As part of this, they’ll be releasing their Digital Maturity Model 2.0, which expresses three phases of engagement:

1. Baby steps: where a customer is encouraged to make a single purchase/interaction
2. Walking: where a customer now has multiple channels of engagement / repeat interactions
3. Running: lifetime customers, which is meant to express ongoing brand advocacy

Ok, I didn’t get that perfectly, but that’s a rough outline of slide — it went by fast.

This comes on the heel of Sitecore’s purchase of company focused on traditional print components — point of purchase displays, postcards, etc.

Sitecore is moving from a web CMS to a… hmm… how to describe it?  A digital relevancy company — attempting to get in the center of customer conversion points.

I have now heard “lifetime customers” at least a dozen times this morning. It’s an interesting pivot — to move from software licensing budgets to into digital marketing budgets as well; Sitecore will allow for more social plug-ins to gain overall and long standing brand loyalty.

I get how this matters for product-based companies — where there is a large disintermediation from the producer (say Cheez-Its) and the consumer (say… me.) There are layers of distribution entities from Cheez-Its to me and the marketers at Cheez-Its won’t know my name, where I live, why I like Cheez-Its, etc. unless I tell them.  Closing the gap makes sense.

For our clients, I realize we are taking everything Sitecore is aiming to do and inverting it. Working with hospitals and health plans, they touch their audiences consistently and more consumption of healthcare is *not* necessarily a plus — in fact, it might be a disaster if the ACO model goes through — unlike other industries.

We’re looking at how to leverage these same tools for an industry that may be increasingly handed a population to manage that it cannot know all that much about thanks to HIPAA. (A super cool Sitecore feature involves sucking in data from Facebook and emailing based on data therein– I can’t see any healthcare lawyer giving that a thumbs up.)

Our emphasis is using those same tools to better segment the audience that’s already there but clients are firewalled from knowing. Effectively, we’re flipping Sitecore on its head.

These topics are culled from live feeds — thanks to Twitter hashtags — and expose the conversational dynamics of people using social media.  Ice-T asked his followers this week to tweet with the hashtag of his TV show:

And it worked.  #SVU made it to the top Twitter trends, gaining exposure to the millions of people who use twitter.com as their entry point to tweet.

The shelf-life of these trends has shortened to days and hours, but their reach in such a short duration has increased.

So, how do we think about trending topics in healthcare?

There was a bit of a rage when, in a fit of whimsy, an Oregon Hospital released its Pink Glove dance, garnering 13 million views:

As with anything viral, there have been a series of copycat videos and even a competition which has emerged around this theme, where I pulled the above video from.  (I admit, I was joking when I proposed this topic and slightly surprised to find out the video had been uploaded a few days ago.)

Pink Gloves is certainly the closest thing to a hospital marketing generated Internet meme that I can think of, but granted, we’re talking about a rather small subset of potential YouTube videos.

So how what do you think of healthcare organizations — which propose to be sober, responsible community members — engaging in a Gangnam Style parody?  Does it diminish the overall brand?

And the original (for reference):

• Inform the visitor the page has indeed moved and is no longer available at that URL, instead suggesting they start over at the homepage or use the site search to find the content they desire.
• Send a true 404 response code to the search engines to make sure the page is removed from the search engine index.

Have Some Fun

Just because it’s an error page, a 404 page doesn’t need to be boring. A great website keeps a consistent tone of voice right through to the 404 error page. For example, Lego stays true to their brand with a great 404 page, and cute puppies are always a win-win. Who says healthcare can’t have a little fun too?  Check out our latest entry into the 404 fun with the newly launched www.drexelmedicine.org. (404 page here)

Do you have a favorite 404 page?

New Changes to Google Places Listings

In short, Google Places is gone as you’ve known it. The pages have a new look, and are much more aligned with the Google+ product. The rating system was overhauled, now following the Zagat 30-point scale. What hasn’t changed (at least yet) is the way you manage or verify your pages.

For now your Google+ business pages and new Google+ Local pages are still separate.  For a business owner, the new changes are purely cosmetic to this point. But the merger is coming soon according to Google. In fact, they’ve updated a handful of businesses with the full integration for other businesses to preview.

