HEALTHCARE & SOCIAL MEDIA

Dr. Rose Marie Leslie is hoping to reach teens with a message about the dangers of e-cigarettes. So she’s started posting regularly on TikTok, the popular short video app, and has collected a large following.

Leslie, who goes by @DrLeslie and is a family medicine doctor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, has amassed more than 300,000 followers on the platform in recent months. Most of her TikTok videos offer insights on health issues that impact teens, ranging from how to talk to doctors about birth control to why it’s a bad idea for a group of friends to share a lollipop.

She’s best known for getting real about vaping and vaping-related illness. The issue is more urgent than ever for many parents, with surveys showing that vape use at an all-time high among teens amid an outbreak of a life-threatening vaping illness. 

Part of the problem, according to medical experts, is the teens aren’t aware of the risks because public health organizations aren’t communicating with them on the platforms they use.

That’s where Leslie comes in.

Leslie doesn’t talk down to the viewer, but instead shows side-by-side images of a vaping-related lung injury and a normal lung biopsy, and discusses the root causes.

In one video, she shows her followers what vaping lung illness really looks like under a microscope. “That is terrifying,” she says in the video.

Leslie says she gets a lot of messages from teens who have stopped vaping because they watched one of her videos.

“I expected it as a primary-care doctor who’s often talking to teens about the health risks associated with something like vaping that’s perceived as cool,” she said.

Greater engagement on TikTok than other platforms

Leslie is just one of the doctors who have recently started popping up on TikTok. Far more physicians are on Twitter and Instagram, which are more popular with older generations.

But those who have taken the TikToK plunge say they are experiencing far greater engagement on content there than on other social media platforms.

Jefferson Health’s Dr. Austin Chiang, one of the most active physicians on social media, recently joined TikTok after reading about how it’s taking off. 

Chiang uses TikTok primarily as a platform to talk to other young doctors about issues that matter to them, like the cost of medical education or the sacrifice of giving up their 20s to spend nights and weekends in the hospital.

Chiang says he already sees the most engagement on TikTok, which is used by more than 700 million people daily, according to its owner ByteDance.

Chiang and Leslie are also using TikTok to combat health misinformation.

“I’ve heard the criticism that doctors and other medical professionals on social media are somehow less credible, or won’t be taken as seriously by their peers,” said Sherry Pagoto, a behavioral scientist and professor at the Department of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut. “But I think that school of thought is going to be a thing of the past.”

Pagoto notes that medical experts need to meet teens where they are, rather than sticking to the older methods of advertising on television or Facebook.

“It would be great for public health organizations to follow the lead of these medical professionals on TikTok,” she said.

Read More: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/29/doctors-use-tiktok-to-talk-to-teens-about-vaping-birth-control.html

Healthcare social media marketing has evolved significantly over the past decade.

Gone are the days of social media managers posting the same or similar content across one, two, or three social media profiles and calling it a day.

Given the importance of social media in healthcare, the team at Convince & Convert wanted to identify common trends across social media marketing from the top U.S. hospitals.

Our New Healthcare Social Media Research

Convince & Convert reviewed all Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube public posts from January 1 – March 31, 2019, by 54 of the top U.S. hospitals, as determined by bed count and the 2018–19 Best Hospitals Honor Roll.

We used Rival IQ for content aggregation and in-depth competitive analysis of all 54 hospitals’ social media efforts. We gathered insights into how hospitals use private messaging by directly interacting with hospital Facebook pages through Messenger.

We also ranked the Top 20 Hospitals in Social Media based on a ranking score that includes Audience Size, Engagement, Engagement Rate Per Post and Total Posts.

The 4 Best Practices for Healthcare Social Media Marketing in 2020

Here are the 4 best practices of healthcare social media marketing that will help you set your strategy in the right direction this upcoming year.

1. Diversify Your Channel Mix Beyond Facebook and Twitter

Our research found that hospitals post on Instagram less than once every two days, but publish to Twitter and Facebook at least twice per day on each channel. Based on posting frequency, Instagram and YouTube are as secondary channels, despite these audiences being more engaged.

2. Vary Your Content Mix to Optimize Audience Actions

More than half of the best-performing posts included photos of people. Twenty-seven of the best 50 posts clearly showed the faces of people or babies.

In addition, curated content links have higher engagement: 35% of links shared by hospitals are curated, meaning they are not from the hospital’s own domain. Posts with curated links earned an average of 0.033% engagement per post, while links originating from the hospital’s own domain generated half as much engagement, at 0.015%.

3. Boost Top Performing Posts Organic Posts

While engagement is trending down across social media as a whole, brands are circumventing declining organic reach by spending money to ensure their content is getting seen.

In fact, 5.5% of all hospital Facebook posts we analyzed are signaled as “likely-boosted”, according to Rival IQ. Of those likely-boosted Facebook posts, the engagement rate per post was 177% higher than the non-boosted posts.

4. Connect with Niche Communities

While Facebook Brand Pages continue to be used by patients and hospitals, some hospitals are beginning to leverage Facebook Groups and Messenger to create deeper connections with audiences. 

In fact, 30% of the top U.S. hospitals are making Groups part of their Facebook strategy. Twelve of the 54 hospitals (22%) are currently or have recently used Groups as part of their Facebook outreach.

Social media marketing is the present and the future is returning to a one-on-one approach of engaging with audiences directly, be it in a private message or in response to a recommendation. Users are eschewing the spotlight in favor of smaller, niche communities where their presence is valued and they are not just a number.

