Lately I’ve been thinking quite a lot about transparency in the online world. Transparency is, after all, one of the basic tenets of social media. You must be transparent to remain credible when it comes to social media. That’s been taught to all of us as we’ve jumped into the social media world. When social media first started on the scene, the ideal of transparency really ignited me. I thought the world would be changed over night. Power to the people, and all that. Organizations would now have to be transparent to their customers, and to the world. However, here we are five years later and we all have learned a lot. I’m not quite as optimistic on that ideal anymore. I do think the bar on transparency has been raised over the past few years, as there are many stories of companies being held to task by interested parties. And the amount and speed with which we all have access to information is still staggering to me. However, I also think that there is still a long way to go on full transparency.
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Health content is essential to the success of a hospital’s Web site. If a patient or user is searching for information on a particular diagnosis or treatment but are unable to find relevant information on your Web site, they will not only visit another site, but their experience may also leave a lasting negative impression of your organization. As a user, if I could not find relevant, in-depth information about bone cancer on a Web site, for example, I would assume that the hospital does not have the necessary services to treat me, or that it is simply not a very sophisticated hospital. Most purchase this type of content from a health information vendor and some even create their own content. Regardless of how it is obtained, the key is to provide some type of health content on the Web site; which can be evaluated using the following questions as a guideline:
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Greystone is pleased to announce the results of our recent survey on hospital/ health system Web budgets. We sent the survey invitation to more than 100 healthcare marketers, and received responses from 65. (please note: Greystone’s research panel is made up of hospitals or health care systems with at least one FTE dedicated to the Web, and members tend to be more “Web 2.0 savvy” than other hospitals and health systems)
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It seems, especially in health care, that we tend to get wrapped up in our day-to-day duties and the brainstorming and creativity of promoting our organizations online gets lost along the way. That’s why I feel it’s important to keep our eyes open in our everyday life and experiences, and draw ideas from places other than competitors and peers health organizations’ websites.
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Three….Word….Taglines
Lately, here at Greystone we’ve been talking about updating our printed marketing materials. As I was tossing around ideas for a possible folder cover, I found myself using the dreaded “three word tagline.” My decision came about simply enough. I was thinking of a simple, straightforward design with the possibility of including a few photos. Anyone that is familiar with my design work knows I’m a fan of grouping in threes – photos, text areas, buttons, etc. So, as usual, I ended up with three symmetrical images on a nice, clean, light grey background. This was fine, but then I immediately grabbed three keywords from some of our old printed materials and proceeded to place one under each photo. There I was staring at three photos with three “keywords” underneath them. I have to say that I liked the look, but something still bothered me.
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Today is one of my favorite days of the year: Opening day in baseball. I’ve been waiting since last October for this day to come, and it’s finally here. I like the freshly-manicured green grass fields untouched by runners and basemen; I like the look of the crisp, clean new uniforms untouched by dirt and sweat. Perfect games, although improbable, are possible and nobody yet has a losing season. Mostly, I like the idea that anything is possible starting with this day.
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At Greystone we are a pretty lean company that gets an extraordinary amount of work done. There are lots of things we could probably do better, but given our size we really accomplish a lot. This is in large part because we have a great team of dedicated and talented individuals working here. Most importantly, everyone is ready to pitch in and do whatever needs to get done at the time. Keeping up this blog is something we all agree is important… we believe in the power and value of blogs, and make recommendations to our clients all the time that they should have a blog of their own. However, when it comes right down to it, Greystone is not great at blogging. The Greystone blog is one of those things which our busy schedules make it tough to get done and days and weeks can go by without anyone writing or posting anything to our blog. That’s why a few weeks ago we created a weekly schedule and assigned everyone a week to post something to the blog. So far, I’m happy to report that we are only a week behind. :) I won’t tell you who at Greystone hasn’t finished they blog post yet, but the pressure is on!
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Every day people say great things about your hospital or healthcare system. “They saved my brother’s life”, “They are some of the nicest people around”, “We’ve had our babies there and it was a great experience”. They say it in the grocery store, in church, during poker night, and at the salon.
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We have recently received inquiries from several hospital or health systems Webmasters who want to know our opinion about Web sites like Alexa, Compete.com, and Quantcast.com. These “third party web data providers” use proprietary algorithms to estimate the number of visitors on any Web site, and have become a major resource for many Web marketers.
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One of my responsibilities here at Greystone is to assess hospital and healthcare system Web sites. When we complete an assessment, we use a grade system to determine the quality of a Web site. Thirty-one categories are evaluated using a consistent and quantitative scoring system, and we assign grades to each category ranging from an A to a D-. You may be wondering, why no F’s? Giving an F to a client is like wearing high heels on a hiking trip: you just don’t do it, unless you want to endure the repercussions.
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