Social Media in Healthcare Organizations Social Media

¶ … 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.

The pros and cons of using social media in healthcare marketing

The pros for using social media in healthcare are, with the one-to-one conversations that people have in social media a healthcare organization can build stronger relationships with its patients. Patients are on social media, if any healthcare organization wants to reach its patients then it cannot ignore social media as majority of adults are on there. Customer service, People are nowadays posting messages on social media healthcare organization need to be on social media so they can access and respond to these messages thus promoting their organization Choi, Eldomiaty, & Sae Won, 2007.

Healthcare organizations, can also use social media to manage any crisis that might occur in the organization and the quickest way of reassuring the patients and customers is by using social media. Social media are also used to get feedback from patients and their relatives regarding the services they received when they visited your organization. This feedback would be beneficial in improving services and care provided.

The cons of using social media are, due to the dynamic nature of social media the organization will be required to be on social media a lot of the time there so that they can ensure they respond to all comments and questions faster and this can be time consuming. Ensuring that the articles and comments that the organization makes are always relevant and interesting may prove difficult to maintain. The time it takes for one to start seeing the benefits of social media is long. Thus, the ROI takes longer to be achieved. There is no guarantee that the posts the organization makes will always elicit positive feedback. There are times when the opposite might occur as all post are open to criticism. There is also a likelihood of ruining the organization's name if social media is used clumsily as this might lead to public backlash. Having more than one person handling the social media for the organization can also create a mix up in the tone and phraseology of the messages posted.

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.