Is Mobile Part Of Your Healthcare Marketing Plan?

Posted on January 3, 2012 by m.sherman

According a recent survey, 17 percent of cell phone owners have used their
mobile device to look up health or medical information. That percentage goes
up to 29 percent if the cell phone owner is between the ages of 18 to 29. What
does that tell us? People, especially the younger generation, are not only getting
medical and health related information online, they’re getting it on their mobile
device. mobile and healthcare

What’s the best way for your hospital or medical facility to get into the mobile
online space? You want a presence that’s useful and easy to use for the
consumer and doesn’t break any HIPAA rules and regulations.

If your medical facility is in a rural area where Wi-Fi is not as accessible, you may
want to create a mobile version of your website so potential patients can access
information via their smartphone 3G connection.

You may want to look into a custom app that includes bios of your physicians and
details your services. You may also want patients to make appointments right
from the app and share that information with their family via a social network or
email and phone calendar. If you can provide a convenient service to patients
and potential patients, they’re likely to stick with you for all their medical needs.

The possibilities for marketing your hospital or health care facility in the mobile
space are endless. For help creating a custom app or mobile-friendly version of
your website, visit Wax Custom Communications or call 305-350-5700. Happy
New Year!

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Musts for Every Health-Related Website

Posted on December 19, 2011 by m.sherman

With the Internet changing at breathtaking speed, so must your healthcare or hospital website keep up with the times. Here are a few of the basic tactics you want to stay on top of for your healthcare website. Hospital_Website

  • Make sure your site can be seen properly. Test your site on all the major browsers, including Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari (for MAC users) and IE 9.
  • Have a mobile version of your website so they are compatible with smart phone browsers.
  • Limit the amount of Flash you include on your site. Flash on a website can make your website very snazzy, but it does nothing for search engine optimization and Apple (iMac, iPhone, iPad) doesn’t support it at all. Make sure all your web pages are converted to HTML5.
  • Make your website easy to use.  Most people – especially patients – have a lot on their minds and aren’t very patient.  Make sure your website loads quickly and easy to navigate and read.
  • Include relevant reputable links to back up what’s said on the website.  It adds credibility to your hospital or healthcare facility.
  • Make sure your website is socially compatible.  People who look at your website may not need a service you provide, but they know someone who does.  Make sharing easy. Use services such as ShareThis and include links to your social media channels. This helps the business and the consumer.

To find out more about how Wax Custom Communications can help you enhance your website, visit http://www.waxcom.com or call 305-350-5700.

 

 

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A Twitter Chat Helps Get Your Tweets Noticed

Posted on December 13, 2011 by m.sherman

You and your healthcare facility may have some exciting news to share with the outside audience. Maybe it’s a new facility or a wellness seminar with a great speaker. twitter-chat

As a marketing person, you have to get that information out to the masses. One way to do that is via social media – it’s cost effective because it doesn’t cost anything more than time you put into it, and it can go viral.

For a business or a hospital, the first social networks you may consider to get your message across are LinkedIn and Facebook. Don’t ignore these great networks. But there’s another way to get folks talking.

Let me introduce you to Twitter Chat. Twitter, the third name in the Big 3 that come to mind when you think of social media, has more than 200 million people currently on the site and has become the most popular social network with the media – every news anchor and celebrity seems to have a Twitter handle these days.

With Twitter, however, there are tons of conversations going on in real time, and it can be hard to get your messages to break through.

A Twitter Chat, or Twitter Party, is simply a group of online Twitter users who use a designated hashtag at a scheduled time to discuss various topics and trends. At the chat people can interact with each other, ask questions and get information on a topic. Each tweet related to the chat includes the same specific hashtag in the tweet – for example, #flushots – to allows people to easily follow the tweets that are involved with your specific chat.

To make your Twitter Chat even easier for your audience, you can create a custom feed and provide a link to your event via http://tweetgrid.com. This will make it even easier for people to follow along because they will just see tweets that involve people in the chat.

Before you host a Twitter Chat, do your homework. Usually a Twitter Chat lasts for between 30 to 60 minutes. You will want to decide on a moderator or host who tweets on behalf of your healthcare facility. Designate a specific hashtag for your party. Make it as short as possible – with Twitter, you are limited to 140 characters and to participate in the Twitter Chat, each tweet needs to include that hashtag. Create a script for the topics you want to talk about and prepare 50 to 100 tweets in advance so you can easily copy and paste them during the event to keep the chat moving.

