The Healthcare Public Relations & Marketing Society of Greater New York released research stating that 34 percent of consumers are using social media to search for health information. This surge in internet traffic illustrates that social networking is vital to medical marketing and advertising.

Using Twitter For Live Feedback

Twitter provides the ability to disseminate information very quickly in a concise format that is easy to follow. While this media might not be appropriate for press release, a medical marketing agency can utilize Twitter for some interesting and unique advertising opportunities.

There have been a small number of hospitals that Tweeted during a live procedure from the operating room. This kind of forward thinking creates a positive buzz for both finding new patients and getting the attention of fellow professionals as well. For example clinics could use Tweets to advise patients about waiting times, doctor availability or office hours during holidays.

Reach Out To Traditional Media Through Non-traditional Avenues

Journalists for traditional media outlets are using a wide variety of internet sources, viral marketing outlets, and social networking sites to support their reports and to break new stories first. A blog, Twitter account, or social profile is more than just a vanity piece; it is an effective promotional technique.

A medical clinic or hospital can use social networking and media to gather attention in addition to traditional press releases. Even small snippets of interesting news is enough to warrant further attention into a particular client’s unique staff, procedures, or any other distinguishing feature. When news is generated in this way, it comes across as genuine and spontaneous, which it is, and helps reach new audiences who might not be inclined to pay attention to press releases and other such statements.

Emergency Communication

Emergency situations are not an opportunity to advertise a particular service or facility, but a facility’s performance and response to crisis is a great way to showcase a superior dedication to patients. Better serving patients and their families with social media outlets can also allow two-way communications. For example during hurricane season, a medical marketing agency in Sarasota FL or Tampa FL could connect with their clients connect with their patients giving helpful advice in case of injury or emergency. These same avenues can also be used to inform other professionals; when the radio waves are jammed pack during an emergency, an alternate contact method can mean the difference between life and death.

Overall, a medical marketing agency would do well to leverage social networking outlets to further promote their clients. The do-it-yourself atmosphere of blogs and tweets also allows for a highly customized and personal face to be associated with any particular facility or staff.

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If the clients won’t arrive to you, then you can go to your clients. At least for item sales, that is. A new trend that many laser clinics and medical spas is adopting is on the internet product sales. It’s attractive for many reasons:

1. It adds an accommodating product for your current client base which may be too busy to stop in and grab their own items. Convenience is the way of life these days!

2. It highlights your laser clinics and medical spas to new customers.

3. It produces sales revenue that you might not have been exposed to prior to.

4. It’s comparatively easy to manage and will not need much staff time (i.e., low overhead).

5. It will give you the chance to stand out in comparison with different competitive methods in your region.

6. And, it might even increase your SEO position!

Concerned about the price of shipping items? No worries! The U.S. Postal Service now provides price effective Priority Mail Flat Rate boxes in different sizes. So, if it fits, it ships!

Want to make your item line even much more appealing and personalized? Try custom label packaged items like the ones from Concept Labs, CBI Laboratories, or Natural Skin Care to name a few. In fact, you will find so numerous corporations providing white-label pores and skin care items today that you could be very specific with ingredients and additives. Just perform an online search for “private label skin care” and numerous companies will come up in your search results.

Some methods offer relaxing CDs for sale, aromatherapy products, sleep masks, robes, and numerous other comfort items that produce a sense of personalization with their customers and prospective clients.

How do you add an online store for your web site? Companies like Go Daddy provides “Quick Shopping Cart”, and there’s X-Cart, to name two. Like many internet-based businesses, you will find a ton of them. Just use the search terms “online shopping software” and see what comes up!

What comes up then could be your nonsurgical cosmetic medical spas revenue in an region which probably could use some enhancing!

The proof is in the numbers: 34% of consumers use social media to search for health information, according to research data from How America Searches: Health and Wellness.

While it’s easy to identify demand, many healthcare marketers are not exactly sure how they might tap into the social web to reach business goals. To help understand the possible applications, consider these five examples of how the social web can work for hospitals and others in the healthcare industry:

1. Tweet Live Procedures
In the past year, social media channels have helped open up an area of healthcare previously only available to a select few: the operating room.

