The following guest post is contributed by John Luginbill, CEO and Founder of THE HEAVYWEIGHTS and author of the blog TurnUpYourVolume.
Using results-oriented social media is the key to increasing patient volume. You need to integrate a strategic, results-oriented social media program to actually see an increase in your patient volume.
Let’s look at two scenarios:
Hospital A decides to launch a social media program. They make it their goal have an online presence in the next 6 months. They serve a large demographic of patients in the area, and seek to engage over 5,000 consumers and publicize their 8 different service lines. They entrust this effort to one tech-savvy member in their marketing department, and get the program running smoothly for about a month or two, only to find the initiative burdensome and unsuccessful, converting just 3% of their follower to patients.
Hospital B wants to get their social media program off-the-ground. They gather 5 key decision-makers and choose a specific service line to promote through social media, collectively creating a strategy. They narrow their target to 1,000 people in the county, and choose unique keywords to reach these people in particular. The social media tasks are divided among the team, setting a goal to get 50 new patients from their social media target by linking to online appointment requests. 6 months later, they’ve received 150 service-line specific requests for appointments, driving 15% of their target audience to take action.
Here’s what Hospital B did right. They:
- Used specifics in their messaging and target audience
- Divided tasks to make the effort sustainable
- Made it easy for their target to take a measurable action
- Set clear metrics to evaluate success
I strongly believe the key to successful social media is a comprehensive social media strategy that’s automated and results-oriented.