If you plan to use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube, you might heed some of the following tips for your own credibility and job insurance:

• Learn the platforms: Learn how to use each social media tool to your advantage, which means learning how to use privacy controls and other customizations.
• Keep professional and social relationships separate: By dividing social and business lives, a healthcare professional can maintain a professional demeanor on one hand and socialize with friends and family on the other. It is not appropriate to “friend” patients on Facebook or to follow them on Twitter.
• Watch your associations: You may want to connect with a patient on a blog, but you may not want to connect with that patient on Facebook or LinkedIn. On the other hand, you don’t want a friend with an offensive user name to appear on your list of people you follow on Twitter, unless you Tweet anonymously (possible by not revealing your real name, but a user name when registering).
• Keep politics and religion quiet: Unless you plan to be a journalist or an activist, it is best to keep those two topics in the personal realm, rather than the business realm. Activism, however, is up to you — if you, as a healthcare professional — want to campaign for clean water, then use your professionalism to temper your activism.
• Use social networking to say “Thank you” and to set up meetings in person: This Mashable article explains that social networking provides the perfect medium to extend your hand in business situations appropriately.
• Keep comments civil and don’t use social media while under the influence: The article about medical students explains succinctly how these comments can lead to expulsion from school — and in professional situations may lead to job loss or loss of clients.

Read the full post citing the Jobvite survey and Mayo clinic advice for healthcare professionals and their use of social media at: The Health Express

“… with health CIOs thinking about electronic medical record implementations, preparations for meeting the requirements of meaningful use of health IT, virtualization projects, HIPAA regulations, and the explosion of patient data and how to store it securely, social networking guidelines may not be getting the attention it deserves.”

While some healthcare organizations choose to avoid social media altogether either in the name of avoiding industry regulatory issues or to ban workplace social media access as a simple solution, neither approach is anything more than an ostrich sticking its head in the sand.  Any organization operating any part of its business online is affected by the social web. Implementing and enforcing social media policies is certainly something that CIOs will be tasked with, but an effective social media policy requires interaction between legal, HR, marketing, public relations and business managers, not just IT.

Presentation from Bridget M. Forney.

At one point or another, 80% of Internet users have looked online for health information.  Social networking sites, blogs and podcasts have opened up two-way communication lines for patients and providers.  The days of patients merely listening to doctors, associations or even print advertisements appear to be diminishing.

But patients aren’t the only users benefiting from social media.  Hospitals and healthcare providers can and should us social media to their benefit, as well.

In this presentation, Ascension Health takes an in-depth look at healthcare social media by looking at examples of successful users on Facebook and Twitter, healthcare social media best practices and provides visuals and statistics to highlight “Smarter Healthcare Using Social Media”.

Hospitals have attempted to monitor employee social media use at work by blocking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  While this prevents employees from using hospital computers to access these sites, it can’t stop employees from using personal computers and smart phones to share information about work, i.e. your hospital.  When you can’t abolish social media usage, you can definitely implement restrictions.  Developing a social media policy for your hospital will outline the right and wrong ways your employees can engage with social media.

HealthLeaders Media shared these 5 tips to guide your hospital social media policy:

1. Keep it short
2. Keep it simple
3. Keep it encouraging
4. Keep it educational
5. Keep it transparent

While the guide can’t prevent employees from engaging in social media entirely, it can hinder the types of messages and information they are sharing.  Using this guide will help to ensure your employees are aware of the information they can and cannot share and the repercussions they will face if secure information is exposed.

For hospital social media policy examples, enjoy this database provided by Social Media Goverance.

With a boom in health related blogs, information sites are now gravitating toward social media.  Patients are increasingly sharing medical experiences and seeking advice from other patients who share similar health concerns.   Online communities are giving patients support, personal experiences, and direct answers – something they cannot always get from experts.

While patients are gravitating toward social media, a recent ClickZ article shares that some healthcare marketers seem to be hesitant:

• WebMD has recently lost ground to rival online communities, such as MedHelp.org.  In an effort to fight back, WebMD launched  Health Exchange putting community content on the front lines.  Marketers have been invited to create branded posts and host consumer discussions about health and wellness for the site, but as of April 5, no marketers had signed on.
• Sharecare, a yet to be launched site from WebMD founder, Jeff Arnold, plans to provide users with info from several points of view including celebrity physicians, hospitals, high-profile health authors, local providers and other users.  The site was projected to launch in early 2010 but has now been pushed out until summer.

With over 60 million consumers sharing health experiences online and over 200 hospitals a part of social networking communities, it’s safe to say social media is of great importance to the healthcare marketing mix.  Are regulations and compliance issues hindering marketers from taking the plunge?  The importance of growing patient communities to healthcare marketers will continue to increase as a large and highly accessible consumer base.

If you’re new to Twitter, it’s hard to know what tactics to implement.  And even harder to know what effective tactics to implement.

Here’s a list of 5 Twitter Tips for Healthcare Professionals to ensure you’re utilizing the service to its full potential:

1. Stay confidential – Don’t mention any information that can identify clients or patients. Don’t write anything where a patient could identify themselves – it could be embarrassing for them or break client trust.
   
