Stop Waiting for Emerging Media to Emerge

In a Q&A session on "the future of emerging media" at the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market  Development's (SHSMD) annual conference in Chicago this week, many of the questions surprised me. About half of the attendees were well versed in social platforms and wanted information on the nitty-gritty of tracking and strategy, the other half still seemed worried about opening their organization up to online criticism and were skeptical about achieving leadership buy-in. This half of the group is clearly struggling to embrace social media. One woman proudly proclaimed that, after hours of work, she had successfully created a Facepage.

Panelist Dean Browell, PhD, executive vice president for Richmond, VA, ad agency Feedback, said it best: "I know some of you are thinking, just let me retire before I have to learn this crap."

That "'wait-it-out" attitude must be why attendees at this year's conference 'are asking the same social media-fearing questions they asked in years past.

"To be fair, those questions are now uncommon," Browell said when I asked him about social media acceptance the next day. "A year or two ago people didn't even want to raise their hands to admit that they had a Facebook account."

Still, it seems as if the healthcare community isn't integrating social media into its marketing strategies as fast as it would like. After all, 12 of SHSMD's 60 regular sessions were devoted specifically to online marketing and social media, in addition to a few workshops.

The key to successful social media integration, which Browell and the other panelists in the ""session tried to drive home, is that the online community is going to talk about your organization whether you are active online, or not.

"You can't control the message in any media—this is just amplified," said panelist Stephanie Cannon, director of Web  communications and e-business at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, OH.

"You wouldn't decide not to do PR because there might be a bad story written about you," Browell added. "'They're going to be negative if we're [online] or not. We need to ask, do we want to be aware it's happening and do we want to have a vehicle to respond?"

Representatives from The Ohio State University Medical Center explained how they tackled that question in a session called "Going from 'Take It Down' to 'C-Suite Tweets' in Six Months." In mid-2009 hospital leadership blocked Facebook, YouTube, and other social sites throughout the organization—including patient-accessible wireless—after a nurse manager complained they had a negative effect on ED productivity.

But Ryan Squire, social media program director for the 980-bed organization, advocated reinstating access to social media to improve both patient and employee satisfaction.

"Every time you shut down Facebook you're telling employees, 'I don't care what you have to say,'" he said. "You can't create culture for patients if you don't create culture for employees."

So by forming an interdisciplinary committee and considering the legitimate need for Web access, employee preferences, and the liability for not having open Web   access, Squire and his team created a social media policy and convinced leadership to remove blocks on social media sites.

Now, most department heads write internal blogs and the CEO regularly updates a video blog. The marketing team has also used Twitter for service recovery—even turning some dissatisfied patients into brand advocates.

As in industry, healthcare is slowly making strides toward social media adoption, but progress is slower than most of us would like to admit. To continue to move forward, we have to consistently educate, debunk misconceptions, and prove the validity of social media marketing. We can't afford to wait it out.