Last February, Henry Ford Hospital became one of the first hospitals to Tweet a live procedure from an operating room. Doctors, medical students and curious non-medical personnel followed along as surgeons tweeted short updates on the kidney surgery to remove a cancerous tumor.

This healthcare marketing tactic can effectively create excitement and raise public awareness for a healthcare organization. In the case of the Henry Ford procedure, Twitter was abuzz that February day with users both re-tweeting the messages from Henry Ford and adding their own thoughts on the event. That buzz can help healthcare organizations both attract new patients and recruit medical personnel.

2. Train Medical Personnel
Some healthcare organizations are beginning to recognize the potential impact of leveraging social media channels to complement training efforts. Mayo Clinic Social Media Manager Lee Aase, for example, incorporated social media into a recent training presentation for local chapters of the American Heart Association. (Check out Lee Odden’s social media interview with Aase for Online Marketing Blog.) During the presentation, Aase leveraged Twitter to encourage participants to contribute to the discussion using the #AHAchat hashtag.

Weaving social media into healthcare training initiatives can provide multiple benefits, including:

• Giving trainees a forum to ask questions and quickly receive answers
• Providing presenters with immediate feedback from trainees (i.e., if trainees have mastered a concept of if more guidance is needed)
• Enabling organizations to complement healthcare marketing efforts by sharing slideshows, video or pictures from training sessions on social sites like YouTube or Flickr

3. Reach Mainstream Media
70% of journalists now use social networks to assist reporting, compared to 41% the year before, according to a  Middleberg Communications survey reported by PRWeek. With numbers that high, it only makes sense for healthcare marketers to leverage social media channels in order to achieve coverage by both mainstream media and industry publications.

As part of healthcare marketing efforts, organizations can use social media channels – including blogs, forums and microblogs – to share success stories from out-of-the-ordinary operations or treatments, medical research or other significant achievements. For example, when Aurora Health Care tweeted a knee operation in April, it received significant media attention, both from mainstream media and industry publications including Good Morning America, the local Milwaukee public radio network and Hospital Management Magazine.

4. Communicate in Times of Crisis
When disaster strikes – whether it be a flood, an earthquake or a terrorist attack – hospitals and healthcare providers are at the center of it all. Healthcare providers can leverage social media networks to provide real-time updates both for those directly affected by the crisis and those watching from afar.

During the November Fort Hood shooting attack, Steven Widman of Scott & White Healthcare – one of the hospitals that treated Fort Hood victims, used Twitter to provide up-to-the-minute news. Through Twitter, Widman provided updates on emergency room access and hospital operation status, re-tweeted news from Red Cross and communicated with reporters.

Widman shared with Found In Cache Blog the results of the social media crisis communication efforts:

• Twitter followers increased 78% in just three days
• Scott & White Healthcare was listed on the front page of Twitter as a “trending topic”
• The hospital’s YouTube channel was ranked the 79th most viewed non-profit channel during the entire week surrounding the crisis

5. Provide Accurate Information to Patients
73% of patients search for medical information online before or after doctors visits, according to this video from the HealthCare New Media Conference. With the magnitude of health information available on the web – both accurate and inaccurate – it’s likely that these patients can easily be misinformed.

By integrating social media into the healthcare marketing mix, organizations can share accurate, timely information regarding symptoms, diseases, medications, treatments and more. Social sites like Inspire are providing a forum for patients to share their health problems and questions about treatments with other patients, as well as qualified medical personnel. Inspire, for instance, partners with trusted health nonprofit organizations to ensure information is accurate and its community is safe.

The benefits of integrating social media into healthcare marketing efforts are priceless – from improving patient care to gaining media coverage to attracting new patients and staff. If your healthcare organization hasn’t already taken advantage of social networking channels, now is the time. If you’re having challenges getting approval, check out “Social Media in Healthcare Marketing: Making the Case“.

How else can healthcare marketers leverage social media to complement their efforts?

But in healthcare marketing, it’s an understatement to say that gaining buy-in for social media isn’t easy.

