchmarking customers about how we could improve the product. In their responses, two conclusions stood out: First, make it easier to see key conclusions and results. Second, reduce the amount of time it takes for users to enter data and review reports.

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It’s Time to Make Friends with Facebook

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

In case you missed the big news last week, Facebook announced that it has added its 200 millionth member. That’s right – Facebook Nation is now the fifth largest country in the world. If your temptation is to discredit the impact of this amazing growth on healthcare by assuming that these new members come from the ranks of teenagers and college students, you would be making a big mistake. A majority of Facebook users are now over 35, and the fastest growing segment of Facebook users is actually women over 55. According to CNN, “There are now about 1.5 million female users older than 55 on the site — roughly a 550 percent increase over six months ago.” As a 33-yr old who has recently received friend requests from my mother and several of her friends, I can personally attest that the AARP-ization of Facebook is for real.

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