Social Media and Healthcare

The marketing world is changing every day. New tools and technologies emerge, fresh thinkers put new spins on old tactics, and the bar for quality continues to rise as audiences everywhere are exposed to more content in a day than they could possibly process.

For all the changes that have taken place over the years, one thing is certain: Content marketing is here to stay. In fact, this time last year, it was estimated that the content marketing industry would be worth more than $400 billion by 2021.

And as content marketing continues to grow and our approaches to it become more mature, these five trends will shape the way companies (and their audiences) create and consume content in 2019.

1. Content marketing is becoming marketing.

2. Strategy will become more essential.

3. Customer success will emerge as the new frontier.

4. The marketing funnel will change shape.

5. Distribution will remain a driver of success.

read more at https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2018/10/14/5-content-marketing-trends-to-watch-in-2019/#10ada3281202

Follower count is, unanimously, the biggest indicator of success on Twitter. Some people may contend with that statement. They may argue that quality of followers, quality of tweets, level of engagement, etc. are far more important success metrics.  

However, a lot of people are, without a doubt, influenced by the number of followers somebody has. Having a huge follower count is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. People see you have a lot of followers, assume your tweets must be extra-special or you must be extra-special and follow you, thus increasing your follower count further.  

So, what really gets you more followers? You will find articles aplenty online that tell you how to get more followers on Twitter. Why, I have written quite a few myself.   

But this post is different.  

This post does not rely on experience, observation, commonly held beliefs, guesswork or any other abstract factors to tell you where Twitter followers come from and how to get and keep them. This post is based entirely on scientific analysis and facts – numbers, stats, hard-to-refute conclusions. So, let’s get going.  

Scientifically, these are the factors that influence how many twitter followers a particular account can amass:  

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1939

When did marketers start assuming that the way to stand out amidst loud and flashy advertising methods was to be even louder and flashier? We’re faced with increasing evidence, statistics, and research findings indicating that consumers are tired of being bombarded with extraneous information, which distracts rather than assists them in their buying decisions.

According to research done by CEB, the most effective way to reach consumers isn’t through elaborate and complex websites, ads or sales copy, but rather through simplifying the decision making process: in other words, presenting exactly what consumers need to know, while leaving out the rest. In fact, they found that companies who simplified and streamlined the decision making process for their customers were 86% more likely to make a sale.

The key to modern marketing? Simplicity.

more at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/07/08/heres-the-simple-secret-to-apples-marketing-success/

Across industries, sophisticated organizations are now committing both time and money to their social media marketingcampaigns. But the healthcare industry (including hospitals, B2B medical manufacturers, and health clubs) has hesitated to embrace social media.

A survey of 1,060 U.S. adults by the PwC Health Research Institute found that one-third of respondents considered social media platforms appropriate for the discussion of healthcare. The Journal of Internet Medical Research found that 60% of adults surveyed used the Internet to access medical information. This is a major opportunity – it’s time to get ahead of the curve.

Here's how healthcare institutions can engage on social in a relevant, useful, industry-appropriate way.

In a study by Infinigraph, we measured the effectiveness of different posts made by healthcare companies, including hospitals, clinics, and health care foundations. We found that healthcare audiences engaged most with posts containing images.

Some of the most engaged-with Facebook posts contain images, and all link to valuable content. These short posts link to larger articles which tell human interest stories, tapping into audience emotions, or provide useful health information.

• Make your data available. Allow your ratings and reviews, as well as error rates within your database (if applicable) to be made public.
• Educate your employees on social media policies. Make the risk of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) clear, and prohibit posting inappropriate information about doctors or patients.
• Implement privacy settings. Be sure to safeguard personal information and content.
• Avoid using social media channels to communicate with patients on sensitive issues. Advise them on a secure, personalized server.
• Enlist at least one author, editor, or reviewer on every piece of content that you publish. Include references or links to the source of your content, and date it whenever possible.
• Include an “About Us” or “History” section on your website. Present information about qualified staff, services, and facility as well as your purpose, goal, or mission.
• Ask for audience feedback through surveys and questionnaires. Make your contact information easy to find, and encourage your audience to get in touch via email, Facebook, and Twitter. When they do reach out, respond promptly and thoughtfully.

