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The Marketing Edge, one of the longest running marketing and public relations podcasts.
Host Albert Maruggi weaves his 25 years of marketing and PR experience across business, technology and national public affairs in interviews with newsmakers, authors and business leaders.
Maruggi is a frequent speaker and conducts workshop sessions on new media. For more information or to discuss your business challenges and goals, e-mail him.
This year a marketing firm that will go nameless gave me a gift. They showed me the importance of being relevant. It was an interesting lesson that I turned into an entertaining podcast, but it’s better if you be the judge of that.
The story begins with the presentation I gave about social media in health care to the Minnesota Medical Group Management Association this summer. The group is a professional association for those in clinical practices for the most part. They attended the presentation to discuss how social media is being used by health care delivery practices. Here is the summary of that presentation.
The conference had around 300 or so attendees, and exhibitors. I ended up on the list of attendees I suspect because two weeks after the conference I received a prospecting letter from the account manager of a marketing firm that either attended or exhibited at the show. This is where the fun and the lesson begins.
The firm sent about 6 letters, 2 emails, and a cute, well designed die-cut, four-color direct mail piece. The assumption of all these communications was that Provident Partners, yes, the PR/marketing firm that produces this podcast and has been providing consulting services in using social media in healthcare, was instead a medical clinic.
Imagine my dismay when I was told that this marketing firm could help me with my social media marketing to seniors looking for healthcare. Am I missing something here? No, they just skipped the part of marketing that says know your prospect.
I just didn’t have the heart to call this local Twin Cities based firm to tell them they should check their prospect list first. No, instead I thought I could learn a thing or two from their work. I am as much a student of how business and people communicate as I am a practictioner. By remaining on their list, it reinforced for me the importance of being relevant to any prospect. If that means you need to spend 80% of your time researching prospects before you contact them, then that’s what you have to do. When a company takes the time to learn about each of the prospects on their lists, then, and only then, can they begin to establish a relationship of value.
In this case, it’s one marketing firm not checking the records on a conference list and sending prospecting materials to another marketing firm. No harm no foul. What if however, it’s that same methodology for a clinic. Would a cancer patient get a marketing piece for Lamaze class, or a “thanks for being our patient” direct mail piece to a patient who has passed on? Exactly, it does make a difference.
It’s a lesson we can all learn from and apply all year long. Focus on being relevant and the prospect will react favorably. What amount of time do you spend on researching prospects? Are mass lists useful in lead generation for health care?
If you are interested in more about social media in health care we have created a separate blog called Social Media for Health Care
This Marketing Edge podcast focuses on health care and includes an interview with Leigh Ginther director of marketing and public relations of Swedish Covenant hospital in Chicago. Ginther describes the logic, strategy and resources they used to create Swedish Covenant social media programs.
Ginther also discusses how they identified resources of physicians to blog and deliver unique content that attracts patients. They spent some months learning the communities first and aligned those that were most active online with the appropriate service lines
They also have a program geared to general hospital offerings and awareness.
We get into the details and practical issues of resource allocations for social media programs and whether it helps achieve the hospital’s goals.
HEALTHCAMP MINNESOTA - Come On Down October 24 .
Social Media No Slam Dunk for Health Care
Along with all the hype and hypesters attempting to apply social media to anything that breathes, health care in many cases, is a cautious participant, taking time to evaluate what it means to be social.
While other industries can dip there toe in the water, a subjective opinion about a big screen TV isn’t going to kill me, health care opinions can have consequences. Checking a box once you create a Facebook Fan Page does not a social media strategy make.
HealthCamp Minnesota is a conference on Saturday, October 24 that will discuss the consequences of social media, technology, and ailment communities in healthcare. In many cases there are clear benefits, however it’s not that simple. Is our culture ready to take the time to learn about preventative care? Is rating a doctor something a patient can do accurately beyond beside manner without any medical knowledge? Will medical devices come to market quicker because companies are interacting with social ailment communities? If yes, somebody better tell FDA.
Health care is a complex topic involving the legitimate differences about the interpretation of scientific evidence and the emotional pull of life and death. One of the keynote speakers at HealthCamp Minnesota is Rachele Chrismer who will share an inspirational story about her son’s diagnosis of Infantile Neuroaxonal Dystrophy which took her to 7 different states, many false hopes, and dozens of hours of research.
Lee Aase manager of syndications and social media for the Mayo Clinic will open the program with an overview of the behind the scenes impact social media has had at the Mayo Clinic. Panel members from Blue Cross Blue Shield, AbbeyMoor Medical, Fairview, IHC Health Solutions, CG3 Consulting, Health Grades, and the National Marrow Donor Program, among others. This is a camp format which means the attendees will be encouraged to contribute to the dialogue of each panel. Register for the program here. There is also a welcoming reception for attendees on Friday evening,
Mr. President, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Given your comments about health care reform in your weekly radio address yesterday, I thought you would enjoy Mr. Levy’s perspective on building a culture of improvement in health care, articulated in this Marketing Edge podcast. As one Twitter user to another, you both understand the dynamic created when leadership, ideas, and communication come together.
