Written by Natalie Moore on May 4, 2015

The 6 Musts for Your Online Patient Engagement Strategy

We are pleased to introduce Michael Krivich FACHE, PCM as part of our Leadership Series, Forward: The Consumer Experience. Mr. Krivich is a marketing executive and a healthcare blogger with an international following. He is the creator of Healthcare Marketing Matters, a blog dedicated to advancing healthcare. Follow him on Twitter, @mkrivich.

How can a hospital or health system creative group create a sustainable, engaging and experienced based social media strategy and program – all while loving it (and your results)?

Use of social media for engagement and experience management can be a hit or miss proposition without the right strategy and resourcing. When one considers that the healthcare consumer and patient have over 145 touch-points that impact experience, engagement and decision making choices, now social media is a strategic business imperative, not a nice-to-have.

Healthcare provider marketing is no longer about grandiose statements or claims of excellence without proof. That doesn’t work in a retail consumer-driven market. Now marketing is about meaningful engagement, managing the patient experience and meeting the healthcare consumer’s needs and expectations. A tall order indeed that takes a strategic business outlook and focus on meeting the needs of the healthcare consumer – meaningfully engaging and managing the experience across all touch-points, (not just one to two).

What does the healthcare provider need?

First, providers and their marketers need an understanding of the social media channels they need to leverage. Here are social media update examples with the most relevant channels:

Twitter: Our world-class hospital with nationally renowned physicians uses a new MRI
Facebook: Your world-class hospital with nationally renowned physicians, the latest technology and Centers of Excellence has a new MRI to diagnose many conditions
YouTube: Here’s a video of the new hospital MRI in action
Instagram: Here’s a picture of the new hospital MRI
Google+: Our world-class hospital with nationally renowned physicians, the latest technology and Centers of Excellence has a new MRI to diagnose many conditions
Blog: Everything patients need to know about having an MRI, and, the story of how our world-class hospital, with nationally renowned physicians, the latest technology and Centers of Excellence uses the new MRI to diagnose many medical conditions
Pinterest: Everything you didn’t know about an MRI (Use photo of new technology branded with hospital logo and link to blog post)

Now what? (Alignment. Alignment. Alignment.)

How do you align your plan? Align it with clinical; with physicians; with executive leadership; with the business plan and with the entire healthcare enterprise.

Effective social media utilization does require alignment and integration. Danger alert: it can be tempting to assign social media to one person and start publishing and throwing a lot of stuff against the wall. To be successful in social media, it takes planning and execution that is in alignment with the healthcare enterprise and the messaging is integrated across the social media channels and platforms that the healthcare consumer and patient are found. It comes down to these key factors.

1. Do the market research.

If you don’t know what social media platforms the healthcare consumer and patients are engaging in, then how can one decide what social media platforms to choose? Know the audience. Know the markets. Know what information the healthcare consumer is searching out. Know what social media platforms they use to gather information and engage. Secondary research may give one clues in how to proceed with primary market research in the hospital service area, but these are guides only.

Build a plan for social that is integrated into the overall marketing plan and strategy of the hospital or health system. Your plan should include goals and objectives, key messages and engagement strategies. Explain how it will be measured and evaluated and who is responsible for executing the plan. (What gets measured gets support.) Obtain executive buy-in and if leadership does not support the plan or is not engaged, stop and fine-tune your strategy.

3. Constantly evaluate.

Learn what the healthcare consumer does and doesn’t like. Test messages and engagement strategies. Fail fast and become the learning organization and not repeating the same mistakes.

4. Engage and build a meaningful relationship.

Engage and build a memorable and lasting relationship with your healthcare consumer. Stay away from meaningless fluff and anything that looks like it’s centered solely around the organization (instead of your consumer). And listen very carefully to what is being said in social media so you can respond accordingly.

5. Commit to a full-time Marketer.

Allocate the resources for someone to manage your digital reputation full time all the time. Don’t say the hospital doesn’t have it. Reallocate the marketing budget to social media from more traditional areas.

6. Invest in your Creative.

Invest in staff training on social media, identifying the skills sets that may be lacking and if need be, hire from the outside. Experience counts as the healthcare enterprise does not have the time for trial and error. Budget marketing IT resources and systems for measurement, automation and reporting on social media channels and activities.

Social media done right will drive engagement, revenue and growth. It will also provide the healthcare enterprise with a continuous presence in the market that supports and is at the core of all of your marketing activities. Remember, presence builds preference.