2. Share information – Do post the link to a great article.  Do retweet great information that aligns with what you are trying to achieve.  If someone writes something you don’t agree with, do post your apposing view and provide links to evidence. Respond to mentions as much as you can.
3. Think simple – Don’t use jargon. Don’t use a big word where a small one will do. Don’t use three words where one will do. If you need to clarify a tweet, link to a blog post or article on your website.
4. Know your audience – Do determine who your ideal follower is before getting started. Do aim for your posts to align with what they would like to hear. Your Twitter account may rank high in search engine results, so you want to ensure your messages would be appropriate for clients, workmates and potential employers to see.
5. Be engaging – Do work with those in your profession or industry to get more evidence based positive health messages out there. Do follow them, retweet their posts and engage in conversations by replying to their posts. Social media is not competitive – it makes the pie bigger, it doesn’t eat into your piece.

Follow these tips to create effective, meaningful and goal-oriented posts.  If you keep confidentiality and your goals top-of-mind, you’ll be able to see the benefits of social media services like Twitter.  If you haven’t already, create your Twitter account now and be sure to follow @healthcareos for updates, tips and news.

If your hospital has developed innovative social media marketing methods or strategies, please share your stories with us. We’d love to write about you. Email us at: tips at healthcareos dot com

Health Care Marketing, PR and Communications professionals around the world are working hard to understand how new media platforms like social media can help them better connect with patients and create more awareness.  Besides actual participation, there are many information channels (including the social web itself) to learn more including an upcoming event from Ragan and Kaiser Permanente.

Next month Ragan Communications and Kaiser Permanente are offering a Health Care Communicators Summit: A practical how-to conference for Health Care, Public Relations, Marketing, and Social Media on June 7-9, 2010 at the Kaiser Permanente Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center in San Leandro, CA.

Some of the insights offered at this health care marketing and communications event include:

• Measure the success of blogs through Web analytics and media coverage
• Persuade execs to support social media and to blog—on a bare-bones budget.
• Engage patients and the public like never before with Twitter, Yammer, YouTube
• Use Facebook & Twitter (@healthcareos) —must haves!— to help customers, build communities and sell your brand

The event will feature speakers from The Health Care Blog, Kaiser Permanente, and social media strategist at The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Be sure to check out the pre-conference workshop hosted by Ragan CEO, Mark Ragan (@MarkRaganCEO).

Also to note, the conference includes two separate “tracks” – one for PR & marketing communications, and another for internal communications & social media.  To read the full invitation, or register, visit the Health Care Communicators Summit site.

A recent Pharma Marketing Blog post shares some interesting details on Pfizer’s entrance into social media via Facebook. But according to the post, that entrance wasn’t quite graceful:

When I became a Pfizer FB Pfan, Pfizer’s Wall contained a bunch of short “medicine Safety” videos in which patients talked about their medical conditions and medications. I don’t think any mentioned specific products by name.

One video was of a woman with osteoarthritis who expressed concerns about taking any medication at all. I thought this was an interesting video for Pfizer to post to its wall. So I decide to post a comment about it. However, “something went wrong” when I hit the submit button [and I received an error message].

I didn’t really think that Pfizer would allow comments, so this didn’t surprise me. Maybe they are actually “fixing” this “problem.” We’ll see.

But I WAS able to SHARE this video by posting it to MY profile so that all MY FB friends could see it too!

Today, however, those videos are gone and you cannot see the one I tagged on my FB profile page. They were replaced by product photos.

The author of the post, John Mack, gave an update a few weeks later. The Pfizer videos are back up on its fan page, and they are sharable via fans’ Facebook profiles. But users still can’t comment on Pfizer’s fan page.

Could this pharma social media marketing hickup been avoided?

Some may suggest the Pfizer Facebook story was just a bait-and-hook tactic for gaining fans. Others might say laywers stepped in and “caught wind of the FB content, got twitchy and told them to pull the video and replace with safer content,” according to one comment on the blog post.

Either way, a social media savvy marketing agency could have potentially offered sound advice and consulting on how to successfully enter the social media world.

What do you think?

How do hospitals measure their social media ROI? Are they simply tilting at windmills like Don Quixote? Too often, we find ourselves counting the number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers or the number of people who viewed You Tube videos, trying to justify engagement in social media.

However, the bigger question is whether hospitals can afford not to engage.

The post goes on to highlight 8 reasons why it’s no longer an option for hospitals to ignore social media in the marketing mix. We’ve summarized a few here:

• Improve customer service: When problems arise (i.e., a patient is unsatisfied with his or her hospital experience), hospitals can respond immediately and resolve the issue.
• Reach younger health care consumers: While most health care marketing dollars are spent on reaching the Baby Boomer segment, social media efforts can reach the 25-34 year old audience.
• Find blood donors: The article cites one hospital that has organized two blood drives via social media — using Twitter to promote and allowing sign-ups on Facebook.

Has your hospital integrated social media into its marketing mix? How did you convince hospital executives to move forward with the plan?