Mr. President, you clearly understand social media from a challenger’s perspective. Mr. Levy has had considerable practice with it in a leadership position. He’s been blogging since 2006 and has faced medical, labor and financial crises in transparent and thoughtful ways. Mr. Levy has built a culture of improvement in large part because of the shared desire among the health care professionals at BIDMC to provide quality care, to always improve their performance. They have done this by being transparent and committed to the ultimate goal of providing excellent health care. Mr. Levy believes, as I believe you do, that the status quo in health care needs to be more open to the concept of improving through a discussion of failures, the uncovering of vested interests that prevent attaining a shared goal, and a clear focus on long-term solutions that are in tune with the changes in our world.
Social media can be used as a partisan echo chamber which will produce little if any positive change. For those who want the status quo, this will be a good thing. Used in this manner, social media will die a quick death as soon as the next Shiny New Object comes along. However, in the hands of individuals in a society committed to being better, lustful for learning, and accepting of the synergy of ideas exchanged around the world in real-time by any individual, not just the ruling classes, then social media holds potential far beyond its role in health care reform.
The conversation in this edition of the Marketing Edge podcast will benefit every CEO regardless of the industry, even the CEO of the United States.
I will explore this issue with Dr. Jeff Segal of Medical Justice, the organization that attempts to put context around the patient discussion of their visits with physicians, even if that means limiting patient’s ability to blog about their physician. We will be joined by Amy Tenderich of Diabetes Mine. Tenderich has built a tremendous community about diabetes and through this community’s active blogging is generating shared knowledge to improve diabetes treatment.
Join the conversation Should Patients Blog About Doctors live, Friday, May 8 at 1:00PM Central Time on Blog Talk Radio. You can call in (646) 716-4882, ask questions or send in questions on the @AlbertMaruggi Twitter tag. This show is brought to you by Social Media Throwdown.
The world is full of good Samaritans who give of themselves for others. Let’s focus on two, Ed Bennett of the Maryland University Medical Center and David Ekrem, Manager, Web Development at the Mass General Hospital for Children. They compiled a list of hospitals using social media, specifically at least one of four types of social media blogs, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Ed and I chat in this podcast about why and how hospitals are gradually dipping their toes into the social media pool. Bennett weaves ways to use social media in with new media tools like, webcasts, podcasts, and video of surgeries, long before it became fashionable to Tweet about it. In the podcast, Bennett, a web manager, makes a good case for marketers and PR folks to work with IT in this life and death environment.
There are hundreds of ways to use these tools, enough to give anyone a headache. Allow me to outline one use for each medium.
Blogs – A blog is a place for an on going dialogue, detail, and to build a body of work that helps brand a facility or an individual. Dr. John Butler is a physician at the
Arden Hills Clinic in Minnesota. He recently caught my attention with a post about the iPhone as an essential medical instrument. His blog helps ease the anxiety about medicine in general and informs about specific issues about which he is familiar. It warms us up to Dr. Butler.
Facebook – St. Jude’s Childrens Research Hospital there are so many things this Facebook page does well but I share it not because other hospitals should take on the same thing, but to show how versatile this platform can be. It can be used by patients to share their stories on your wall. When you visit this site to see those stories, bring a tissue. It uses widgets in conjunction with the page to raise donations. It uses multimedia to inform. And yes, it shares a personal side asking NCAA bracketology questions and other aspects of being part of a social community.
Twitter – Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, VA and Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, GA are good examples of hospitals that use Twitter as a newsfeed. Little nuggets of news from the hospital, events like parenting classes or links to information about faster radiation treatments are a good diet of information for hospitals.
IDEA
I have not seen this application for twitter yet, so I’ll share the idea. If you’ve seen it from a healthcare provider let me know. If not, and you like the idea, take it and tell me. I think a facility that has a specialty in hearts or bariatric surgery can do a specific feed related to diet and exercise. It would contain information about calorie count, fast food healthy choices, reminders to do 2 flights of stairs, and all coordinated to an appropriate time of day. This feed is best send as a text message to your phone since it will be a good reminder to push away from that lunch table in time to take the long way back to the office.
Comment line 206-600-6887 – or leave a comment below and we’ll donate a food item to a St. Paul food shelf.
Come Hang and Learn in San Francisco
Discount code for Marketing Edge readers and listeners
Here is a $100 discount code for Marketing Edge readers and listeners, SNCRFRIEND if you only want to attend the New CommForum (see agenda) or if you want to attend the New CommForum and the InBound Marketing Summit use this code NCFFOS to get $200 off the listed price if you plan on attending both conferences.
