A Guide to Social Media For Healthcare Companies

There is a huge opportunity for healthcare professionals to use social media to satisfy the needs of customers searching for information online. Facebook is a pillar of any social marketing campaign however which additional channels should be in your marketing toolkit for healthcare specific brands? Prototype Interactive takes a look.

More than 40 percent of consumers say that information found via social media affects the way they deal with their health (Mediabistro) Users are on social media looking for healthy living ideas, healthy events and so on. They are also interested in finding healthy education videos, medical providers and more. The difference between traditional forms of healthcare marketing (pamphlets etc.) is that social media, in particular Facebook, gives users a two-way conversational channel with healthcare marketers and other people who are suffering from similar ailments.

What Should I include in my Healthcare Marketing Strategy?

Social media can be a job that many people in your healthcare organisation control and because of this, it is advisable to develop a social media strategy handbook to outline your expectations for your brand on social media. Your handbook can include a mission, voice guidelines, an editorial calendar, a content strategy behind each platform and ways in which you would like to leverage paid promotions.

It is also important to define the main business objectives you have for your healthcare organisation on social media as well as align these goals to KPIs (key performance indicators). Some goals for your social media marketing strategy might be:

• Increasing traffic to organisation's website
• Increase newsletter sign ups to blog
• Raise awareness for their brand via shared information
• Raise awareness around a specific campaign (such as breast cancer screening for breast cancer awareness month)We recommend two to three main goals to measure your social media efforts against.  

Some KPIs you may choose to measure your goals are:

• CTRs to your website
• Number of shares, likes and comments
• Sessions to your website from social traffic
• Reach and impressions
• Views and view rate (video only)

Once you have defined your business goals and objectives, you can choose your platforms aligning them to your goals. The top platforms for any social strategy include:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Twitter
• YouTube

Beyond the pillar platforms above, you might consider local listing websites or healthcare provider listing websites as well.

You need to build an editorial calendar to plan your weekly / daily posts, seasonal campaigns and events. An editorial calendar also helps you to manage the time of the day for posts on each platform, ensure posts are optimized for SEO purposes and allows each post to go through the necessary approval processes.

Finally, each social profile needs to be consistent, with profile image, cover image and information the same across the board. This helps to develop trust with your audience and well encourage users to put more faith in your brand.

Taking this time to plan goals/KPIs around your social media efforts and develop an editorial calendar will ensure your social media plan is sustainable and effective. What do you think? Tell us over on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.