Social Networking, “Hmmm”, before joining Santa Rosa Consulting I used social networking sites to connect with friends on facebook, view videos sent to me on YouTube and connect with current and past colleagues on Linkedin. All with a bit of hesitation in terms of “How much information to share”. As the Chief Technology Officer at Santa Rosa Consulting, like any CIO, CTO, COO, CFO, there is always hesitation in what is or is not shared on the internet, given our sensitivity to securing our client, employee and company information.
When I joined Santa Rosa Consulting in May, 2008, my goal was to fullfil our founder’s wish of building out a technology platform that would be very unique; One that would make us the easiest company to do business with and the easistst company to work for. At some point down this very agreesive path I was tapped on the shoulder and asked “What are we doing to market our services and create awareness? Why are we not blogging, tweeting, posting videos on YouTube?” My first thought was “Wow, how can we go down this path and ensure the security of our client, employee and company information? Who can create content for Tweets, Blogs, Videos? How can we overcome some of the negative aspects such as inappropriate blog comments, inappropriate twitter comments, etc”. So I ventured beyond my own personal use of socal networking and looked at how other industries including the Healthcare Industry are using Social Networking to promote their businesses. What I found was suprising as well as exciting to me, a marketing shift in “About Us” to “What can we share with you to provide you value”.
So let’s take a look at some good examples of how Hospitals are using social networking followed by some statistics about how many and what sites they are using. First some good examples:
- Providence Hospital in Portland uses YouTube to promote breast cancer awareness in a very fun way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEdVfyt-mLw. 5,272,543 views, that is “Awareness”.
- Sentara Healthcare uses Twitter to share informatin with patients and employees around healthy eating tips, health surveys, employee recognition, success stories. They have an amazing 1,395 followers on Twitter, this last tweet is an example of how they use Social Networking: New at Sentara Today -- Helping aging parents plan for the future. http://twitter.com/sentarahealth.
- Cleveland Clinic uses Facebook (6,371 Fans), Youtube, Twitter (2,369 Followers) and Linkedin. Sharing information about hearing loss, wellness tips, promoting an upcoming “Online Health Chat” about Coronary artery disease (CAD) and video clips of dietician’s discussing healthy Holiday meals.
- The President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston started a blog to share thoughts about hospital, medicine and healthcare issues. To follow this blog… http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2009/12/blue-glove-medical-record.html
- ProgressWestER uses Twitter to inform patients of wait times in their ER … 5:38 p.m. Less than a 15 minute wait in the ER. To follow on Twitter… http://twitter.com/ProgressWestER. 344 followers.
In the true sense of social networking, these hospitals are creating online communities in ways never possible before. A back door approach to marketing that provides value to it’s members through information sharing using various approaches made availble by social networking sites. So how common is the use of social netwroking amongst hospitals? Here are the stats:
U.S. Hospitals that use Social Networking tools. Last Update November 27, 2009 http://ebennett.org/hsnl/
- 473 Hospitals total
- 218 YouTube Channels
- 254 Facebook pages
- 356 Twitter Accounts
- 57 Blogs
Top 5 States - Hospitals Using Social Networking http://ebennett.org/hsnl/
So out of the roughly 7500 hospitals nationwide, close to 500 are known to actively engage in social networking. It will be ineresting to see what this number looks like in another year along with what creative new approaches will evolve. What do you predict? How do you see hospitals using online social networking? What works? What doesn’t work?
Happy Holidays to all and best wishes for the New Year!
Reta Lock
Chief Technology Officer
Santa Rosa Consulting, LLC