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Five Questions Health Care Has About Social Media

By: Marijean Jaggers | 04/15/2010

Standing Partnership's team has experience in the health care industry in everything from manufacturing to hospitals, healthplans to pharmaceutical companies, nonprofits to small- to medium-sized health care practices. Every single one of these clients has asked for direction in social media engagement. Here are the five questions, and their answers, that our health care industry clients ask us the most:

1. How should we engage in social media?
2. What tools should we use?
3. Who should be responsible for maintaining our social media presence?
4. What if we make a mistake/have a crisis/attract people who don't like us?
5. Why, again, should we do this?

Let's take these one at a time.

1. How should we engage in social media?

This is not a short-answer question, but there are four ways the health care industry should engage in social media. First, the industry needs to LISTEN to its community. What are they saying? What do they want? Are you delivering it? Read lots of content including blogs, news articles and tweets. Watch industry videos. Listen to podcasts. Become informed about your industry's and your company's presence in the social Web.

Second, CONNECT to those with common interests -- start inside, and work your way out. Connect with colleagues using social networks like LinkedIn, then begin to connect with your external network of those who care about the same issues and opportunities.

Third, ENGAGE by being helpful; answer questions, respond to queries, connect others to one another when you know they could benefit from a relationship. Share content you find of interest. Thank others for their contributions of helpful content.

Fourth, PUBLISH your own content in a blog, on social networks, with video or audio, in whitepapers, news releases or articles, all shared in the social Web.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

2. What tools should we use?

Before we answer this with the standard "Big Three" answer, we have a question for you: what tools are your community members using? If it's LinkedIn, focus there. Facebook? Crank up your efforts in that space. Twitter? Tweet away. Find out what tools those you're trying to reach use most frequently and plan accordingly. The big three are those we just mentioned, and it's likely that's where your audience is and where you should be as well. Add-ons include Flickr and YouTube and, in some cases other sites and networks unique to your field.

3. Who should be responsible for maintaining our social media presence?

This is potentially a multi-million-dollar question because if your community manager is not the right person, or is a person who makes some unwise choices, the results of that could be devastating to your brand and reputation and financially, a killer. We'll answer this question with another blog post: Who Can and Should Manage Your Community?

Another point on this topic is this: the community manager, responsible for maintaining your presence, really needs to be an employee -- further to that, someone senior enough in your organization that they're not likely to leave any time soon.

4. What if we make a mistake/have a crisis/attract people who don't like us?

Even though we work in PR, we don't believe in sugarcoating so we'll tell you this: It's going to happen so you might as well prepare for it. Before your organization engages in social media -- and we mean WAY before, you must have these internal discussions to decide how negative feedback will be handled. Once determined, the process must be clear to all those in the organization responsible for the company's online -- and off-line -- presence.

The pharmaceutical industry has taken matters into its own hands, by seeking guidance from the Food and Drug Administration on how they may interact on the social Web. The lack of control inherent in social media relationship building and content publishing has made the internet a scary place for health care and a regulated industry like pharma is correct to be cautious. Pharmaceutical companies, by and large, aren't waiting for those guidelines to be handed down from the FDA on stone tablets -- they're forging ahead -- a bold move but the right one as it is critical for the industry to be where patients are and that is online.

5. Why, again, should we do this?

We find that health care clients, once they begin grappling with the issues that arise in the discussion of Question #4. above, often ask "Why are we doing this? Are we SURE we want to do this?" The answer is still emphatically YES. There are many reasons, but one that seems to resonate with many was measured and published by Altimeter and Wetpaint in 2009, in Engagementdb, Ranking the Top 100 Global Brands.  We've written about this study before.

In a post about the study, Sarah Perez on Read Write Web writes that "Those brands that were the most engaged saw their revenue grow over the past year by 18% while the least engaged brands saw losses of negative 6%."

Overwhelmingly, the argument is heavily FOR, not AGAINST social media engagement in health care. Many in the industry are already there. It's good for brands, patients, providers, managers, customer service representatives and in short, everyone who has an interest or a stake in health care. And really, isn't that all of us?

Posted in Digital Communications