Social Media | The Main Artery

Social Sharing Best Practices for Cardiovascular Marketers

October 22, 2012

Subtle shifts in how and when you share social media content can make a big difference in your engagement with patients and prospects.

A recent study by content platform, Compendium, examined 200 companies’ social sharing statistics. Here’s what they found for business-to-consumer content:

Ideal message length
- LinkedIn: 21-25 words
- Twitter: 1-5 words
Using a question mark
- LinkedIn: 45% fewer clicks if include a ?
- Twitter: 52% fewer clicks if include a ?
Using an exclamation mark
- LinkedIn: 27% more clicks if ! is used
- Twitter: 8% fewer clicks if ! is used
Using hashtags
- LinkedIn: 20% fewer clicks if hashtag is included
- Twitter: 82% fewer clicks if hashtag is included
Using a number
- LinkedIn: seems to have no real effect one way or the other
- Twitter: 3.5% more click if number is included
Best time of day
- LinkedIn: 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. and again over the lunch hour
- Twitter: 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
- Facebook: during the lunch hour and the late afternoon
Part of the hour
- LinkedIn: fairly even, but avoid sharing content 10-15 minutes into the hour
- Twitter: top and bottom of the hour
Day of the week
- LinkedIn: Monday
- Twitter: Monday and Wednesday

While it’s fun to see stats like these, I still think it’s important to use this as a starting point and do your own testing. But this study does drive home the point that it is important to include metrics like these in the evaluation of your social media strategy. Several of these items are imperatives in developing a social dashboard.

And, don’t forget. Great content still rules. Sending irrelevant messages will never work – no matter what time or day of the week.

*B2B stats vary significantly. See the study for more details.

1 Comment | Social Media | Tagged: healthcare marketing, healthcare social media, Heart and cardiovascular marketing, Julie Robinson, Kuhn & Wittenborn | Permalink
Posted by Julie Robinson

Nine Ways to Get Your Cardiovascular Marketing Facebook Page Ready For Timeline

March 5, 2012

Timeline for Facebook brand pages is here.

Some brands have already switched and by the end of March all brand pages will be moved to the new Timeline layout. Are you ready?

Timeline on personal Facebook pages has certainly received mixed reviews. Personally, I like it, and I feel like most of the naysayers are just reacting to the challenge of change. From a visual standpoint, Timeline offers a lot of branding opportunities that are far superior to the traditional page.

Regardless of when your brand page makes the shift, I think this post from B2C Community offers some great tips to start the preparation process.

1. Get the Timeline for your personal profile if you haven’t done it yet. Familiarizing yourself with how it works will shorten the learning curve for your business page.

2. Start planning – Think about elements from your current page that should migrate to the new look. Use it as an opportunity to reinforce your brand message.

3. Think visually – A big difference between the Timeline and the old wall interface is the emphasis on images. The main piece of “real estate” is the large cover photo at the top, but images are featured throughout. You might need to augment your Timeline with some new photos. Again, make sure the images are consistent with your brand image and that they reinforce marcom campaign efforts.

4. Think historically –Timeline essentially functions as an online scrapbook, and it makes it easy to tell a historical story. For an organization that has been around for awhile, it offers an interesting opportunity to capitalize on your history. If you have old photos you might want to include, start gathering and scanning them now.

5. Think live media –If you’re not already using video, the Timeline transition would be a great time to try it. Anything you can do to make your page more active and dynamic will lead to more engagement.

6. Content is still king – Don’t think the plethora of Timeline’s images can make up for weak content. Continue to post interesting articles, blog entries, health tips and more. Think of your page as a clearinghouse for everything your audience needs to know about cardiovascular health.

7. Expect the unexpected, and be prepared to run on the fly – It’s impossible to predict exactly how Timeline for businesses will work. Some are predicting that third-party apps, which currently reside on custom tabs on the left hand side will end up in boxes near the top, just like on our personal profiles. If that’s the case, this opens up new opportunities for exposure. At this point, we also don’t know if the Timeline layout will be conducive to custom landing pages.

8. Explore – Look around to see how other brands are using the Timeline, and get ideas about what might work for you.

9. Avoid hand wringing – Don’t stress about Timeline, and don’t avoid it. Switch over as soon as you can. Early adoption will lend credibility to your brand’s savvy. Coming off as a Facebook laggard sure seems inconsistent with being a strong, innovative cardiovascular brand.

Leave a Comment » | Social Media | Tagged: hcsm, healthcare social media, Heart and cardiovascular marketing, Julie Robinson, Kuhn & Wittenborn, New Facebook Timeline | Permalink
Posted by Julie Robinson

Three Metrics You Should Consider To Increase Your Cardiovascular Marketing Facebook Results

January 23, 2012

Three game-changing metrics can help you improve your Facebook performance.

