5 Common Facebook Mistakes Made by Home Health Companies

21Apr

Facebook, Healthcare Marketing, Uncategorized

When it comes to Facebook, it really does take more than simply creating an account and watching the leads, referrals, and clients come pouring in. The site just isn’t suited for the “build it and they will come” mentality.

This is especially true for members of the healthcare industry, and in particular home health agencies. In the wonderful world of Facebook, people login and engage with information they find useful, and brands which interest them. When you are able to fill these two needs, Facebook becomes a different ball game: one that continues to evolve and bring new and more interesting opportunities.

From working in the healthcare market for some time, I’ve seen many home health agencies that have been getting it wrong on Facebook for years. In the past, I chalked it up to the fact so many healthcare organizations were just waking up to the power of social media for marketing purposes and were doing their own internal fact finding.

Now however, you really need to “up your game” and get involved with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, not only to stay competitive, but also to continually engage your target market in an increasingly cluttered world.

There are several fundamental problems that many home health companies have made on Facebook. In order to help ensure that your agency is not making these mistakes, I’ve listed them below with some easy fixes for you to follow. Let’s get started:

1. Make Sure You Have a Facebook Page. Make sure that your agency has its own Facebook Page….not a Facebook Profile or a Facebook Place. You want a full blown Facebook Page. Nothing is more unprofessional than a member of your target market being asked to “Add as Friend” rather than “LIKE” your Page.

2. Hi-Resolution Cover Image and Logo. Facebook branding should continue on from the branding that you have on your business cards, website, brochures and more. Make sure that your Facebook Cover image is on-brand and is eye catching (after all, it’s the first thing people see when they come to your page). Also, make sure that your Facebook Page logo is hi-resolution and meets the guidelines of size that Facebook puts forth. Both of these items I’ve seen done incorrectly time and time again, and these first impressions do make a difference!

3. Don’t Neglect Your ‘About’ Section. This is another highly neglected area by many home health companies. Go to your Facebook Page, click Edit Page and then Update Page Info. This will bring you to a page where you are asked to fill in specific information about your organization. FILL IN EVERYTHING YOU CAN! A good rule of thumb is to open your agency’s website in another window and then copy and paste the information directly from there to the corresponding area of the Facebook Page. Remember to pack this section with keywords – this is how you will be found easily and quickly in Facebook searches!

4. Respond to Comments, Reviews and Posts! There is nothing worse than going to a home health company’s Facebook Page and seeing absolutely no responses to anything that was written to them. You need to respond to everything – whether it is positive or negative. If you have tons of negative reviews, have you thought to reach out to these people to fix this situation? Just leaving them up there to fester is not bringing your credibility higher, it is dragging it down to rock bottom.

5. Post More Than Once Every 10 Years. Nothing says “I’m here and I care” like completely ignoring your Facebook Page. Sarcasm of course. You need to post to your Facebook Page consistently. If someone goes to your agency’s Facebook Page right now and sees that your last post was 3 months ago….why would they follow or LIKE you? People want to engage and follow home health care agencies that are active (on a consistent basis), not those who never even check their page.

These 5 mistakes are easy to overcome, especially with the help of a qualified social media marketing team. If you are experiencing the above problems, or just need some help making sense of the social media landscape for your home health agency, let us know! The Go! Agency are specialists when it comes to the healthcare social media space and we can help you define and reach your goals today. Call us toll free at 866-926-2636 for a free consultation.

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Healthcare Social Media: 20 of the Best Healthcare Marketing Websites

By Christopher Tompkins

9Aug

Healthcare Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized

The healthcare industry is one that The Go! Agency works with extensively. All areas of this field – from recruiting, hospital groups, medical facilities and clinics, to individual physicians and practitioners – are waking up to the power of social media marketing. With the Age Wave and Baby Boomers demanding better, cutting edge, state of the art care – their ways of learning, communicating with their practitioners, and telling their friends about that care will advance too…and social media is the vehicle!

As we are always ones to keep up with the latest and greatest in marketing for all business segments, we have been compiling a list of resources to use to keep up to date with all the trends.

I shared this list with a healthcare client of mine and they went through the roof and suggested that we share it with all of you. As you can guess – I loved the idea!

So below is a list of all of (my) favorite healthcare and medical marketing websites and blogs that have the sharpest and most informative content to help those in healthcare market their businesses more effectively.