Google is obviously trying really hard to push Google+ into its other products, which is really interesting. Despite the cool features of Google+ as a social network, it doesn’t seem to be catching on with the public. Maybe it’s never going to be a Facebook-type destination website, but rather a product that enriches the other Google products you use every day such as search and Android.

The takeaway from the changes? If you don’t currently have a Google+ page for your hospital or network, it’s probably time.

As a strategy team, we take the same approach with our clients. We start off the year with a planning session and then, each quarter/month, we review and refine. With the pace of technology change today, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. Our plan helps us stay on course. This doesn’t mean we don’t modify the course in response to changing business goals and technologies but, more importantly, that we have a course.

As you chart your course for 2012, I’d like to share some successful projects from our clients in 2011, and some upcoming plans for their 2012.

1. Easier, faster and better reporting. Google Analytics recently released a new interface with multiple dashboards that allows you to create comprehensive reports in a custom dashboard that displays on a single screen.  Our clients love this time saver. It can be tedious going in to pull reports for different departments, but now you can create a custom dashboard for each of them.
2. Evaluating costs. Are you paying for printed doctor directories? IASIS and MedTouch partnered to provide online Print to PDF directories to put control in the user’s hands. It is now possible for a user to receive a dynamically generated directory, based on his/her unique search query results. This allows visitors looking for a specialist, like an allergist, to print to PDF filtered results from your Find a Doctor database. The prospective patient could then look back at his list later as he/she calls to find out which local allergist is accepting new patients.
3. Physician visibility. We all know ranking at the top of search engine results is vital for hospital services, but what about your physicians? Google your top physicians’ names and you’ll probably see sites like Healthgrades.com and vitals.com, but your website’s physician profile is nowhere to be found. When prospective patients are researching your physicians, it’s important they’re seeing YOUR website with all the information necessary to become a patient. Using advanced search engine optimization and search engine marketing (SEO & SEM) techniques can dramatically improve physician visibility, not to mention physician satisfaction.
4. Navigating the social media changes. In the last year we saw YouTube change its non-profit channel design benefit for hospitals (thankfully most of our clients had this on their 2011 list and were able to get in before the change), the introduction of Google+ pages for businesses, and numerous Facebook changes.  Having a roadmap and a strategist to provide a course and direction is vital in this fast-changing world of social connectivity.
5. Ad budget management. In 2011, MedTouch continued to grow as a leader in SEM for healthcare, demonstrating the value of search engine marketing through hundreds of successful campaigns. With proper setup, you can determine which online ads and which channels provide the best results. And “results” does not mean mere clicks, it means that visitors performed the actions you desire them to, such as calling a phone number or requesting information. Unless you’re tracking conversions and diving into data, ROI is a guess. Typically, Google and Facebook generate the most traffic, but Bing may deliver more conversions at a fraction of the cost. With SEM, you have the opportunity to do A/B testing and focus your ad budget on the channel that delivers the best result, not necessarily the most clicks.
6. Mobile tools for patients. Smartphone ownership expanded to over 50% of the population this year and our clients noted a marked increase in mobile traffic to their websites. Many clients allocated a portion of their budget to creating dedicated mobile sites to serve this segment; without one, mobile user experience is typically poor. Most mobile sites included Find a Doctor, to offer patients convenient contact look-ups on the go. A couple savvy clients dove right into mobile application development in 2011, well ahead of their peers, after identifying the accelerated pace of smartphone adoption in their markets.  ER Wait Times, GPS Directions, and Wayfinding were among the mobile application tools developed for patients.
7. Content Strategy. In 2011, MedTouch engaged in many content overhauls—from small site optimizations to complex audits and architectures to thousands of pages of brand new copy. As health care consumers’ expectations and capacities evolve, your content must become more targeted, strategic and tailored. Your key audiences—patients, visitors, referring physicians, researchers, donors, etc.—expect your web content to be a clear, personalized and intuitive extension of your care mission. The results for these clients were more action-oriented and relationship-building content, blog strategies and more informed and trained teams. The biggest content killers include: a lack of content speaking to basic patient questions (ie. surgery length and recovery time), too technical content, the absence of sound and user-friendly information and a lack of ongoing governance methodologies.
8. Accurate Google Places information and map markers. Patients searching from mobile devices are presented Google Places results above organic results. Google is the first place they’ll find your hospital listed. Chances are, if they’re searching for you from their phone, they’re looking for a doctor, directions, or a phone number. You’ll want to be sure they can complete these tasks quickly or they may start looking elsewhere. Many hospitals have struggled with inaccurate Google Places information, as Google doesn’t make it easy to take control of your listing or change your locations in Google Maps.
9. Prioritize service lines in your marketing and think outside the box. You can’t always achieve the results you want by focusing on the “whole enchilada.” Optimizing your entire website or running online ads on all your service lines is both labor-intensive and costly. Test a new idea on a service line first to see what works.  You’ll provide measurable returns on your investment and gain invaluable insight into your market that you can take back and use to refine your overall online strategy down the line.
10. Finally, the ability to associate content dynamically on your website. You can now display patient testimonials or related health news on a condition page by tagging the content within a content management system (CMS). Take the grunt work out of maintaining your website next year by making strategic enhancements in how you store and release new content through your CMS. Talk to your in-house or partner CMS providers on how to upgrade.  Your webmaster or marketing go-to on the front lines will love you for it.

