You’ve certainly heard the old adage about the cobbler’s children and the state of their shoes. Well, I’m afraid those of us at Greystone.Net have been so caught up in helping clients and trying to stay current in this fast moving Internet world, that we neglected our own site for too long.
With 185 hospitals using one form of social media or another, I’d say healthcare has clearly gotten the message. But I worry a bit about some of what I’m seeing out there. Let’s just say there’s evidence aplenty that while many have dipped their toes in the waters of social media, few have a real plan in place.
One of the more popular ways organizations and businesses have established a presence on Facebook is through the “page.” The Facebook page was necessary since the typical individual profile just didn’t fit for an organization. For example, few organizations have favorite movies or books, or even a real birthday. Even fewer are married (insert joke here).
In case you are not aware, social media has invaded our web space. Transparency is popular and public health information is being shared. I find it amazing that the Internet is the number one source for educating one’s self on health related topics, even more popular than asking your own doctor! Wow, we have become an empowered bunch of know-it-all’s. Well good for us! We are, in fact, a generation of web savvy multi-taskers, able to simultaneously watch TV, surf the web, listen to music and talk or text on our cell phones. (Well, not me but the rest of you people out in cyber-land). We make decisions based on our network of friends, not traditional ads which is good because studies have shown that “groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.” (Surowiecki J.) So, we are, therefore, at the very least, know-it-all populaces in training.
Because of this societal change, more people are seeking social networking virtually, either in lieu of on in conjunction with live, face-to-face networking. Blogs, vlogs, vodcasts, discussion boards, forums, RSS, wiki, Facebook, Twitter, avatars, Flickr, Second Life, Technorati … overwhelming and seemingly never-ending. Yet, despite its monster type appearance, social media is worth taming and incorporating into your hospital strategy. Here’s why – MySpace, 100 million users, Twitter, 2 million tweets a day, Wikipedia, 2.4 million articles. So many people to reach, so little time. Are you ready?