Enjoy and make sure if you like the blogs, let them know I sent you!

KevinMD.com: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/
The Healthcare Marketing Exchange: http://www.healthcaresuccess.com/blog/
Weekly Probe Marketing: http://www.weeklyprobe.com/category/marketing/
MedTouch Blog: http://blog.medtouch.com/
Medical Marketing: http://blogs.estcomedical.com/
Hospital Impact: http://www.hospitalimpact.org/
KBM Group: http://www.kbmghealth.com/blogs.aspx
Medical Marketing Blog: http://www.mednet-tech.com/
ePharma Rx: http://blog.intouchsol.com/
Healthcare.Marketing: http://hospitalmarketinganas.blogspot.com/
Quaintise: http://blog.quaintise.com/
Enabling Healthy Decisions: http://georgevanantwerp.com/
Healthy Conversations: http://www.trajectory4brands.com/
Medical Marketing Blog: http://omnimedicalmarketing.com/
Gandolf’s Marketing Magic: http://www.gandolfsmarketingmagic.com/
Medical Web Experts: http://www.medicalwebexperts.com/blog/

Are there any more that you would like to add to this list?

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Healthcare Social Media Marketing: 5 Reasons Not To Wait Any Longer

By Dale Griffen

9Jan

Healthcare Marketing, Uncategorized

It’s exciting to see more and more healthcare organizations buzzing about social media marketing over the past year. Social media marketing is such a wonderful way to connect with members of your target market (including your customers, referral sources, patients, and their families and caregivers) I’m happy to see healthcare organizations are beginning to adapt their marketing plans to include a social strategy that extends beyond the traditional ‘face to face’ and old school collateral brochures.

As we at The Go! Agency handle many healthcare clients, the trend that we have seen when speaking with these various organizations is that many are struggling to get things off of the ground. Whether it be red-tape such as writing social media policy and procedure clauses, dealing with HIPAA guidelines or just superiors who are reluctant to invest time and money in this ‘new med‘ – push back has been a common problem.

While time will force these problems to vanish, there are quite a lot of advantages to being an early adopter as a healthcare organization. After extensive research, we have found many healthcare companies fall flat when it comes to their use (or misuse) of social media.

Here are a few of the reasons why healthcare organizations shouldn’t wait any longer when it comes to executing a social media marketing campaign:

1. Facebook is not just for Starbucks. With its millions of active users (and I stress the word “active”), Facebook has a sea of people that you can engage with from your healthcare organization. These people are consuming information in every category, not just the mega-brands. Everyone has their space on Facebook. Even better, with Facebook Pages you can categorize your organization fully, and configure locations and other valuable information for your target audience. Whether your business is local, national or international, Facebook has the ability to create real connections, support customer/patient communications and will help you let your audience know about any events, or exclusive information with just a few clicks.

2. Your audience (and competition) is on Twitter. The healthcare and medical community is not only on Twitter…they are active! Doctors, medical companies, hospitals and many more are offering updates, event news, guidelines and much more on a daily basis. Yet another massive and active community, Twitter is a hot spot for sharing information and you need to be in the mix!

3. There is a LinkedIn Group to fit your needs….or 50! Just adding your hospital or company to LinkedIn is wonderful and important step…but what if you could also add an additional audience of 50,000 to 1 million+? With LinkedIn Groups you can engage with potential customers/patients based on subject and location and get in front of them on a daily basis. Now that is coverage!

4. YouTube is the portal for promotion. Using video as a promotional tool is a must in the healthcare industry. Having the ability to illustrate what your company is capable of in addition to the skill of your team or products is imperative. Now imagine having the ability to place this video on the second largest search engine out there: YouTube. Fully branded and packed with information, this vehicle does nothing but build your profile, credibility and positive sentiment.

5. Act now or be left behind. As there are many organizations that are understaffed or unable to give the appropriate time to either do the social media or even pitch the idea of a campaign to the CEO….the organizations are simply trickling in. But this speed will begin to increase at a faster and faster rate. By being an early adopter, you can gain more market advantage and make a splash as one of the first organizations in your area to have a wonderful Facebook Page, an active Twitter account, a linked in LinkedIn account and a sharp and slick YouTube page.

I like ending with number 5 as there are many healthcare marketers out there that have received a lot of push back on social media from their organizations. But for every one, there are numerous others who are getting their campaigns approved and are launching effective social media marketing campaigns and claiming their social real estate. My advice is to get your plan together quickly so you don’t miss the boat!

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6 Healthcare Social Media Mistakes….and How to Avoid Them

By Dale Griffen

9Jan

Healthcare Marketing, Uncategorized

With all of the information out there about social media, it is tough to know what to pay attention to and what to take with a grain of salt. Yet even with all of this information, it is still possible to make a few mistakes when executing your healthcare social media marketing campaigns.

As an owner of a social media marketing firm, every day I speak with healthcare professionals who are trying to make the most out of their Facebook and LinkedIn profile, or making their “tweets” count on Twitter. The following are a few of the most common mistakes that I have seen healthcare organizations make on social media and what we can do to combat them in the future.

Mistake #1: Lack of Research on the Platform

This is a very important one. With all of the hype around social media (and also due to the fact that creating accounts is free and easy), many of us are eager to just jump in headfirst. Keep in mind that social media is a branding and visibility platform and thus needs to carry the right messaging and voice. Before you go full speed ahead, first see what you are getting yourself into.

I suggest taking the time to look through each site. Where is your target market? What is your competition doing right (which can really help you come up with a strategy)? What applications can be useful? How are people communicating? What tools do I have to communicate with my market? While Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can work to everyone’s advantage, if you only have time to manage one or two presences, it is best to be able to pinpoint the right ones and save yourself time and effort.

Top tip: a great way of seeing what sites suit your healthcare organization is by asking your existing patients and/or clients via polling.

Mistake #2: Lack of Focus

When you execute an advertising campaign, you know who you are targeting. When you do a public relations campaign, you know what market you are trying to reach out to. When you do an email marketing campaign….well, you get the point. Social media is no different.

Social media allows us to target with laser focus, you just need to identify who you are trying to reach. Once identified, the key is to connect with “meaningful people” not just random people to get “the numbers.” Come on, why connect with 10,000 people who don’t care about you? What good does that do? Find connect and engage with people that matter. Focus!

Mistake #3: Lack of Consistency

If you are going to do social media, make sure to do it on a consistent basis – not whenever you can grab a free second. By consistent I mean daily, weekly, bi-weekly…on some sort of schedule. Since you are growing your audience, you need to be in front of them gaining that visibility and credibility consistently. My tip? Create a schedule of when you will be executing social media and what messages you will be highlighting. It takes a few minutes, but can save hours of weekly work.

No time to even make a plan? Outsource! It’s not a dirty word anymore.

Mistake #4: Using a 100% Push Marketing Approach

Push marketing is used all of the time in traditional marketing. While it is a perfect fit in many instances, it is not the foundation of an engaging social media strategy. Push marketing literally “pushes” what you want from your audience directly on top of them, while “pull” marketing using social media is about starting a conversation, engaging, enchanting and much more. My suggestion is to use a 90% pull and a 10% push marketing equation. This is something that I have used and it works a treat. This way you can grow your audience and create value before offering up something exclusive. If they believe you to be credible through your pull approach, when you incorporate the push elements you will have higher levels of success.

Mistake #5: Wrong Goals

Truly look at what you are trying to achieve, and “more patients through the door” is not enough. Social media has many outcomes, so it is smart to have a broader scope. Think in terms of hits to your website, newsletter signups, ebook/book sales/downloads….this is the way to go!

Mistake #6: Lack of Planning

Again, I am going back to the importance of a plan: without a plan, you plan to fail. Although we know this cliche all too well, there is definitely truth to it. Why? Because a strategic plan saves you time and money – two things that we all can use, right?

Sit down and figure out your marketing strategy and then layer your social media strategy on-top. Social media can support and enhance everything you do, you just have to keep the two connected.Without the connection, you are wasting the power of cross marketing and branding. Flying blindly in a new marketing medium could not only be risky for your reputation, but also cause you more trouble than you can handle.

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I hope that these healthcare social media mistakes are ones that you have not made and if you have, you will no longer make. It is important for us to all to take a close look at our plans and strategies in order to see how strong and effective they can be. Without strategy or planning, a healthcare social media marketing campaign takes a lot more time and a lot more effort to execute.