Social Media and Healthcare Evaluation

We like this tip: Listen. See what this communicator learned at #mayoragan.

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"5 ways to start engaging patients

Listen more than you speak: It’s an easy enough adage. Social media is a great monitoring tool. Yes, you should be tweeting and posting relevant important information about your hospital or health system, but remember to listen. Use social media as a way to connect directly to your users—there’s nothing between you but a screen.Have a great story to tell: You don’t always need to have a super touching narrative to tell, but have stories in your back pocket you use to engage people. As human beings, we have an aching need to connect. Don’t forget how you learned your earliest lessons about life—from stories. Make sure you are using different types of stories as you engage with your communities.Focus on your content: Content is a BIG word for a much smaller word—information. Think about it. When you hear content, you probably get nervous. When you hear information, it’s an easy, familiar concept. So remember, your content is simply information molded into a recognizable content type for your users. Ads, direct mail, press releases, tweets and posts—they are all versions of content that people instantaneously recognize. Work this and choose the right type of content to best serve the story.Hire a community engagement manager—NOT a social media person: What I hear is that most hospitals want to hire a social media “guy” or “gal.” What you need is someone who understands how to transform your hospital’s online social activities into a community. Then the engagement part needs to happen by LISTENING to what patients, families and visitors want and need.Encourage teamwork: Community engagement is really the intersection of several different parts of an organization: marketing, PR, customer service, crisis communications and emergency response. Work with other people in those departments: ensure you are delivering the best possible experience for your customers as they engage with your brand using these technologies.
Via Camilo Erazo