Consider for a moment just what healthcare marketers are up against:

• A multitude of privacy regulations
• Nursing and support staff shortages
• Increasing demand for services thanks to the quickly aging Baby Boomer generation

It’s not difficult to understand why some healthcare decision makers may be slow to adopt social media. But instead of throwing in the towel, consider these 5 tips for making the case for social media in healthcare marketing:

1. The movement has started. Healthcare may not be as quick to adopt social media as some other industries. But there are many hospitals and healthcare organizations that are quietly innovating on the social web, as Digital Influence blogger Rohit Bhargava suggests.

In a recent post, he points out that there are 367 US hospitals using social media. They are responsible for 10,000 Tweets from 267 Twitter accounts. When making your individual case for social media in healthcare marketing, leverage some of the great examples out there:

• Patients Like Me is an online community site created in 2004 by MIT engineers to allow patients to share information and their personal experiences. The goal is to connect patients with the same or similar diseases so they can rely on one another for support.
• The Center for Connected Health community website is designed for healthcare providers and policymakers. Community members can discuss controversial topics, and share best practices, new ideas, upcoming events and research.
• Individual hospitals are involved in social media efforts as well, Bhargava points out.  The Sarasota Memorial Hospital uses Twitter to answer patient questions and provide immediate customers service. In March, the Henry Ford Hospital used Twitter to connect with 1,900 people and answer questions during an actual brain surgery.

2. Patients—and potential future patients—are involved in social networks. A March 2009 report (pdf) from Nielson Online found that 67% of the global online population takes part in online communities. Plus, time spent on social media sites now accounts for almost 10% of all time online.

Clear and simple, patients use social media. Hospitals can utilize social channels to answer healthcare- or illness-related questions or simply provide medical information—just as the Sarasota Memorial and Henry Ford hospitals have done. If the numbers aren’t convincing enough, consider this: Patients are comparison shopping for hospitals, CNN reports.

With the increasing cost of healthcare and a growing number of available hospitals, it’s only natural. Social media is just one tool for hospitals and healthcare organizations to stay top of mind and relevant for patients.

3. Patients are online, and so are physicians. Consider a few statistics from Manhattan Research:

• As much as 89% of US physicians rely on the Internet as an essential part of their professional practice
• Approximately 64% of physicians now use smartphones
• 41% of physicians’ research takes place online The bottom line is physicians and other healthcare personnel are already spending time online.

Additionally, Doctors have their own social network, Sermo, which has over 110,000 practicing MD’s participating.

By embracing social media, hospitals and healthcare organizations can provide their current staff with a mechanism to share information and best practices. Plus, organizations can use their social efforts as an incentive when recruiting new employees.

4. Healthcare is top of mind, in the news and constantly changing. Particularly since the last presidential election, healthcare has been thrust into the public spotlight. From universal healthcare to electronic health records to patient privacy, there’s a new healthcare news item in the headlines every day. Social media can provide an effective mechanism for hospitals and healthcare organizations to stay involved in healthcare legislation discussion.

Take the lead from Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The hospital CEO is using his blog to discuss and comment on potential health insurance legislation – among other topics.

5. Social media efforts don’t have to involve a lot of costs. Budget cuts have become a common business practice across nearly all industries—hospitals and healthcare organizations are no exception. But social media campaigns don’t have to include a significant financial investment.

Consider the healthcare marketing success story from the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic in 2005 began utilizing social media channels to promote and increase downloads of its podcasts. The clinic posts the podcasts, along with video and text, on its blogs. It also leverages a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account and a YouTube channel. Downloads of the podcasts have increased by more than 8,000%, thanks to using three free social channels.

Be sure to read this recent interview with Lee Aase, the manager of syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic, where he offers specific advice for other companies on his “MacGyver-style” testing , developing a social media strategy, winning management approval and measuring social media ROI.

Post Script:  Here’s a newly launched blog in the B2B Healthcare category of Medical Imaging from McKesson (a TopRank client). It integrates with a Picture Archiving and Communication System web site.

These tips, of course, are just a starting point to help healthcare marketers make the case for social media in healthcare marketing and creating better connections with the healthcare community, hospitals and patients. What examples of social media in healthcare have you found worth pointing out?