Read More: https://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-marketing/healthcare-social-media-marketing/ 

Many hospitals have HIPAA anxiety when it comes to adopting social media strategies. This slide share outlines 9 no-nonsense rules that will help hospitals sta…

ABSTRACTBackground: Twitter is an interactive, real-time media that could prove useful in health care. Tweets from cancer patients could offer insight into the needs of cancer patients.

Objective: The objective of this study was to understand cancer patients’ social media usage and gain insight into patient needs.

Methods: A search was conducted of every publicly available user profile on Twitter in Japan for references to the following: breast cancer, leukemia, colon cancer, rectal cancer, colorectal cancer, uterine cancer, cervical cancer, stomach cancer, lung cancer, and ovarian cancer. We then used an application programming interface and a data mining method to conduct a detailed analysis of the tweets from cancer patients.

Results: Twitter user profiles included references to breast cancer (n=313), leukemia (n=158), uterine or cervical cancer (n=134), lung cancer (n=87), colon cancer (n=64), and stomach cancer (n=44). A co-occurrence network is seen for all of these cancers, and each cancer has a unique network conformation. Keywords included words about diagnosis, symptoms, and treatments for almost all cancers. Words related to social activities were extracted for breast cancer. Words related to vaccination and support from public insurance were extracted for uterine or cervical cancer.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates that cancer patients share information about their underlying disease, including diagnosis, symptoms, and treatments, via Twitter. This information could prove useful to health care providers.

It’s no secret that today’s healthcare patients are increasingly using digital tools as part of their overall health maintenance. A January 2013 Pew Research Study showed that 1 in 3 Americans used the internet to figure out a medical issue, and 41% of those surveyed acknowledged social media influenced their health care decisions. To put this plainly, people have added social sites to their health care toolbox, which creates a big impact for the healthcare industry. Like my post on the regulatory issues affecting the banking industry’s presence on social and digital, the healthcare industry has unique concerns when it comes to marketing on social. However, risks and challenges should not outweigh the unique opportunity that social presents for the industry.

Read more: http://www.sayitsocial.com/2014/02/hipaa-healthcare-social-media/

Social media is already used for a wide range of personal and professional purposes, but according to a recent report by eHealth Initiative, it is now an effective treatment for chronic disease, as well.

This is because social media allows individuals living with chronic disease to join online communities where they can socialize, share tips and information, vent frustrations with others who understand, and even connect with medical professionals from around the globe.

There are many reasons why social media is an outstanding addition for those suffering from chronic disease. In America chronic disease accounts for 75% of healthcare spending, and impacts more than 133 million Americans.

Whether on social network sites, message boards, online blogs, or on chronic disease related forums, individuals and family members now have a large selection of online resources that allow them to interact and engage with one another.

Read more: http://mhealthwatch.com/social-media-may-play-a-role-in-treatment-of-chronic-diseases-22548/

Besides medical education credentials, specialty experience, and a pleasant bedside manner, the next most important thing a doctor can have is a good — or preferably great — reputation. It can be a deciding factor between a new patient choosing your practice instead of another. And today, having a healthy online reputation as a physician and medical practice is more important than ever.

Just take a look at these convincing statistics:

• According to a recent report published on the Journal of Medical Internet Research, not only did 88 percent of adults in the United States search the internet for health-related information, but 47 percent of adults Americans looked up information about their providers online, 37 percent reviewed physician-rating sites, and seven percent who consulted online information about their provided posted a review online themselves. Thirty percent compared physician’s online before making their choice as well.
   

• A further study reported as part of the Pew Internet and American Life Project revealed that 43 percent of people with a chronic disease looked online for information about doctors.
   

• A survey by Software Advice of 4,515 patients in the United States indicated that patients used online review sites as a tool to research doctors. As a first step to find a new physician, the majority (62 percent) of uses online reviews as their initial go-to method.
   

• In 2011, 28 percent said they searched online for information about the quality of care provided by a primary care physician or medical specialist as compared to 24 percent in 2010, according to the 2011 Survey of Health Care Consumers in the United States published by Deloitte.

Read more: http://healthworkscollective.com/jonathan-catley/146436/guide-healthy-online-reputation-physicians

Besides medical education credentials, specialty experience, and a pleasant bedside manner, the next most important thing a doctor can have is a good — or preferably great — reputation. It can be a deciding factor between a new patient choosing your practice instead of another. And today, having a healthy online reputation as a physician and medical practice is more important than ever.

Just take a look at these convincing statistics:

• According to a recent report published on the Journal of Medical Internet Research, not only did 88 percent of adults in the United States search the internet for health-related information, but 47 percent of adults Americans looked up information about their providers online, 37 percent reviewed physician-rating sites, and seven percent who consulted online information about their provided posted a review online themselves. Thirty percent compared physician’s online before making their choice as well.
   

• A further study reported as part of the Pew Internet and American Life Project revealed that 43 percent of people with a chronic disease looked online for information about doctors.
   

• A survey by Software Advice of 4,515 patients in the United States indicated that patients used online review sites as a tool to research doctors. As a first step to find a new physician, the majority (62 percent) of uses online reviews as their initial go-to method.
   

• In 2011, 28 percent said they searched online for information about the quality of care provided by a primary care physician or medical specialist as compared to 24 percent in 2010, according to the 2011 Survey of Health Care Consumers in the United States published by Deloitte.

Read more: http://healthworkscollective.com/jonathan-catley/146436/guide-healthy-online-reputation-physicians

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