I’m excited about 2012, the strategic roadmap kickoffs and the opportunity to work with our amazing existing clients and the MedTouch strategy team. Have a project in mind for us? We would be happy to hear from you!

Happy New Year

Google has introduced “sitelinks” to its results pages. If a page shows up in the coveted number one position, it is now often rewarded with this search game-changer.  The reward: real estate, and lots of it.

Sitelinks are links under a website’s main Google listing. These links lead to subpages within a website. Currently, Google will display up to twelve of these sitelinks, giving a number one listing a vast amount of screen space.  Here’s an example:

Google has said that it is improving its algorithm to present the most relevant subpages in the sitelinks. For now, it looks fairly random.  And, not all browsers support sitelinks yet.

So, what’s the answer to the question, what is the most important meta tag? The sitelinks are speaking, yelling, even: ALL OF THEM.

A well-crafted meta tag strategy will help steer Google’s crawlers in the right direction. With proper title tags and meta keywords, you can tell Google to put this in the sitelinks, but not that, please.

The above example for Virtua is an example of a good meta tag strategy. Notice that relevant keywords are displayed boldly and notice, more importantly, that the mini-descriptions under the links are all different. Even though they have very little space to explain themselves, they get the job done.

Here’s an example of poor meta tag strategy:

Notice that the descriptions repeat themselves and that they aren’t very, well, descriptive. Note also the page titled “2.” I’m sure that’s not what I was looking for.

Because of SEO fads suggesting that meta tags are not as important as we thought they were, many webmasters allow computers to auto-populate their meta tags. This puts the same keywords and description on virtually every page. This will cause the descriptions in the sitelinks to be repetitive and stale.  Each page needs its own unique set of meta tags.

The number one position on Google is the holy grail of Internet searching. The battle does not end there, though. Not only do we have to fight for the top, but we have to look classy when we get there. You can show up early for a job interview, but if you didn’t iron your shirt, your chances of landing the job aren’t great.

17% of cell phone owners have used their phone to look up health information, and 25% of Americans use social media as a health resource. As this trend increases, hospitals will want to take advantage of the opportunity to communicate with patients via social media and mobile channels.

Do sites like Foursquare disrupt the traditional balance of power between hospitals and patients?

Foursquare provides patrons the opportunity to review a facility and provide "tips" to improve the experiences of other patients.

Recently, many patients have started to publicly check-in at hospitals, which can lead to worry or excitement on the part of the patient’s friends. Encouraging the use of such location-based applications could disrupt the balance of power between hospitals and their patients. The ability to check in at and review a hospital provides the patient with more power and places more accountability on the physicians to run a smooth practice at a hospital that may now be under the public scrutiny of its social media-savvy clientele.

