The low-cost and low-risk strategy of developing and maintaining a blog for your small healthcare organization might be the best investment you haven't made yet.
If your health system or hospital is still wading in the shallowest waters of social media, i.e. only periodically posting to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, a blog may be a gentle transition to the vast ocean of opportunities social media presents.
Blogging provides many benefits for hospitals and health systems. Think of it as the mouthpiece of an organization's megaphone. The message originates at the organization's, not on a billboard, not on a television commercial. Not to discount out of home media, but as Lee Aase, director of the Mayo Clinic for Social Media, pointedly said last week, a hospital or health system blog should be thought of as an organization's "home base."
All internet roads ultimately lead back to the blog, and a blog provides ultimate control over how a message is delivered and who can react to it. That's not the case on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, the three most popular social media platforms.
The Mayo Clinic's blog is a standard to which blogs from large healthcare systems are held, and rightly so, they do a great job of integrating its entire social media. I picked three other hospital blogs that are also getting it right. There are many more, but the following hit my qualifications of being easy to find, updated regularly, and nurturing a true community.
1. Cancerwise
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center's blog is about all aspects of cancer, from diagnosis to survival and all the research in between. The blog features stories from a mix of physicians, patients, and caregivers, and the content ranges from first-person accounts of surviving cancer to tips on what to pack for an appointment at MD Anderson. Patient stories are the most engaging, and it's a place where the hospital shines, too.
Most hospitals and health systems know this, and have made patient stories a cornerstone of their marketing strategies to showcase patient experience and clinical expertise. Using the blog as another platform allows a separate space where you can embed videos, clinical advice, or other parts of the website that are easily overlooked or are difficult to find.
For example, a physician finder is a pretty standard tool that exists on an organization's website, if the system has employed physicians. If an organization has hundreds of physicians, it's easy for them to get lost in the shuffle. On the Cancerwise blog, when the topic turns to research or education, a physician is usually featured in the blog post with a link that opens in a separate window (pay attention bloggers!) to that physician's page, which includes current and past research projects as well as their history with MD Anderson.
Another important part of this blog is that it is updated at least four times a week. Even if you can't blog every single day, establish a pattern that users will come to know (and appreciate). There's nothing worse than finding a blog you enjoy reading and following only to come back to the same entry three days in a row. Patients and users are savvy and time-restricted. If you don't have what they're looking for, they will find someone else who does.
2. Scrubbing In
They say everything is bigger in Texas, and to be clear, it's usually the Texans who are saying that, (I can say that because I'm a native Texan, but don't hold that against me). But at Baylor Health Care, based in Dallas, it's really true.
The health system has deployed an aggressive marketing blitz on social media channels and maintains not one, but two blogs. Its newest, Scrubbing In, made my list because it looks like other consumer blogs, which attracts a wider audience than Baylor Health patients, but is clearly all about healthcare, as the catchy title implies.
Baylor Health's other blog, Sammons Says, is also well-maintained blog about its cancer care services. Scrubbing In also made my list of top three because it is easy to find and the blog posts are topical. As I write this, from a desktop in Dallas, the city is abuzz and reeling from the news of the death of nationally known, but homegrown radio personality, Kidd Kraddick. At the young age of 53, he died suddenly in New Orleans, and preliminary reports point to cardiac disease, perhaps due in part to his smoking habit.
While other healthcare organizations are using the event as an educational platform for heart health, Baylor Health's Scrubbing In blog post acknowledges the loss of someone who was wildly popular in their own backyard first. Why is this important? It shows humanity and it fits with the personality of what a blog should be: a community of readers that find interesting topics at a place they trust. The blog treats Kraddick's death with a series of questions and answers about cardiac health with a link to Baylor Health's heart health online tools that a reader may be ready to use.
3. Signature Moms. This blog, maintained by Signature Healthcare, a hospital and multi-specialty medical group based in Brockton, MA, looks different from the other blogs on this list (and other lists of top hospital blogs) because it is written by and for a singular audience – moms. Developed in 2011 as a way to create a sense of community for moms who delivered and/or received care at Signature Healthcare, the blog reaches one of the most sought after demographics, particularly in healthcare where women are the primary decision makers.
I also include this blog on my list because Signature Healthcare is a relatively small hospital and medical group compared to the previous Texas giants, showing that organizations willing to be creative can achieve what bigger budgets do. To help make sure the content on the Signature Moms blog is fresh, the hospital holds a yearly contest online for local blog contributors. There are currently eight bloggers, and their only prize, besides achieving fame as a published mommy blogger, is $200. The alternating voices from Signature Healthcare's service area achieve the same community feel that other popular mommy blogs do.
It doesn't feel like a cheap advertisement for their labor and delivery services because the posts that the bloggers write are about them, and their personal experiences with their children. Sometimes the posts are about healthcare, but more often they are about the daily lives of moms and their kids. Lest you think the blog is great, but too small to care about, it recently surpassed 100,000 views and 2,500 subscribers.
The low-cost and low-risk of developing and maintaining a blog could be the best investment you haven't made yet.
Jacqueline Fellows is a contributing writer at HealthLeaders Media.