3 Strategies for Powering Up Word-of-Mouth Healthcare Marketing

2. Employ social media strategically

Social media can be extremely effective in generating positive word-of-mouth buzz, but it must be done thoughtfully. Simply tweeting and posting status updates to Facebook  isn't going to influence patients.

Hospitals must engage in meaningful conversations online in order to drive patients to their organization or a particular service line.

UK HealthCare, which has more than 19,000 Twitter followers, successfully accomplished this with the Runners Clinic. In August 2011, the organization retweeted a tweet from University of Kentucky mentioning the clinic.

Retweeting and responding to tweets mentioning your organization and its service lines is an effective way of letting followers know that other people think your hospital is pretty great, too.