Privacy Concerns

Another big concern is privacy: when a patient posts a status update about his or her condition at the hospital, questions are raised as to the legality of such an action. On the one hand, patients may update Facebook or Foursquare or Twitter with medical information that may be considered private and confidential by the doctor or hospital; on the other, doesn’t the patient have the right to share their health information if they so choose? Ultimately, hospitals can’t control what individuals say in updates or tweets or reviews, but as more information on this budding location-centered market is gathered, privacy regulations may be introduced to keep confidential what needs to stay private.

The future of social media and healthcare could bring a few interesting developments:

1)       GPS tracking of on-call doctors could become the modern pager

There’s potential for non-invasive tracking applications to see where on-call doctors are in relation to the facility (which provides a more accurate estimate of when they’ll arrive to provide care).

2)       Social media can be used to gain insight into the patient experience

If hospitals were to pay attention to reviews and tips on Yelp and Foursquare, they could use that data to get a better idea of what patients are really saying and thinking about the facility or its employees and thereby attempt to improve the patient experience accordingly.

When Foursquare users aren’t checking in, they might be posting “tips,” or short reviews about the place they’re visiting. Yelp is a site with a similar purpose that used to be confined to food and drink – now, people have begun to grade physicians, hospitals, and healthcare services. Because users are generally honest in their grading, helpful information and data can be gathered that could help to improve or benefit the hospital or practice in the future. For example, if many users on Yelp and Foursquare rate a hospital’s parking facilities as lacking, the hospital could use that information to fix their parking issue and make the hospital experience better for everyone.

3)       Social media could be used to identify patient health trends

If a patient comes in complaining of heart distress, his doctor could reference the patient’s check-ins at different places (such as gyms, steakhouses, or fast food chains) to help form a better picture of the patient’s health behaviors.

With technology constantly improving and expanding, it’s up to other industries to stay relevant and keep up, and the healthcare industry could benefit greatly from active use of social media sites like Foursquare.

I’m often asked to prove the value of social media and Elizabeth’s analysis and results were so interesting I asked if I can share.

Below is a summarized version of her report:

PCRMC Physicians Group was able to go live with their Facebook account the week of May 1, 2011.  During the first week the page was very plain, had no character and no ads.  The only likes that were received were those of the administrators.

The group had decided to experiment with a few ads to see if it would ignite an increase in their page’s likes.  The spark was lit and a trend was started. The data that was received from the Facebook reporting site showed consumers would click the ad, but only 20-40% would take the extra step and like the page, or be a follower of the page.

After consulting with MedTouch, PCRMC Physicians Group decided to invest in a personalized landing page. This presents the visitor with a welcome page that provides answers and calls-to-actions instead of the Facebook Wall. PCRMC saw a tremendous change as a result of this new landing page, which the Facebook ad redirected too.  Over 80% of consumers that clicked the ad also Liked the page.

Before adding the About Us Welcome page, PCRMC had 100 Likes. Two weeks after launching the About Us Welcome tab, they had 300.

Thanks PCRMC for partnering with MedTouch!

If you would like to know more about Facebook pages, please contact our business development team to start a conversation.

For now, Google is discouraging businesses from creating Google+ profiles, instead promising a business experience to launch later this year which will “far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses”.

It’s anybody’s guess at this point what this might look like. Some have speculated on a style similar to Facebook business pages. Sean Percival posted a concept on his blog suggesting tight integration with Google Maps, Google Offers and more.

Improving Google Places
Personally I’d really love to see Google+ and Google Places join forces for one unified Google business experience, giving businesses greater control of what users see and an easier way for customers or patients to share their experiences.

Today, there’s very little sharing within Google Places. Google relies heavily on 3rd-party sites like vitals.com for reviews and business information, which is often wrong. Reviews on Google Places are often tied to a single physician instead of the facility and users rarely utilize Google’s built-in rating system for positive remarks.

Hospitals have already invested time and effort into building (and often correcting) Google Places accounts. Allowing businesses & users to interact via the Google+ and “+1” button could reduce Google’s reliance on 3rd-party sites and actually feed better data to Google on which hospitals or clinics are deserving of more attention, aka better search engine ranks.

Most importantly, I’d really hate to see one more Google business presence to claim and verify if it’s anything like Google Places verification.

Has your hospital created a Google+ profile? If so, we would love to hear about what you’re doing.

Join my circle on Google+