Once you decide on a specific date and time, promote the chat in all your social media, email outreach and website. Look around the web to find other places where you can post a chat you are hosting. Include the Tweetgrid link and the date, time and designated hashtag in all correspondence.

During the chat, make sure all your tweets are HIPPA compliant and aren’t specific about any individual cases. After it’s over, make it a point to mention and follow all the tweeters who participated in the chat. This will help get new followers. A Twitter Chat can lead to lots of buzz, community engagement and even new patients, which in turn can lead to more business for your hospital or healthcare facility.

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How Google+ Will Affect Search

Posted on December 6, 2011 by m.sherman

Last week, we looked at the benefits of Google+, Google’s new social network, and how it will change communication on the web and affect healthcare marketing.  Today, let’s take it a step further and see how a Google+ business page will affect search. google-plus-one

Google is the most-visited website and biggest search engine in the world. As a result of Google+’s social network, Google will be able to improve its search engine results pages through the enhanced information it can to collect from your social circle. Through Google+, Google will be able to understand faster than ever before what people are interested in.

Another benefit that Google+ brings to search is that results become much harder to cheat. Google can now more easily police spammers by watching how users try to influence search results. When Google sees a profile that only shares and votes for things on one website, it knows who to target as a spammer. If it sees profiles dominated exclusively by +1s, it might get suspicious. If you spam votes, Google will discount the value of those votes, and in turn decrease your ranking on the search engine results page.

Last, the +1 button you’re starting to see around the web (both on Google and on other websites) is changing how websites are getting traffic.  The +1 button, Google’s response to the Facebook “Like” button, is a way for people to decide what’s relevant online, in this case on Search.  The more people who click the button (or essentially endorse/vote for the page), the greater the chance the page will show up higher on Google’s search engine results page.

One of the biggest attributes to SEO success is the click-through rate – how often people who see you on their results page actually click on your page in the results. One of the powerful ideas behind the +1 votes is that you can see certain results that are extremely popular without even having to do anything. If enough other people in your Google+ social network find particular information helpful and the site receives enough votes, this type of information will start to become available without even having to click on the link.

Google+ is simply not just like any social network out there. It has the power to affect our search habits, and the search engine giant is not afraid to use that to its advantage to penetrate the social media space. A properly optimized Google+ page can make a difference in helping a person decide to use your product or service or not.

For more help on setting up a Google+ profile for your company visit our contact page on our website. Don’t forget if you like this article, +1 us on our new Wax Custom Communications Google+ page by clicking here.

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The Google+ Effect on Healthcare Marketing

Posted on November 28, 2011 by m.sherman

RedGooglePlusA few months back we posted an article called Google+, Healthcare and Beyond. In that post, we talked about the basics of this new social network, including circles and the +1 button. Google+ is still in its infancy, but since then, 40 million users have joined this new network.

In early November, Google launched Google+ for business. Finally, you can easily create a business entity on this new social network. Just when you started mastering and maintaining a presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, here is something else marketers need to pay attention to. What new benefits does Google+ bring to healthcare marketers?

  • First, and most important, Google+ is powered by the search engine giant Google, the most-viewed website in the world. If you go to Google to search, there is a good chance a Google+ business profile may come up in the search results, which means more website traffic for you.
  • Fans of your page can become free marketers of your page by adding a brand to a specific Google+ Circle within their network and then sharing that page with their network. They can also interact with the content posted by that company. For instance, users can “+1” (endorse) company updates, leave comments, upload photos, and tag the brand. If you see that someone you know had a great experience at your hospital and you endorse it, there is a good chance they too may use that same hospital for their healthcare needs.
  • An interesting aspect of this platform that’s not available currently on the other big social networks is its Hangouts feature which enables companies to engage with fans, prospects and customers through video conference calls. For a hospital, that could be a great way to create focus groups and discuss basic treatment options for patients without getting into specifics that could violate HIPAA regulations.

Wax Google PlusGoogle+ for businesses is merely a month old. For now, I recommend to start using the service by creating a business page and start using the same best practices you would use in your other social networks, including regularly sharing fresh content, reacting and responding to your fans and optimizing for lead generation.

Next week, we’ll go into detail about how Google+ will change search marketing. In the meantime, feel free to “+1” and add to your circles Wax Custom Communications’ brand-new Google+ page by clicking right Wax Custom Communications’ brand-new Google+ page by clicking right here.

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