AMEDNEWS.com – Twitter: What’s the use?

When I was on Twitter yesterday, I learned from Craig Gagnon, a fellow healthcare marketer and member of the Healthcare Marketing (#hcmktg) Twitter Group, about this great article by Pamela Lewis Dolan of  American Medical News on the subject of Twitter in healthcare. Specifically, Pamela’s article discusses early physician adopters and their use of Twitter. This topic has received a lot of attention of late, even in mainstream media, but Pamela’s article takes a nice, broad look at the subject, while bringing the reader along with educational points. The article even ends with a ‘Twitter 101′ addendum. This would be a good article to share with c-suite folks within hospitals who are still struggling to understand social media, and Twitter in particular.

“Doctors who keep tweeting stick around because they find it can be useful. Physicians most often use Twitter as an extension of their Web presence, a patient communication site, a marketing tool or a virtual water cooler with their colleagues. Or, maybe a combination of all four.” (Source: Pamela Lewis Dolan, American Medical News, June 29, 2009.)

The article introduces the reader to Dr. Wesley Young, an emergency physician in Honolulu who uses Twitter.  Dr. Young has already had patients select him because they recognized him from various social media sites. And he feels that this is just the beginning  – “a foreshadowing of things to come.” Imagine, you can grow your medical practice by building a following via social media. How does that change the way people look at Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Blogs?

Another physician, Dr. Peter Beck Kim, a family physician from California, plans to use Twitter to communicate with patients who want that kind of interaction. He’s doing this in large part because he sees more and more of his patients using smart phones to send messages and visit the Internet.

But Twitter does have its limits in terms of the length of messages one can send and the obvious privacy issues that come into play in healthcare.

“Physicians tend to gravitate to other physicians in most social networking mediums, and Twitter is no exception. But there are few curbside consults here. Besides the obvious privacy issues related to posting on a very public forum, there’s limited dialogue opportunity within the 140-character limit. What you often find is the virtual version of office banter and the occasional sharing of links to useful resources.” (Pamela Lewis Dolan, American Medical News, June 29, 2009.)

Check out the article online at http://tinyurl.com/mpbzrf.

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketer

Twitter Groups for Healthcare Marketers

A couple of weeks ago (6-8-09) I wrote a post on LinkedIn Groups for heathcare marketers. I guess it is only fair that I now add a post about Twitter Groups for healthcare marketers. It’s important that I admit upfront that what I know about social media changes and expands everyday. A friend of mine, Keith Fontaine, was doing a presentation on social media in healthcare and he described the process as trying to fly a plane while you build it. I agree! And I’ve found Twitter to be one of the more elusive platforms out there.

So, you probably know about Twitter. You may even have an account and post your 140 character tweets periodically. Well, Twitter also has groups that aggregate tweets from their members.  The groups, as with LinkedIn, are sorted by interest area. There’s very little risk in joining one of these groups, other than the fact that the members (your peers) see your tweets and they may, in fact, decide to follow you. At a minimum, I suggest you check out the groups available on Twitter (join Twitter first, if you haven’t already). You may be surprised to see some of you colleagues listed as members of these groups. To access a directory of Twitter Groups, go to http://twittgroups.com/directory.php.

What I’ve seen is that Twitter Groups provide rapid access to the most up-to-date information in the industry. The people who belong to these groups are sharing links to articles, blog posts, and news stories as they find them. After exploring these groups, you may find that this is exactly the kind of resource you’ve been looking for. The challenge is to avoid social media burnout when you find yourself belonging to numerous groups on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, along with following some of the leading blogs in the industry.

Here are some of the Twitter Groups that I follow:

Healthcare Marketing Group (hcmktg)

http://tgr.me/g/hcmktg

Healthcare Communications & Social Media Group

http://tgr.me/g/hcsm

Healthcare New Media Marketers Group

http://tgr.me/g/heatlhcarenewmed

Also, check out this terrific post by Christopher Boyer, on his Hospital Online Marketing Education blog – http://tinyurl.com/l4ckoy. Christopher’s post has a ton of helpful information about tweetups.

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketer

Random Acts of Generosity Lead to Gratitude

As a marketing strategy, the idea of routinely committing random acts of generosity may not be something that has occurred to you. When I was in Starbucks this morning, my friends behind the counter told me that my lattes were on the house. There was no special reason or occasion to warrant this action. They just did it. And I appreciated it. Heck, I’m writing about it in my blog.

