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As Twitter Matures, Hospitals Harness its Power

 |  By Marianne@example.com  
   May 16, 2012

Over the past few months healthcare marketers have been testing the waters with the latest social media kid on the block, Pinterest. The excited-yet-cautious manner with which marketers are approaching this platform makes me nostalgic. It seems like only yesterday we were acting this way toward Twitter.

When Twitter launched in 2006, the general public approached it with more caution than excitement. Twitter is too limiting, they said, with just 140 characters. It breeds narcissism. It can't compete with Facebook. And what are these #hashtags, anyway?

But over time the critics quieted. To date, Twitter boasts more than 140 million active users, who generate 340 million tweets per day. It played a pivotal role in the Arab Spring and other political movements around the world. And it has won over marketers across all industries as an essential communications tool.

Last week, Houston's Memorial Hermann Hospital live-broadcasted via Twitter, a procedure to remove a benign brain tumor from 21-year-old female.  Dr. Dong Kim, the surgeon who treated former U.S. Representative Gabriel Giffords (D-AZ) and his team used the hashtag #MHBrain for this groundbreaking event.

Real-time communication with patients, providers
Today many hospitals are on Twitter, but only some are using the network to its full marketing potential and gaining measurable results. One of these trailblazers is Atlanta Medical Center, led by its director of marketing and public relations, Marcus Gordon.

Gordon uses the AMC Twitter account to communicate with patients, providers, and media, to manage crises, implement service recovery, and promote key service lines.

"Being part of a conversation, and having the opportunity to participate and help drive the direction of a conversation, is a very valuable thing," he says. "Twitter, along with Facebook and other online social networks, are digital word-of-mouth marketing tools that need to play a role in any organization's marketing/public relations strategy."

Twitter is a great way to take the pulse of an organization, Gordon says, through both positive and negative mentions. Patients who may not share their experience via letter, email, or even Facebook post, are often more apt to do so on a platform like Twitter.

Twitter for service recovery
And if you do get a negative mention, there is no reason you cannot turn it into a positive with some speedy service recovery.

AMC practiced Twitter service recovery recently when a patient's daughter, who happened to be a local Starbucks barista, tweeted about being unhappy that she was unable to access Facebook through the hospital's wireless connection.

Gordon's team acknowledged her complaint, granted her the internet access she wanted, and gave her a branded AMC cup to drink her coffee in. She later tweeted about the great customer service she received.

"Be honest and transparent–and always follow HIPAA guidelines," Gordon says. "If a customer complaint arises that elicits an immediate and confidential response, offer a way for the consumer to contact someone directly over a private line.  Do not get into a discussion over Twitter about a course of action. Within one tweet, offer a potential solution to a problem, a link that already has a potential solution, or a way for someone to connect directly off-line."

Twitter for crisis and media management
In addition to correcting customer service crises, Twitter can be beneficial in dealing with external crises, such as natural disasters or other emergencies that impact hospital service.

"Many organizations, including ours, have used Twitter to keep the general public informed, in real time, of pertinent events and emergency management protocols that have literally helped to save lives," Gordon says.

Twitter is also an efficient means of communication with the local and national media, in times of crises and otherwise.

"We've had a lot of success both pitching and interacting with members of the local and national media through Twitter," Gordon says. "Most of our local reporters with major TV stations and print publications use Twitter as a source for stories. We also had national stories air last year on The Weather Channel and ABC 20/20, and through tweets and re-tweets, and got the national reporters and programs to mention us several times as part of the story lead-ins as well as online discussion when the story aired."

And AMC hasn't stopped there; it recently entered a digital partnership with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to promote key service lines. Since the Journal-Constitution has 63,367 Twitter followers to AMC's 680, the partnership is allows the hospital to share its message with a much larger audience.

Currently, AMC is using the partnership to promote a new service line for a surgical procedure to alleviate excessive sweating. Metrics of re-tweets and mentions tracked well. 

"In the future, we hope to more directly correlate promoted/advertised tweets with measurable downstream revenue," Gordon says. "We are also looking at live tweeting less complex, lower risk surgical cases to promote awareness around key service areas."

As you look to the future of your organization's Twitter and social media plan, what do you see? Now that Twitter is out of its infancy and toddling toward maturity, the question hospital marketers should be asking isn't "Should we be on Twitter?", but "How can we use Twitter to its fullest potential?"

It turns out 140 characters isn't limiting at all.

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Marianne Aiello is a contributing writer at HealthLeaders Media.

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