As more consumers use the web to research their medical needs and choices, the greater the demand for some type of performance metrics in healthcare delivery. This dynamic taking place in healthcare is causing greater competition among providers, and more healthcare marketers to look for ways to tell their story.
Healthgrades dot com is one of several sites that provide detailed reporting on physician performance, legal issues, and hospital outcomes. Within the last year, surveys of hospital outcomes mandated by Medicare are now available to the public. These points of data are piling up to create a mountain of information for patients to sort through as they make a decision on healthcare. To be sure, reliance on a general physician and friends and family are important, but checking that information against a report card gives a bit more substance behind a decision. Other physician rating sites include Find a Doc, Vitals, and RateMDs
In this podcast with Christopher Boyer of Healthgrades.com , we explore some of the reasons why millions of people are using these sites. We get into what tactics hospital marketers should be evaluating to tap into the stream of information patients and their families are accessing.
The most important indicator to examine social media and understand the impact of rating sites is the powerful element of “intended search” in healthcare. Those searching for healthcare information are usually doing so because of a need. It is more than likely it is an urgent need. Healthcare is different in this regard that many other industries. People can causally shop around a vacation destination or a car without a making a purchase, it’s unlikely that people are casually browsing hiatal hernia or slip disk remedies.
Call us with your comments or questions that we can chat about on the show, 206-600-6887. Provident Partners donates a food item for every comment we received.
Health care is going through some growing pains when it comes to social media. Word of mouth, especially from friends and family, is the leading resource for consumers selecting a primary care physician, according to a study from the Center for Studying Health System Change.(CSHSC) The concept that consumers would aggressively seek out performance information and cost comparisons from sites like HealthGrades and Carol is not taking place as many predicted.
In Minnesota company that bet on their advertising concept in a phrase – if men and women shopped for a ties and purses they would shop for medical care. After a huge PR splash, consumers weren’t buying the concept proving that PR without audience effective buy-in tactics doesn’t drive the bottom line.
The Edelman Health Engagement Barometer echoes the findings of the CSHCS study in that physicians and, friends, family, and peers are the leading trusted sources of information about healthcare. When it comes to consumers selecting a provider.
Where does this put social media in healthcare? Squarely in the middle. Here’s how.
Consumers do not feel confident enough to select a complex purchase without some guidance according to the CSHSC study. This guidance, I believe, comes in two forms, 1) peer to peer, including friends and family as well as patients who share their real-life experience. There are several sites picking up traction that provide anecdotal real-life insights Healthcare scoop and CareSeek are among them. You can even learn about Maruggi’s kidney stone surgery at St. Joe’s Hospital with Dr. Portis. This “someone like you” information gives patients comfort. In the study more than 50% of consumers use information from friends and family in their decision to select a physician. I would aggregate patient experience blogs in a similar category.
2) Professional information from a physician is also a highly valued component in this study. Nearly 40% of healthcare consumers consulted with a physician about from whom they should seek care. I believe this expert-to-patient exchange provides confidence in the selection. It is essentially a check and balance on the consumers leanings based on peer-to-peer information.
We interviewed one of the leading healthcare bloggers, author of Health Populi Jane Sarasohn-Kahn. She highlights how social media is working its way into one of the last holdouts of web 2.0 implementations, the healthcare industry. While it is slow going, Sarasohn-Kahn says there are many aspects of social media in healthcare, only one of which is the “shopping” aspect. For example, healthcare improvement through greater transparency as demonstrated by Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and Nick Jacobs, President of Windber Medical Center is an area of social media that is noticed at the highest levels of the profession and media.
Sarasohn-Kahn talks in this podcast about the relationship consumers have with social media in their healthcare decisions. She also touches on how the once antagonist political entities of universal healthcare may well be ready to reach a constructive solution just in time for the Obama Administration. Her advice, read Critical by Tom Daschle
What does this mean for marketers and PR professionals in healthcare? While comparing Doctor Smith and Doctor Jones along with the cost of an MRI may be a way off in the distance, tapping in to communities and conversation are here today. Whether it is driving health plan members to use online services or a hospital using video to highlight their latest surgery procedures, consumers are willing participants in the learning phase of healthcare decision making.
In the area of public relations, podcasts are used to increasing effectiveness as a source for news reporting, and consumer information tools, Johns Hopkins Medicine podcasts are a classic example. Baby steps in social media is just fine for healthcare for now, 2009 we expect to see further growth as patients, physicians and healthcare journalists are plugging into the budding movement of healthcare transparency.
Reminder all comments to the Marketing Edge podcast comment line 206-600-6887 or Marketing Edge blog will result in a food item being donated to a Twin Cities food shelter. Your opinion is worth a meal to someone in need, so tell us what you think.
December Drawing:
Use Giftag, www.giftag.com the website for all your gift ideas and whish lists, and tag your gifts that are up to $25 with Marketing Edge. On December 20 we will pick one gift and purchase it for that Giftag user.
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