This reminded me of an article a colleague passed along to me from the New York Times Magazine on June 21, 2009. The article by Rob Walker was titled “Favor Enhancement: Real gratitude can be profitable. How, then, to create it?” The article talks about how Hyatt Hotels plans to randomly do unexpectedly generous things for its guests as a marketing tactic. “The idea is that the unexpected nature of the fits will leave the customer not just pleased bu also grateful. Gratitude is a powerful, and potentially quite profitable, emotion to inspire.” (Source: NYT Magazine, June 21, 2009) You can check out the article online at http://tinyurl.com/klttwn.

For his article, Walker interviewed Robert Palmatier, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Washington and an author of an upcoming paper in the Journal of Marketing addressing the power of gratitude.

“While Palmatier says there has been a lot of research on the psychology of gratitude in the past five or six years, he points to an older study that’s now considered a classic. Participants waiting for an experiment to begin were treated in one of two ways: Some were unexpectedly given a soft drink by an assistant posing as another participant, and others were not. This seemed like an act of pure generosity on the part of a fellow participant, but it was actually part of the experiment. When the same assistant later asked subjects to buy raffle tickets, those who had been given a soda were far more likely to do so — and on average bought twice as many tickets as those who didn’t get a soda. This says something about the human animal, and Palmatier adds that other studies have found that we feel pleasure from reciprocating out of gratitude, and guilt when we don’t. This, he adds, is something a business can use to its advantage or, depending on how you look at it, exploit.” (Source: NYT Magazine, June 21, 2009)

When you’ve got a moment, check out this article online. Walker’s column is always interesting, and this one ventures into the realm of being thought provoking. And it certainly applies to how we treat patients in the healthcare environment. How far would it go in helping preference numbers for a given hospital, maybe yours, if the staff was coached to perform random acts of kindness and generosity? What kind of loyalty and positive word of mouth marketing would that generate?

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketer

Medicine in the Age of Twitter

There was recently a great article by Pauline W. Chen, M.D. in the New York Times. The article, titled “Medicine in the Age of Twitter,” tells a remarkable story from a physician’s point of view. According to Dr. Chen, “there continues to be anecdotal evidence regarding social media’s potential to strengthen the patient-doctor bond.” Social media represents an opportunity for physicians to reach out to patients who may otherwise be isolated. What makes this article compelling is Dr. Chen speaking about her personal experiences with patients and expressing her point of view as a physician.

Acknowledging that adding yet another communication tool for physicians to manage could become onerous, Dr. Chen goes on to point out some of the other potential benefits of social media in medicine:

“And social media can also help patients and physicians widen illness support networks, which in turn can augment the patient-doctor relationship. Health care providers have long known that patients with chronic or life-threatening diseases benefit from support groups made up of people who can sympathize and empathize with them. But such support is difficult for physicians or hospitals and clinics to cobble together when patients and families are physically isolated or homebound, or when they have an orphan disease like Eddie’s.” (Source: New York Times, June 11, 2009)

The question is, do medical professionals want to open up this kind of dialogue with patients? What happens when we open the flood gates? These are important question to address. Check out this terrific article online at http://tinyurl.com/ktbrt6.

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketer

Final Day for W3 Award Entries

Today is the last day to get your entries in for the W3 Awards. The W3 Awards recognize outstanding websites, web advertising, and online film and video.

You can enter today by going to www.w3award.com.

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketer

Facebook as a Marketing Tool, Part II

Sometimes these social networking communities and blogs actually work the way they are supposed to! Yesterday I published a post titled “Facebook as a Marketing Tool” on this blog. Warren Allan Johnson commented on my post, and gave me a link to another great article from Wired Magazine.  http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall

The article is titled “Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out.” Well worth the time it will take you to read it. You can access the article online by clicking here.  (http://tinyurl.com/njl8jx)

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketer

Facebook as a Marketing Tool

Earlier today I came across a great article in The Jakarta Post titled “Why Facebook can be a marketer’s best friend.” The title alone got my attention. It turned out to be a terrific article, explaining the difference between Facebook and some less sticky alternatives. Stickiness is Facebook’s claim to fame as a marketing tool. People tend to come back again and again. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“For stickiness, Facebook has managed to convince users to invest their time in the website. They can post links, photos, videos, status updates and other information that can be shared with others within their “life stream”, to keep even those living far away up to date with their thoughts and recent activities. So it will be just as if they are living next door. This results in users coming back again and again to the social networking site.

