Free is good, especially when it comes to marketing your hospital or health system. So you jump in with free opportunities to display your brand through social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter; then you start a blog and then all of a sudden, it doesn’t feel so free anymore.
The conversation continues about QR codes. According to Mobio™, QR barcode scanning in North America grew 1200% in the last half of last year. Quick response codes already make sense with consumer products for purchase information, competitive pricing information, coupons or discounts, but how are they relevant for healthcare? Relevance is the key question about how QR codes can work with your healthcare marketing strategy. Are you just adding QR codes because it’s a hot ticket right now, or do you actually provide a value added to your current or prospective patients?
To do list:
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.
I’ve often touted Paul Levy’s “Running a Hospital” blog as the best in the business, and last week he cemented that position IMHO with his post on blocking social media. We’ve written about that before, but Levy offers the highly credible point of view of a hospital CEO.
When I was trying to convince doctors at my last place of employment that allowing secure messaging from existing patients was a good idea, I heard more than once that it would be the “end of modern medicine as we know it.” One of our physician champions found a reference that I’ve never been able to relocate that quoted doctors saying the same thing about another technological advancement: The telephone.
You know the old saying, “everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it”? Social media is not like that. Yes, everybody is talking about it, or so it seems. But many are actually doing something about it.
It’s barbeque season, and there are few things I like better than a good barbeque. But what happens if you are at a neighborhood barbeque and you realize a group of neighbors is talking about your hospital or health system. What do you do?
Prior to leaving my last job, leadership was talking about adding a position with “social media” in the title. While I applauded the additional resources, I suggested that might be kind of like adding someone to the PR staff with “news releases” in their title.
It’s always interesting to review the program for the Healthcare Internet Conference . Since the vast majority of the sessions were proposed by those in the industry, it’s really a reflection of what’s happening with the Web strategies for hospitals and health systems.