Social media marketing strategies for healthcare organizations

¶ … Social Media in Healthcare Organizations

Social Media Social media increasingly integral part healthcare organization's website online strategy. Write a -- page (excluding title reference pages)

Using social media in healthcare organizations

Social media are a new way of co-creating and collaboration on content with others. It provides practical resources for healthcare organizations, in raising awareness of health related issues to the public, and facilitating change in behavior which will help people to live safer and healthier lives Sae Won & Choi, 2007.

With social media, they can disseminate information in real-time and link groups of people around common issues. Any website or platform that allows users to publish and share information with each other is referred to as social media. The information shared can be videos, photos, or messages. Technologies for social media are in different forms namely wikis, internet forums, social blogs, podcasts, magazines, weblogs, social bookmarking, videos, and photographs. The different types of social media are content communities, blogs, virtual social worlds, social networking sites, collaborative projects, and virtual game worlds. The functional building blocks of social media, which help in understanding the engagement needs, are conversations, identity, presence, reputation, groups, relationships and sharing.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allow users to initiate conversations with others and share their opinions with people within their circles. Sharing information with the people within their circles allows for easy and faster dissemination of information, people can also use social media platforms to access news articles from all around the world Hassid, 2008.

Facebook and YouTube permit for uploading of videos which is more informative and thought provoking than just having text based information. Wikis allow for collaboration between persons, who are working on a project enabling them to share information with each other.

Utilizing social media in addition to traditional marketing tactics

Healthcare organizations have started integrating social media tools in their marketing campaigns. Facebook, is now been used by hospitals where they post gratitude notes and patient stories which engages patients, and this has a universal positive effect. Healthcare organization can also use social media to make announcements about events, create media attention and post their blogs, which will receive comments from patients and their relatives. Utilizing social media together with other marketing strategies gives the healthcare organization a chance to start building relationships with its potential and current patients Xiang & Sarvary, 2007.

These relationships can benefit the organisation in the lon run. Social media are an extension of the traditional marketing strategy and an organization can use it to expose themselves and their services to patients. It is much easier to join a conversation regarding a disease and offer information to the group of people, plus also provide links to your organization website where they can find more information.

Before a patient seeks medical attention, many of them will first go online to search for information regarding the pain or sickness they are facing. Healthcare organizations need to encourage its doctors and care givers to start participating on social media Azu, Lilley, & Kolli, 2012.

Thus, they can respond to the patients and encourage them to visit their hospital for further check-ups and advice. This is also a form of marketing which can be combined with the traditional strategies and has far much better results.