Achieving business results with social media can be a dicey topic. Facebook’s newly revamped Facebook Insights analytics tool gives page owners a staggering amount of information about fans, but who has time to sift through all of the data to find truly actionable items?

Facebook marketing guru Amy Porterfield says paying attention to these three key metrics is a good start:

1. Track ”People Talking About This”

People Talking About This is a new metric for Facebook Pages. It’s also the only one visible to the public, unlike other measurements on your dashboard.

It shows the total number of people who have engaged with your Page in any way over the past week— by Liking it, commenting on or sharing a post, answering a question, tagging your Page, or responding to an event. The Facebook Insights dashboard also shows a percentage increase or decrease from week to week.

People Talking About This seems to be a good measure of overall engagement, still the holy grail of social media metrics.

Porterfield reminds us that the best way to increase engagement is to ask. Ask questions vs. crafting static posts, and give your audiences mini calls-to-action, e.g., “If you found this tip useful, share it with your friends.”

A great tip: Never let a post go unattended. When someone does comment, Like or share your post, reach out personally to acknowledge the action with a thank you, or use it as an opportunity to expand the conversation. But whatever you do, don’t leave fans hanging.

2. Track “Engaged Users”

On the Insights dashboard, there’s a chart in the Page Post Information area with a column called “Engaged Users.” It shows the number of unique people who have clicked anywhere on that post. (Note: Insights only tracks this for 28 days.)

Hint: If you click on the number itself, you’ll also see a pie chart with types of clicks, including “other,” which counts the clicks not included in any other metric (clicking on someone’s name, for example). This shows you how many people are really paying attention, even if they don’t comment or click Like.

Your goal should be to steadily increase clicks on your posts over time. If that’s not happening, you may need to think about how to create more targeted posts that address the relevant information your target audience wants, and focus on challenges you can solve for them.

3. Track “External Referrers”

By clicking on Reach (under Insights in your sidebar) and scrolling down to find “External Referrers, ” you can find out how many times people arrived on your Facebook Page from an external site during a selected date range.

In order to drive more traffic to Facebook, start by determining where your current referrals are coming from. Then, Porterfield suggests asking the following questions:

Am I optimizing my Facebook Page so that when Google indexes Facebook, users find my Page too?

Including keyword-rich information on your “Info Tab” can help users find you easily.

Am I doing enough outside of my website and Page to bring traffic in?

Guest blogs from popular bloggers, webinars, online chats, and interviews with experts are all good strategies to drive traffic to your page.

Does my website account for some of my referrals?

If not, your website might need some updates. For example, add a Like box social plugin, include share buttons, and display your social icons in a visible place on every page.

Are you using Facebook Insights yet? What metrics do you find most valuable? What else are you doing to show effectiveness in the social media arena? Please share.

Leave a Comment » | Measurement, Social Media | Tagged: Facebook Insights, Heart and cardiovascular marketing, Julie Robinson, Kuhn & Wittenborn | Permalink
Posted by Julie Robinson

The Power of Blogs and Cardiovascular Marketing

November 10, 2011

Blogs have a big impact on women when it comes to making purchase decisions.

A new study from BlogHer found that women buyers are both more excited (74 percent) and more nervous (53 percent) than men (71 percent and 42 percent respectively) when it comes to making major purchases such as cars.

But their buying behavior is also influenced by their online behavior. Women who spend time online both with blogs and social networks also exhibit more excitement about the purchase decision. Women who consult blogs showed an increase of 13 percentage points on the excitement scale over women who do not, while women who consult social networks showed an increase of 12 percentage points.

The study also examined women’s confidence and stress levels when considering a car purchase:

Confidence among women who use blogs for auto buying advice is eight percentage points higher than women who do not, and five points higher among women who use social networks.
The stress levels of women who use blogs for auto-buying advice is four points lower than the total sample. However, stress levels remain the same for women who use social networks.
Blog readers are also less nervous by two points than the total sample, while social network users show a four-point increase in nervousness—higher than the total sample.

Okay, so I realize that car buying and healthcare provider selection may not seem like an apples-to-apples comparison. However, one could certainly argue that both are major decisions driven by a fair amount of emotion.

If you think about the drivers measured in this study – feeling nervous and stressed about their choice and expressing a need to feel confident in their decision, one could certainly draw some interesting parallels with the healthcare selection process.

As most of you know, I’m an advocate for using blogs to disseminate educational content. If you’re not yet a believer, I would encourage you to think again.