Curated from http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2013/11/should-hospitals-be-on-facebook-social-media-marketing-for-the-healthcare-industry.html

1. Focus your content. Find your niche.

We live in a world where purpose matters.

2. Create consistent themes.

If people like what they see, they'll come back for more.

3. Give your content a branded look.

If people share your image by uploading it to Facebook or another social media site, make sure you own it.

4. Have a flexible content calendar.

Follow the two-stream content method:

- One stream of content is planned.

- The second stream of content is based on listening in real-time to what's going on in your niche and around the Web.

5. Post what the audience likes-and wants to share.

Read more at: http://www.healthcarecommunication.com/Main/Articles/11549.aspx

Social media guidelines for physicians frequently focus on the need for doctors to separate their personal from their professional identities, but those types of policies get social media all wrong, according to a viewpoint recently published in JAMA.

Instead, the viewpoint's authors suggest a simpler, more straightforward means for physicians to assess potential social media activity: Is what you're about to say appropriate for a doctor to talk about in public?

"When a physician asks, 'Should I post this on social media?' the answer does not depend on whether the content is professional or personal but instead depends on whether it is appropriate for a physician in a public space," write the authors - Matthew DeCamp, MD, PhD; Thomas Koenig, MD; and Margaret Chisolm, MD - from Johns Hopkins University.

But for those who remain unconvinced, the authors offer these four reasons why, for physicians, it simply isn't feasible to separate personal and professional identities:It's operationally impossible: With minimal effort and information, anyone can do a web search that quickly connects a physician's personal content to her professional content - assuming both types of content exist. And if both types of content do exist, there's no way to keep them separated, when a connection between the two is just a Google search away.

Lack of user consensus: Despite recommendations from groups such as the American College of Physicians and the Federation of State Medical Boards, some physicians remain unconvinced of the need to maintain separation between personal and professional content. For some, blurring the lines between the two is part of the reason to use social media in the first place, as doing so can level hierarchies and increase transparency, the authors say.

They're often the same thing: Separating personal and professional identities is inconsistent with the concept of professional identity. In other words, professional identify is determined to at least some extent by personal identity. For example, medical students undergo identity changes from student to professional and from consumer of medical services to provider.

Those personal identity transitions help shape who they are as professionals. "When recommendations fail to acknowledge the complex, mutable nature of professional identity and its connection to personal identity, the recommendations fail to offer the unambiguous, practical guidance that is needed," the authors write.It could be harmful: Doctors aren't required to avoid personal contact with patients offline, so why should they be required to do so when they're using social media?

In small or rural communities in particular, such encounters can be unavoidable, and they can even be beneficial to both doctor and patient. The unrealistic expectation that physicians need to maintain two separate identities can carry with it a "psychological or physical burden," the authors write.The authors stress that they aren't proposing that doctors should "eliminate boundaries," or that "anything goes" on social media.

Rather, the key to resolving physicians' "online identity crisis" lies in recognizing that social media exist in primarily public spaces, not in exclusively professional or exclusively personal ones

New digital techniques, novel patient-centered healthcare services, and innovative approaches to communicating health issues are set to take the healthcare sector by storm asit begins to embrace the latest IT revolution.

“Compared with many other industries, pharma is still far behind in terms of harnessing the power of IT for consumer engagement and marketing purposes,” says Dr Emre Basar, a healthcare professional who is also an expert on digital communications. He speaks to eyeforpharma ahead of this presentation at the Multichannel Marketing Conference. 

What’s more, pharma companies need to run pretty fast to catch up if they want to be successful players in this landscape, according to the Medical Science Liaison for Rigosertib at Baxter International. “If pharma waits too long, global technology leaders such as Apple or Google and smaller internet firms will penetrate this growing market,” he predicts.

Patient empowerment is a key trend

“Digitization of the healthcare market will lead to empowerment for patients,” he stresses. “In the past, patients were very dependent on their doctors. Nowadays, patients are pretty well-informed and hence become more and more empowered.”

Patient empowerment will be enhanced by the spread of wearable technology. “Patients will be more independent. Pharma needs to address this trend because it is also a huge market opportunity for them.”

