HEALTHCARE & SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter can serve as a dashboard indicator of a community’s psychological well-being and can predict county-level rates of heart disease, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of theAssociation for Psychological Science.

Previous studies have identified many factors that contribute to the risk of heart disease, including behavioral factors like smoking and psychological factors like stress.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania demonstrated that Twitter can capture more information about heart disease risk than many traditional factors combined, as it also characterizes the psychological atmosphere of a community.

The findings show that expressions of negative emotions such as anger, stress, and fatigue in the tweets from people in a given county were associated with higher heart disease risk in that county. On the other hand, expressions of positive emotions like excitement and optimism were associated with lower risk.

The results suggest that using Twitter as a window into a community’s collective mental state may provide a useful tool in epidemiology:

The Importance of Social Media Editorial Calendars

Social media calendars are inclusive, integrating every aspect of healthcare marketing. From the blog to online newsrooms, events, email campaigns, video marketing, specials, promotions and PPC, social media editorial calendars should be extensive and focused.

Healthcare social media editorial calendars should improve accountability with staff and the brand, increase accomplishment and productivity, force team members to get creative with trends, and increase analytics recordings.

How to Craft a Healthcare Social Media Editorial Calendar

Being that I started out a starch enemy of social media calendars, I like to take it one month at a time. For example, if you were starting today, January 7th, on your editorial calendar, consider drafting it for February, even March. Give yourself plenty of time to do the research, find the trends, get your staff involved, brainstorm and get creative.

Plan your calendar out week by week. Be sure that every week has a specific theme that fits like a puzzle into the monthly theme, whether that be for Heart Disease Awareness Month or Breast Cancer Awareness Month or New Year’s Resolutions.

Break down the topics, expand on those topics, engage your audience and be consistent. Roughly one to two posts per day, including weekends, should be just the right amount. And stay on top of it. If your audience is engaged, interact with them, answer questions and join conversations.

Keys to Healthcare Marketing on Social Media

When creating your social media editorial calendar, consider the following key points:

• 81% of healthcare consumes consider a hospital with an active online presence to be more ‘cutting edge.’
• 85% of Millennials and 78% of Boomers search for health topics online.
• 84% of women research health topics online.
• 66% of adults searching for health care topics has looked online for information about a specific disease or medical problem.
• 47% of adults are likely to share health information on social media with their doctors.
• 57% of consumers said that a hospital’s social media connections would strongly affect their decision to receive treatment at that facility.
• A 2012 consumer survey of 1,060 participants found 54% of patients are very comfortable or comfortable with their providers seeking advice from online communities to help better treat their conditions.
• 60% of doctors recently surveyed said social media improves the quality of care delivered to patients.
• More then 80% of individuals between the ages of 18 to 24 said they were likely to share health information through social media channels and nearly 90% said they would trust the information they found there!

Monitoring social media websites like Twitter could help health officials and providers identify in real time severe medical outbreaks, allowing them to more efficiently direct resources and curb the spread of disease, according to a San Diego State University studypublished last month in the Journal of Medical Internet Research,Medical News Today reports.

Study Details

For the study, lead researcher and San Diego State University geography professor Ming-Hsiang Tsou and his team used a program to monitor tweets that originated within a 17-mile radius of 11 cities. The program recorded details of tweets containing the words "flu" or "influenza," including:

• Origin;
• Username;
• Whether the tweet was an original or a retweet; and
• Any links to websites in the tweet.

Researchers then compared their findings with regional data based on CDC's definition of influenza-like illness.

You probably have heard all the good arguments about why your practice should employ inbound marketing – and, in particular, why you should take advantage of the public’s embrace of social media to learn about and communicate with their doctors, dentists and other healthcare professionals.

Facebook and Twitter can be a great resource for patients, but when it comes to medical marketing among peers and potential employees, your more feasible choice is LinkedIn.

As the world’s largest business network, LinkedIn has some 225 million members as of June 2013, and more than 8 million of them are healthcare professionals. Broad-based groups like LinkedIn’sNetworking for Healthcare Professionals covers topics ranging from professional meetings to the trend toward filing claims electronically. Beyond that, there is a LinkedIn group for nearly any specialty or discipline. Just a sample of groups that have appeared include the Student Doctor Network, the Registered Nurse Group and Bio/Pharm Professionals.

Read more at: http://info.thespotonagency.com/blog/bid/320592/4-Reasons-Your-Medical-Marketing-Belongs-on-LinkedIn

By Stewart Gandolf, MBA, CEO, Healthcare Success Strategies The Internet and social media presence of a physician is the sum of what most prospective patients know about you and your professional r...

Drs Seth Bilazarian and Westby Fisher sit down with heartwire's Shelley Wood to talk about how they got their start in social media and why they think their colleagues should join this worldwide conversation.

Two experts (Shelly and Wes) and a Social Media Novice (me) encourage cardiologists to engage these new information platforms.