By: Melissa Gonzalez

I was recently tasked with determining how relevant localized social marketing like Four Square, Groupon and Facebook Places is to the healthcare industry. As an engager, it’s easy to overlook the obvious progression of social media changes, but through a marketing lens the changes and patterns that are beginning to shape and drive consumer habits are quite enlightening.

We all know the healthcare industry has been slow to adopt social media; for an often very conservative industry it’s uncharted territory. But recently the industry is beginning to accept its importance and get involved, realizing it’s vital to continue to engage with consumers/patients where they are – and right now, they’re online.

Here are some recent social media trends on the rise. Don’t be surprised if you find healthcare joining the ranks of the many small businesses that are using these resources to get their brand in front of the computer and most of all, move the needle.

Group-Buying Websites: Groupon and Living Social

Group-buying sites like Living Social and Groupon grew ten-fold in the last year. Living Social had 7 million unique visitors in March alone, up 27 percent from the previous month according to ABC News, April 2011. With Facebook small business accounts growing daily, users are able to share local deals sent to their email with online friends and social media networks.

Tim O’Shaughnessy, the CEO of LivingSocial says, “The business model is based on two fundamentals: People can’t resist a bargain; and small businesses are always looking for more customers.” It’s astonishing how one little email can generate more business than some could have ever possibly imagined and it’s because of the ease of use to share these deals with friends over social media.

Healthcare providers that would work the best with Groupon include dentists and optometrists who can perform a routine service that is often paid out of pocket. Groupon could be considered a strong alternative to the typical couponing they might otherwise do.

Targeted Localized Marketing: Foursquare, Facebook Check-ins and Google Places

When trying to engage and interact with your consumers/ patients within their community, healthcare providers will need to take a more localized approach.

Targeted localized marketing in a more defined geographic area can benefit consumer engagement, especially in day-to-day transactions that surround family life such as grocery shopping, getting an oil change or going to the doctor’s office. Web searches for products and services in specific geographic regions or neighborhoods done on the computer or smart phone are growing increasingly common; i.e. “Dentist Summerlin Las Vegas.” If you are a dentist in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas, you want to make sure your practice shows up in search results such as Google Maps.

Applications such as Foursquare, Facebook Check-ins and Google Places lets consumers share their whereabouts with the ability to comment. In fact, some businesses have gone as far as to incentivize checking-in with coupons codes for discounts on products and services. Facebook Places has benefited from this high level of adoption, soaring past Foursquare to reach a 32 percent current usage rate; while Foursquare’s location-based service has remained steady over the past two quarters.

It appears that the important message for healthcare is this – stay current with localized social media and how your consumers engage with it, and make sure you’re brand is involved.

Follow Melissa on Twitter at mmariegonzalez or contact her at melissa@massmediacc.com  

By: Jocelyn Torres

What does the department of motor vehicles, an airport and a doctor’s office have in common?

They all make you wait long hours in waiting rooms.

One of the top complaints that people have about doctor’s offices is the waiting rooms. Patients are waiting too long, being treated poorly or simply just bored. Some healthcare companies have focused their attention and budgets on improving online communication but unfortunately have forgotten about basic face-to-face interaction, which happens mostly in waiting rooms.

Improve your waiting room interaction by staying away from these three common mistakes.

1. Rude Receptionists

Some patients will overlook a rude receptionist if they have a great relationship with their doctor. However if no previous relationship exists and your first contact with a particular doctor’s office treats you rudely, chances are you are not going to book that appointment. It is important to remember that all employees not just the doctors are brand ambassadors for your company.

2. Boredom

Keep your patients busy. Provide them with brochures to read, surveys to answer, your social media tags, etc. The key is to give your patients something to do that will benefit both themselves and the practice.

3. 30 plus minute wait

Reducing the waiting time may not be an option; however there are ways to make the long wait bearable. The Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health in New York updated their waiting room to include TV’s with health information and family-friendly cable programming, computers and adjustable group sitting areas. In addition, they allow patients to use their cell phones. Ideally you want to make your patients forget that they are waiting in a doctor’s office.  

Do not waste an opportunity to market your brand and communicate with your patients.

Treat your patients politely and be considerate of their time, and you will see an improvement in your patient’s attitude towards and investment in the brand.

Follow Jocelyn on Twitter at @Jocy_Torres or contact her at jocelyn@massmediacc.com  

By: Carmesha Thompson

Today, more and more professional industries have embraced social media as a means to grow their audience and communicate with them as well. They have turned this 21^st phenomenon into more than just applications that individuals use for their personal relationships. Companies are utilizing social media to enhance B2C relationships.

However, unlike other industries, many in the medical industry have been slow to incorporate social media into their overall marketing plan. They are wary of doing so, because they may see it primarily as a method of socializing with friends and/or do not understand how their practice could fit in the social media mix. What those who are disinclined must understand is that Facebook, Twitter and others can be just another way to communicate with their audience, and unlike other methods, it’s a way to directly communicate with an audience whose attention you have.

Here are a couple of reasons that support the claim that social media is especially useful for healthcare practices:

Your Patients Are Not Just Receiving Their Health Information Online, But They Are Receiving Them Through Social Media

Gone are the days when patients would make an appointment with their doctor to ask a question concerning their health and patiently wait for the day of that appointment to take place. Now people are taking more of an active role in finding out answers to their health questions and self-diagnosing themselves by discovering the answers on their own rather than waiting on their doctor. Thanks to the Internet, the general public has thousands upon thousands of medical resources at their disposal that they can utilize immediately with a click of their mouse.

A survey done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that 80 percent of Internet users look online for information on health topics such as a specific disease or treatment. What’s more, social media (Facebook above all) is a primary resource for users searching for health information. Over 60 percent of all Americans have joined at least one social network and over 40 percent of respondents in a survey by the National Research Corp rely on social networking for health information, and nearly all of those people (94 percent) turn to Facebook. Americans using social media for healthcare are affluent and on average are 41 years old.

Social Media Provides A Voice To Your Practice

Social media allows you to humanize and personalize your practice by providing a voice that speaks directly to your patients. It also allows for two-way communication to take place between you and your patients instantly. You should be constantly posting useful health information relevant to your practice that you know your patients are interested in and may have questions about. Your patients’ perception of your practice as being a trusted source of information and expertise is boosted and appreciated as this brings information to them that they otherwise would have had to scour the Internet for.

For example, during flu season general physicians should post tips on ways to avoid the flu as well as information on immunizations. For any information that you post, patients can ask questions or respond. Also as mentioned above, patients are looking online for their health questions and may often receive information that is wrong or incorrectly apply the context of information they found. If you are the one distributing the facts, then you know what your patients are receiving is correct.