Disease awareness

outlining a disease as a story by combining a narrative structure with visual elements is “much more compelling than a 'simple' disease information website".

- See more at: http://social.eyeforpharma.com/digital/have-you-heard-one-about-disease-awareness#sthash.0NWhybpB.dpuf

Hospital marketing executives and administrators ranked marketing for various service lines as “extremely important” (65.5%) or “very important (24.1%), among respondents to the recent Healthcare Success Strategies (HSS) survey.

Although service lines have generally commanded an important position in the marketing mix, Heart & Vascular Services ranked as the clear leader. It’s likely that the promotional emphasis during coming months will shakeout with the following priority, according to survey takers:

Twitter is a widely used social medium. However, its application in promoting health behaviors is understudied.

In order to provide insights into designing health marketing interventions to promote physical activity on Twitter, this exploratory infodemiology study applied both social cognitive theory and the path model of online word of mouth to examine the distribution of different electronic word of mouth (eWOM) characteristics among personal tweets about physical activity in the United States.

This study used 113 keywords to retrieve 1 million public tweets about physical activity in the United States posted between January 1 and March 31, 2011. A total of 30,000 tweets were randomly selected and sorted based on numbers generated by a random number generator. Two coders scanned the first 16,100 tweets and yielded 4672 (29.02%) tweets that they both agreed to be about physical activity and were from personal accounts. Finally, 1500 tweets were randomly selected from the 4672 tweets (32.11%) for further coding. After intercoder reliability scores reached satisfactory levels in the pilot coding (100 tweets separate from the final 1500 tweets), 2 coders coded 750 tweets each. Descriptive analyses, Mann-Whitney U tests, and Fisher exact tests were performed.

Results: Tweets about physical activity were dominated by neutral sentiments (1270/1500, 84.67%). Providing opinions or information regarding physical activity (1464/1500, 97.60%) and chatting about physical activity (1354/1500, 90.27%) were found to be popular on Twitter.

Approximately 60% (905/1500, 60.33%) of the tweets demonstrated users’ past or current participation in physical activity or intentions to participate in physical activity. However, social support about physical activity was provided in less than 10% of the tweets (135/1500, 9.00%). Users with fewer people following their tweets (followers) (P=.02) and with fewer accounts that they followed (followings) (P=.04) were more likely to talk positively about physical activity on Twitter.

People with more followers were more likely to post neutral tweets about physical activity (P=.04). People with more followings were more likely to forward tweets (P=.04). People with larger differences between number of followers and followings were more likely to mention companionship support for physical activity on Twitter (P=.04).

Conclusions: Future health marketing interventions promoting physical activity should segment Twitter users based on their number of followers, followings, and gaps between the number of followers and followings.

The innovative application of both marketing and public health theory to examine tweets about physical activity could be extended to other infodemiology or infoveillance studies on other health behaviors (eg, vaccinations).

more at http://www.jmir.org/2013/11/e261/

The use of social media tools, for the purpose of releasing an article in the clinical pain sciences, increases the number of views and downloads

The use of social media tools – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and ResearchBlogging.org – for the purpose of releasing an article in the clinical pain sciences increases the number of people who view the article and download it. Social media tools also have implications for the dissemination of medical research articles in other fields.

Problem

Generally, anyone interested in accessing research articles either utilizes a research database such as Pubmed or simply follows a few specific journals. As a result, many articles go unnoticed because end users who could benefit from them lack the time to find them. In addition, those who have time to search these databases may be overwhelmed with lots of articles that are not relevant to their needs.

Approach to Address Problem

The researchers selected 16 PLOS ONE articles using four inclusion criteria relevant to the clinical pain sciences, first published online between 2006 and 2011, of interest to readers of a research group blog (bodyinmind.org), and not previously mentioned in a blog post on bodyinmind.org. The articles were assigned randomly to four researchers who wrote blog posts on them, comprised of approximately 500 words and a link to the online version of the article. These blog posts were randomly assigned two dates: one date for a social media release and one date as a control. The control is not well explained by the researchers and appears to represent a period where nothing is being done to promote the article.