For additional insight into the study on women and the car-buying process, here are charts and a full presentation.

Leave a Comment » | Social Media | Tagged: BlogHer, Heart and cardiovascular marketing, Julie Robinson, Kuhn & Wittenborn | Permalink
Posted by Julie Robinson

Responding to Negative Feedback in Cardiovascular Marketing Social Media

November 8, 2011

Having a plan for dealing with negative comments that pop up in your social media channels is critical.

By now, most healthcare organizations have decided that the benefits of building an online community outweigh the risks. However, I’ve certainly had a couple of clients who have been concerned (and rightly so) recently about how to respond to negative feedback.

I came across a post from Nicola Ziady that offers some good advice about how to deal with less than positive comments.

The first step in dealing with negative commentary on your social media networks is to determine what type of feedback you have received so that you can craft an appropriate response. Below are four types of feedback and what to do if you encounter them:

1. Straight Out Problem

A patient or referring physician may publish information about something that went wrong. This type of feedback can certainly paint your hospital in a poor light, but it can also be helpful in exposing genuine problems that need to be solved.

What to Do:

A comment raising a Straight Out Problem definitely deserves a response. You should issue a public response so that all members of your online community can see it. But it might also be appropriate to send a personal message to the person who made the comment, depending on how widespread the problem is and how many people are discussing it. If a serious problem exists, steps should be taken to fix it. Patients should be notified that you are listening to concerns and that steps are being taken.

Sometimes tough criticism is the result of a “perceived problem” rather than an actual problem (e.g., someone who just doesn’t like the method by which you do a certain procedure). This type of complaint should also be given a formal response, even if only to say, “Thank you for bringing it to our attention, but here’s why we do it that way.”

2. Constructive Criticism

Sometimes feedback comes with a suggestion attached. Many patients — including the most loyal, will use Twitter, Facebook or your blog to suggest ways in which you can improve your facilities, service or care. While this feedback does point out flaws, it can be very helpful to receive.

What To Do:

First, thank patients who took time to provide you with a suggestion. If it is something you will implement or consider, let them know. Bringing patient ideas into your process can certainly build loyalty.

3. Merited Attack

While the negative comment itself may not be merited, the issue that initiated it has merit in generating this type of feedback. You, your physician or your nurse did something wrong, and someone is angry.

What To Do:

Merited Attacks can be tough to tackle and solve, as they are more likely to involve other groups in the hospital. As harsh as this type of criticism can sound, it’s important to remember that it usually stems from a legitimate problem. It is best to respond quickly and with a positive tone. Thank the commenter for his or her feedback and assure them that steps are being taken to correct the problem or mitigate their issue.

4. Troll (I love this term.)

This is an annoying type of negative feedback. The difference between trolling & a merited attack is that trolls have no legitimate reason for being angry at the hospital. This feedback is a waste of everyone’s time.

What to Do:

The last type of negative feedback, Trolling, is the only category which does not require a response. Often, it is better not to respond to Trolls because this type of commentary is not really “feedback.” Instead, it is designed to bait you into an unnecessary and perhaps even damaging brawl. Ignore this type of feedback and remove from your Facebook page. (Note: Yes, it’s okay to remove abusive posts. One of our clients recently had a Troll whose comment initially posed as a Merited Attack. Our first response just fueled the fire, and the Troll turned quite ugly with a very unmerited attack on one of our physicians. We quickly removed the post, and the Troll went slinking away.)

Please do make sure that you have a social media policy in place, especially on your Facebook page that clearly states your intolerance for abusive comments.

Here’s a basic example:

Posting Policy

We welcome the exchange of ideas on our Facebook page through the use of posted comments.

Comments posted on our page do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the [company].

We adhere to Facebook’s Terms of Use and Code of Conduct, and we reserve the right to remove any content that is abusive and/or profane, as well as advertisements for services, activities, and events not sponsored by the [company].

If you have a concern about any posted content, or about any content that has been removed by the administrators of this Facebook page, please e-mail us at XXXXXX.

The bottom line in responding to criticism is to stay positive. As tempting as it may be, don’t be drawn into a public brawl with a patient. Nothing good can come of it.

Leave a Comment » | Public Relations, Social Media | Tagged: Heart and cardiovascular marketing, Julie Robinson, Kuhn & Wittenborn, Nicola Ziady | Permalink
Posted by Julie Robinson

How Will Facebook Changes Affect Cardiovascular Marketing?

September 29, 2011

It looks like brands will have to become more compelling to get noticed on Facebook.

The last week or so has seen a whirlwind of changes to Facebook following founder Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at the f8 conference in San Francisco. Based on an informal survey of my personal Facebook friends and clients, people are confused. What do these changes mean and how will they work?

I found a post that does a pretty good job of outlining the highlights:

1. Profiles are turning into Timelines — a scrapbook of people’s lives. Timelines will be a stream of information about you — the photos you’ve posted, all your status updates, the apps you’ve used, even the places you’ve visited on a world map — that scrolls all the way back to your birth. It encourages you to post more stuff about your past, such as baby pictures, using Facebook as a scrapbook.

Timeline will have a lot of customizable features. It is in beta now and will be opt-in to start. In the long run, it will become the new default profile page.

2. Liking something is “so five minutes ago.” — now you can [verb] any [noun]. The social network has launched Facebook Gestures, which means that Facebook’s partners and developers can turn any verb into a button.

So you’ll start seeing the option to tell the world you’re reading a particular book, for example, or watching a given movie, or listening to a certain song. A lot of experts think this will lead to major “oversharing,” and it will certainly increase the clutter factor in your feed.

It will also mean that a common metric for brand success – generating “Likes” for your brand will become less relevant.

3. Facebook apps need only ask permission once to share stories on your behalf. This change may be one of the more controversial. Previously, apps had to ask every time they shared information about you in your profile.

But app information won’t clog your news feed, because …

4. All “lightweight” information is going to the Ticker. Status updates, photos, etc. will still show up in the news feed. Game updates and other “trivial” details have been banished to the Ticker, a real-time list of things your friends are posting now that scrolls down the side of your screen.

5. You can watch TV and movies, listen to music, and read news with your friends — all within Facebook. Partnerships with services such as Hulu, Spotify and Yahoo News help facilitate this activity. The ticker will tell you what your friends are watching, listening to or reading, allowing you to share the experience with them by clicking on a link.

Very interesting. I’m sure brands will fight to get their messages to show up in the Ticker, as it will imply endorsement by your friends.

6. Facebook has more users and more engagement than ever. It has hit 800 million users, and most of them are active. The social network just saw a new record for the most visitors in one day: an eye-popping 500 million.

Despite consumer grumbling this past week, I have a feeling most of those users will get over it and continue using Facebook.

Have you thought about strategies for keeping your organization at the forefront of engagement given the changes? I’d love to hear your ideas.

Leave a Comment » | Engagement, Social Media | Tagged: Facebook, Heart and cardiovascular marketing, Julie Robinson, Kuhn & Wittenborn | Permalink
Posted by Julie Robinson

Social Media vs. Advertising in your Cardiovascular Marketing

August 3, 2011

Is social media more important than traditional advertising in today’s healthcare arena?

I don’t think so. A regular reader of this blog recently told me that my posts lead people to assume I focus “mostly on social media.”

Her comments gave me pause because while I am a huge advocate of social media, I’m a much bigger advocate of integrated brand communications. However, I can certainly understand her perception because I do write about social media a lot. I think it’s important, and I think a lot of people are still trying to figure it out, so it often seems topical. I think social media is an amazing addition to our marketing communications tool box, but it’s certainly not the holy grail that means we should give up tried and true advertising methods that continue to work.

I’ve also been seeing a lot of articles lately that try to prove the value of social media over advertising. I really don’t get it. Why is it a war? In my not-so-humble opinion, I think both social media and advertising have a key role to play. Just about everyone, starting with your intern, understands the value of a media mix. Social media is just another part of the mix. All media tactics have the opportunity to reinforce each other, making the whole plan more effective than each individual piece on its own.

Let’s look at some key comparisons and discuss:

Engagement vs. impressions

Social media success relies on engagement vs. advertising’s traditional number of impressions. Engaging one-on-one with individuals can help you deliver custom content that interests them. But don’t forget you need to make an initial impression to drive awareness and get them to engage with you in the first place.

Quality vs. Quantity

With traditional advertising, we often measure reach. With social media, one might measure the quality of each individual interaction. Again, though, when you’re launching a new service line or trying to steal market share from a key competitor, quantity can still be paramount. You still need to reach a large number of people to generate leads and build a database with whom you can communicate through social media or other one-to-one tactics such as e-mail.

Constant vs. Sporadic

While traditional advertising often uses a “flighted” strategy, it’s important for social media communications to be ongoing and consistent every day.   One of the reasons I love social media is that it allows you to extend your budget. The reason most of us flight our advertising has a lot to do with limited resources. Social media can “bridge the gap” between flights, and it can deepen relationships with people who first engaged with you because they saw your advertising.

Reputation management

Social media allows you to monitor what people are saying about your brand, and you can participate in the conversation in an authentic, relevant way. It can also provide great feedback that can influence your future advertising strategy. The best advertising hooks people in an emotional way, and the best brands build on positive perceptions that already exist among their target audiences. Social media interaction is a great way to close the loop, so to speak.

In summary, I’d like to say this. Let’s stop arguing about which one is better. Social media is awesome. It allows us to build deeper relationships with patients and prospects than ever before. But advertising is not dead. In order to get people to engage with us in the first place, we have to build awareness and trust. Advertising does a great job of both.

1 Comment | Advertising, Social Media | Tagged: advertising, Heart and cardiovascular marketing, Julie Robinson, Kuhn & Wittenborn, social media | Permalink
Posted by Julie Robinson

Four Free Tools to Monitor Social Media for Your Cardiovascular Marketing Program

July 27, 2011

Listening to what people are saying about your brand online may be easier and cheaper than you think.

One of the first and most important steps to improving your social media strategy is listening. Who’s talking about you and what are they saying?

There’s a host of expensive tools and services that can help you find out, but several of our clients have a hard time selling that expense to management. The good news is there are some really effective tools to get you started that are free.

This post from Stephanie Gehman, marketing manager at Harrisburg International airport,* outlines four good choices.

Getting Started: How do people talk about you?

Start by looking at the keywords and phrases they use to find your website. Your website analytics package, e.g., Google Analytics, Webtrends or Clicky should be able to help.

If you’re not using one of these packages, please consider starting. In the meantime, brainstorm keywords and phrases patients/potential patients would use to find you.

Next, consider one of these four free brand-monitoring tools:

1: Google Email Alert System

Using those keywords and phrases from your preliminary research, you can have any mention of those keywords and phrases in combination with your brand, product or service line sent straight to your inbox.

The notification is a direct hyperlink to the article, website, blog, product review, etc., wherein the keyword or phrase appeared. You can click on the link and be taken directly to the location of your brand mention.

You’ll also have access to brand and keyword/phrase mentions as soon as they’re indexed by Google in search results.

2: SocialMention

SocialMention monitors 100+ social media properties, including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google, and so forth.

It also tracks what your competitors are saying. It can be accessed directly from the tool’s website or you can download the widget and add it to your website to have convenient access to buzz about your brand right from your blog or corporate site. A search plugin also allows you to select SocialMention from within your browser’s search options.

Based on your search criteria, SocialMention will return all of the mentions of your brand or keyword/phrase across the web. It also provides search metrics such as sentiment ratings, top keywords used in conjunction with your brand, top users of your brand name (those mentioning it the most), strength, passion, reach and more.

You’re able to click on the links where your brand is mentioned which facilitates a direct response to the person or party mentioning your brand or keyword/phrase. These metrics may not be totally scientific, but they’re a good starting point.

3: TweetDeck

One of my colleagues has gone so far as to say that TweetDeck “changed her life.” I have to agree. It’s pretty sweet. It really simplifies Twitter because it gives you a simple way to view multiple conversations and searches from one location. You can use the dashboard in multiple locations such as laptop, desktop, smartphone and tablet.

TweetDeck is your personal real-time browser. Connecting with it allows you to save Twitter keyword searches and hashtag searches; monitor your Twitter followers’ tweets, Twitter lists and @ replies; and permits you to tweet from your account(s) too. You’re not just limited to tweeting with TweetDeck, you can also update Facebook profiles and LinkedIn accounts. And you can monitor your brand mentions as they happen and respond just as quickly.

4: Technorati

To monitor the blogosphere for what bloggers are posting about your brand consider Technorati. It’s an online tool that searches a blog directory of nearly 1.3 million blogs for all mentions of the brand or keyword/phrases that you enter in the search field.

When the search results are compiled, you have a listing of posts to review that let you see what kinds of product and service reviews, comments, feedback, stories, etc. are being shared regarding your brand. These posts can help you join in the conversation about your brand and potentially build brand ambassadors.

This is just a sampling of tools that are available, but I think they are a great place to start. Please chime in with additional suggestions.

*Side note: Trust me, these airport people are great at social media. I think health care marketers can learn from other industries, and airports are getting really good at using social media to engage with customers. Consider following one of our agency’s clients, Kansas City International Airport @KCIairport, @JoeKCI, @kcjetsetter for some good examples.

2 Comments | Social Media | Tagged: harrisburg international airport, Heart and cardiovascular marketing, Julie Robinson, Kuhn & Wittenborn, social media monitoring, Stephanie Gehman | Permalink
Posted by Julie Robinson

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