Most of the names on Facebook are real names, as users want their old friends from kindergarten to university to be able to find them. And instead of befriending just about anyone, as was done in other social networks, users on Facebook are a bit more cautious as they would like to share their life with only those they know and trust.

As a result, users have a vested interest in Facebook as it has become their representative online presence. Most of the information provided, such as age, location, occupation and others, makes up the ultimate user database that marketers would drool over. The social connections and norms on Facebook also prevent users from misbehaving (such as online swearing or digital bullying), compared with if they were anonymous on the website.” (Source: The Jakarta Post, June 22, 2009)

Check out the article online by clicking here.

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketer

Marketing in a Recession

This April I did a presentation for the Advertising Federation of Charleston on the topic of marketing during a recession. The title of the presentation was “Big ideas for your shrinking ad budget.” The talk was part of the AdFedU series of marketing seminars for small business owners and managers. I focused on cost effective ways to get the most out of your marketing – with particular emphasis on social media. I’ve edited the presentation into a number of 10 minute segments that appear below. The information is not healthcare specific, but it is certainly relevant to any marketer trying to do more with less. Enjoy!

Part 1 – Introduction: Echo Branding, Customer Service, Community Relations

Part 2 – Media Strategies in a Recession: Figure out Social Media, Listen to Customers

Part 3 – A Winning Formula; and Media Relations

Part 4 – Social Media (quick overview for small business owners)

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketer

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on Twitter in Healthcare

About a year ago I met Jane Sarasohn-Kahn online when I wrote a post about an article she had written. She commented on my post, and we eventually connected through LinkedIn. She is a well-known health economist, leads Think-Health, a health consultancy, and works with stakeholders throughout the health care industry. She is very much focused on the link between, or integration of, healthcare and technology.

Today I stumbled upon a new article of Jane’s titled “Using Twitter for EZ-HIT: Accessible, Fast Platform Has Much To Offer.” It was published on iHealth Beat on June 9, 2009. iHealthBeat is a publication of the California HealthCare Foundation. This is a very well thought out article about the ways in which Twitter is a useful tool for healthcare organizations. You can check out the article online at http://tinyurl.com/mmyekj. According to Jane, “While it may or may not be with us five or 10 years from now, Twitter has become a useable, engaging platform in health care. It’s accessible, useable and fun.”

Here’s a brief excerpt from Jane’s article:

“Twitter’s not just about Ashton and Oprah and CNN. Twitter is supporting engagement for all sorts of stakeholders in health. It’s easy-to-use and quick search interface embodies useful traits for EZ-HIT.”

Jane looks at the benefits of using Twitter for medical education, meeting reportage, quick motivational hits, organizing and communicating medical information. She also goes on to discuss the benefits of using Twitter for public health communication. If you’re trying to figure out Twitter, this article may help you to see the light.

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketer

Caregiver Stress: “The New Female Problem”

On Examiner.com there’s an article by Patricia Grace titled “The new ‘female problem’: Caregiver stress.” This is a succinct article about a growing problem for women: The role women typically play as the caregiver (for children, husband and parents) has a big impact on their mental health and well being.

“Businesses and the overall economy are negatively impacted by caregivers who are emotionally drained by the burden of their role. The financial component of caregiver stress is far more reaching than that individual’s wallet. The trickle down effect of the disorder hurts all of our pockets as it robs employers of nearly $ 33.6 billion.

Stressed out caregivers are susceptible to a whole host of problems as their immune system becomes compromised under the weight and associated guilt of care giving. Migraine headaches and GI disorders are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the impact caregiver stress has on individuals.” (Source: Examiner.com, June 12, 2009)

Caregiver stress can lead to higher levels of absenteeism along with higher utilization of health benefits and prescription plans. These individuals, their families and their employers all pay a price.

The author believes that most corporations do not have the tools needed to discuss and remedy this challenge. Check out the article online at http://tinyurl.com/lvv8rk. It resonated with me because I have a wife who doubles as an executive and a mom, and as the family caregiver. When there’s a crisis, she is more often than not the one who has to step in, alter her schedule, and find a way to cope with all of the competing demands for her time and attention. On a day like today, when I’m on a business trip in Boston, she has little recourse but to handle things on her own. This adds a level of stress to everything she does.

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketer