blog | Healthcare Marketing
how-to-use-social-media-in-healthcare
blog | Healthcare Marketing

How to Use Social Media in Healthcare Industry (Explained with Examples)

The use of social media has skyrocketed, and it is essential for furthering your social media marketing initiatives in the healthcare industry. In this highly competitive field, a strong healthcare social media marketing strategy must be implemented in order to stand out from the crowd and reach patients and consumers.  Naturally, with the developing technology, the research and decision-making habits of patients or customers have also changed drastically. People now google their symptoms, choose a health professional according to the hospital or clinic comments and decide completely in line with the information on the internet.

Social media in the healthcare industry has definitely become crucial for the health sector. In fact, it is estimated that 70% of U.S. healthcare organizations use social media. The best social media marketing strategy for healthcare may make your hospital the top option in your community or your small clinic into a thriving enterprise.  If you require medical social media services, perhaps you can consider partnering with social media marketing agencies.

Benefits of Social Media in Healthcare

In order to engage patients and consumers, many healthcare organizations are attempting to effectively use different types of social media marketing strategies. Organizations are able to abandon conventional advertising methods and use the Internet to interact with patients through efficient marketing and communication strategies.

Here are some of the benefits of using social media in the healthcare industry:

Opportunity to Reach Many People

People do thorough research before choosing a doctor or clinic, and they make choices based on other people’s experiences. Positive or negative experiences gained are shared with people through google reviews or shared posts. 

RealSelf is a social media platform with 236K followers where patients can share their experiences with plastic surgery and dentistry. It’s an excellent platform for potential patients to browse comparison images, read testimonials, and ask questions. 

Informing Patients with Accurate Information

In order to choose a clinic and to make decisions to receive the intended care, patients often turn to social media for medical information. Physicians, clinics and hospitals are in a position to establish themselves as a credible source of sensitive information. Unfortunately, it’s becoming harder to find reliable information online, where information may be shared unfiltered. Thus, healthcare organizations can screen out false information and point patients toward trustworthy sources as people are likely to look online for unguided research and self-diagnosis.

Below, you can find an example of how Johnson&Johnson uses its Instagram account to share medical information on Tuberculosis on World TB Day.

Building Trust

It is much more reliable for patients to seek help from health units or doctors that they have researched beforehand. Because people approach clinics, hospitals, or doctors with much greater confidence after reading about other patients’ experiences on social media, whom many others trust and entrust themselves to. In particular, fields like plastic surgery and dentistry have reached a certain audience by effectively using digital marketing strategies for healthcare. Your customers’ faith in you will grow with each successful service you deliver and each positive feedback you receive on social media, which will encourage others to select you first.

Chelsea Dental Clinic is an award winning cosmetic dentist clinic based in London. The clinic and the staff are highly popular, especially on social media and among patients. The clinic shares information on its staff and the progress of its patients’ treatments.

Sharing the Value of Your Practice

A health professional’s vocation is highly sacred. People have come to understand the value of health professionals and the amount of labor required for their success as a result of the pandemic. If you’re looking for ways to display your hard work and knowledge and seek medical social media ideas for your clinic or hospital, partnering with healthcare marketing agencies is the first step. Successful agencies can help you to create the healthcare marketing strategy you seek and help you increase your online visibility. 

Social Media Tips for Healthcare Organizations

When crafting medical social media ideas, it’s important to keep your target audience in mind and create content that is both informative and engaging. Thus, you should use clear and concise language, avoiding using medical jargon that your audience may not understand. Another important element when creating content online is to use visuals. For this, you can try to share the atmosphere of your clinic or hospital – without violating patient rights, of course- and post regularly to be consistent with your overall brand message.

The healthcare sector is gradually figuring out how to use social media in a way that is comfortable for patients, and professional colleagues.  As per every industry, a strong social media marketing strategy is a must for the healthcare industry.  And… having a robust social media strategy requires time, source, and expertise. For that reason, a great number of healthcare brands team up with marketing companies. Especially, it’s known that healthcare marketing companies in Australia play this game well.

Let’s jump into our suggestions.

1. Have an Online Presence

Let’s start with the obvious one. A rising number of consumers are turning to online review sites to assist them to choose a new doctor. This implies that small-scale businesses with a bad online reputation may be losing out on hundreds of new patients annually.

2. Share Educational Content

Many prospective patients are unaware that they require medical care. They decide to search Google for their symptoms after noticing them. They’re not expressly looking for a doctor, just information. If your website contains a wealth of useful information on the fields in which you specialize, people will turn to you for solutions and your clinic will be the first place they think of when they need assistance or treatment.

3. Use Different Types of Marketing Strategies

Using a mix of marketing strategies is preferable in today’s competitive business environment. If you’re struggling to create an effective marketing strategy for your dental office, clinic or hospital, a list of the best healthcare marketing companies in the UK may help you.  Use all three, rather than just concentrating on SEO, PPC, or social media. You don’t have to employ all of the aforementioned strategies, but by diversifying, you can increase traffic if one doesn’t work.

4. Raise Awareness for New Treatments and Events

Particularly since Covid-19, people have begun to conduct more online research on health issues and have enthusiastically sought out fresh information. Another content idea that can play an important role in your medical social media strategy is to inform users about new treatments and important healthcare developments and events to raise awareness.

5. Protect Patients’ Rights

The significance of patient confidentiality cannot be emphasized enough, even when considering the best practices of digital marketing for healthcare. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA, requires that you exercise extreme caution when sharing patient content that could possibly divulge sensitive information or violate other HIPAA rules. It in fact requires explicit written consent by patients to use their content on your medical social media accounts.

4 Social Media Strategies for Healthcare Professionals & Hospitals

Now, let us guide you through a few medical social media ideas and strategies that you can apply to your marketing mix right away:

  • Focus on the patient experience

Healthcare organizations can use social media to share stories and testimonials from patients, as well as highlight the work that their staff does to provide care. This can help to build trust and credibility with potential patients. American Cancer Society created a YouTube series where their patients share their experiences with the HPV virus and how the facility and staff helped them survive:

  • Educate the public about health and wellness:

Healthcare organizations can use social media to share information about health and wellness, such as tips for preventing diseases, managing chronic conditions, and making healthy lifestyle choices. This can help to improve the health of the community and reduce the burden on healthcare resources.

Another crucial example is by the expert digital marketing agency, Massive Media.

Massive Media partnered with Peace Region Victim Service to address opioid misuse in Northern Alberta, creating a social media marketing campaign that aimed to challenge stigmas and spread awareness. Their strategy involved engaging directly with those affected and supporting organizations, developing relatable and compassionate creative content to represent the diverse impacts of opioid misuse. The campaign featured a dedicated landing page, social media setup, and offline marketing collateral, focusing on connecting affected individuals with resources and support.

  • Promote preventive care:

You can use social media to encourage people to get preventive care, such as annual checkups, vaccinations, and cancer screenings. This can help to catch diseases early and improve the chances of successful treatment.

  • Become a trusted source of information:

To establish yourself as a trusted source of information about health and wellness, you should be more active on social media as an healthcare professional. This can be done by sharing accurate and up-to-date information, as well as by responding to questions and concerns from the public.

By following these tips, you can create a successful healthcare social media campaign that will raise awareness, promote healthy behaviors, and provide information and support to patients and their loved ones.

Best Social Media Campaigns for Your Inspiration 

Healthcare advertising campaigns are important because they can help to raise awareness of health issues, promote healthy behaviors, and encourage people to seek preventive care. These campaigns can be used by governments, health organizations, and businesses to reach a wide audience and make a positive impact on public health. We’ve gathered the best healthcare social media campaigns that have been successful in raising awareness, promoting healthy behaviors, and providing information and support to patients and their loved ones below:

1. Ice Bucket Challenge by ALS Association

This campaign raised awareness and money for ALS research. People were challenged to either dump a bucket of ice water over their head or donate to the ALS Association. The campaign was a huge success, raising over $115 million. 

2. “Yes, Mamm” by Carilion Clinic

Carilion Clinic launched a social media campaign called “Yes, Mamm” to raise awareness about breast cancer and the importance of early detection. The campaign featured videos, infographics, and stories from breast cancer survivors.

3. #WorldMentalHealthDay by WHO

This annual campaign is organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise awareness of mental health issues and to promote mental well-being. The campaign uses social media to share information about mental health, to connect people with resources, and to encourage them to talk about their mental health.

4. British Red Cross – The Power of Kindness

This campaign video displays the story of a young refugee whose life has changed with just a bit of act of kindness. With this video, British Red Cross emphasized the importance of being kind to one another and sharing stories about kindness, and encouraging people to share acts of kindness with others.

5. Dana-Farber Brigham & Women’s Cancer Center x You Have Us Campaign

It’s an incredibly powerful slogan: “Right now you may have cancer. But what your cancer doesn’t know is — You Have Us.” Through confidence-inspiring videos, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute shows its personal approach to cancer treatment and state-of-the-art facilities. By sharing these videos on social media (as well as using more traditional marketing techniques, like television and radio) the cancer center embodies what it means to build trust with your target audience.

6. Johnson & Johnson – Nurses Change Lives

In this advertising campaign, Johnson & Johnson conveyed the importance of the role of nurses in the health sector. The following is the marketing video featuring nurses who, for years, remained by their patients’ sides during the most critical situations and may have saved many lives with their initial action:

Wrapping Up

Social media usage in the medical field is rather debatable. However, using contemporary digital marketing techniques rather than “primitive” marketing strategies is now unavoidable in the technologically advanced world we live in.

It is crucial to have an effective and lucrative social media marketing plan, and the industry demands a lot of work. However, using social media in the health sector will also ensure that the sensitive information from the right source reaches people and will help raise public awareness in addition to promoting the visibility of health professionals.

Written by: 15 June 2023
A Story About
Massive Media

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