In Social Media

Event Blog: Learning Healthcare Social Media from Mayo Clinic

Yesterday I attended a seminar on social media in healthcare, hosted by GA Creative and featuring Lee Aase (@leeaase) from the Mayo Clinic. Lee is an entertaining speaker and brought a wealth of information about how Mayo is using social media tools to deeply engage their patients, staff, and the media. I haven’t seen the exact slides from today, but here is a similar presentation Lee posted to Slideshare:

Energizing Word of Mouth through Social Media

View more documents from Lee Aase.

Some quick takeaways:

You’ll never realize value from social media unless you get out there and do it
A couple quotes/paraphrases: “Your kids aren’t smarter than you. They’re just less afraid to look dumb.” “Your mileage may vary, but you have to at least get a car first.” Both speak to the need to avoid paralysis from analysis and just get out and there and try social media. Claim your orgs Twitter handle, set up a FB fan page, establish a foothold in the social media space. At least start listening.

HIPAA creates unique privacy challenges for healthcare organizations embracing social media
This is true for new content, such as sharing patient stories, and even for blog comment moderation. For example, you have to moderate or “de-identify” (change names) comments from people who are sharing medical stories from relatives in order to guard against HIPAA violations.

Video is a great way to generate content without stressing the experts
Lee had an early concern about how to generate a steady flow of good content (posts, mainly) without over-stressing the doctors and researchers with writing asks. The solution was a cheap Flip video, short and fast interviews, and simple editing guidelines.

Capital investment are close to zero, yet staff time costs can also be kept in check
An oft-quoted slide in Lee’s deck – he has presented similar decks elsewhere – refers to “$0″ as the cost of using Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Mayo runs their blogs via WordPress.com, and pays about $75/year for options. All in all, dirt cheap, which is a key part of Lee’s story – it doesn’t take thousands of dollars to get a social media effort up and running.

Obviously the question is about staff time and skills – the triple challenges of mastering the tools, monitoring the conversation flow, and generating compelling content can be a vast time suck. This is a very real barrier for many companies who would otherwise embrace new media technologies.

I appreciate Lee’s reply that you should avoid creating a social media staff silo, avoid dumping it off to “the kids” (aka interns and junior staff), but rather make use of the untapped creativity and potential of your existing team members. Identify a “gray haired” champion who can advocate to senior management and help get these efforts elevated on the staff priority list. The nature of social media tools is not that they let you do radically new things, but rather they help your staff do what they do already – media relations, patient communications, etc – more effectively, faster, and cheaper than ever before. This is one of Lee’s key recommendations: don’t focus on the discontinuity social media tools bring (that scare people off) but highlight how they help them do their current jobs better.

Related posts:

  1. Social Media in Healthcare Cheat Sheet
  2. Yet again, social media is not about any tool or platform
  3. Is Your Social Media Marketing Evergreen?
  • sarahhaeger

    This is a great presentation, thanks for sharing. My one concern is that you present these tools as being “free” and although there are no external costs to utilize these platforms there are indeed human costs. As we all know, it takes time and dedication to develop, execute and engage successfully using these platforms.

  • socialmallard

    Hi Sarah,
    To clarify, I'm summarizing what I learned from Lee's presentation, so your comment more directly addresses his conclusions. That said, I hoped that I had captured your concern in the post – the raw dollars needed to invest in the tools of social media are negligible, but absolutely there is a real concern about the staff time needed to do it right.

    Lee argues, and I think it's a reasonable argument, that concern can be somewhat addressed by focusing the use of social media tools where it helps with existing staff roles and projects. For example, if you have someone on staff who normally handles PR (media outreach, responding to story queries, etc), social media tools can compliment their existing efforts. Same goes if you have someone who writes customer (or patient) success stories – re-focus their efforts into sourcing and tailoring that content via SM channels such as blog posts, guest video interviews, etc.

    I definitely agree it's still the single biggest objection for orgs embracing social media, and it's a valid one. No matter how you look at it, it will take time, effort, and focus. Lee's point, as I understood it, is one way to look at overcoming that objection. Mileage may vary in your org, as he might say.

  • sarahhaeger

    This is a great presentation, thanks for sharing. My one concern is that you present these tools as being “free” and although there are no external costs to utilize these platforms there are indeed human costs. As we all know, it takes time and dedication to develop, execute and engage successfully using these platforms.

  • http://www.socialmallard.com/ Kevin Briody

    Hi Sarah,
    To clarify, I'm summarizing what I learned from Lee's presentation, so your comment more directly addresses his conclusions. That said, I hoped that I had captured your concern in the post – the raw dollars needed to invest in the tools of social media are negligible, but absolutely there is a real concern about the staff time needed to do it right.

    Lee argues, and I think it's a reasonable argument, that concern can be somewhat addressed by focusing the use of social media tools where it helps with existing staff roles and projects. For example, if you have someone on staff who normally handles PR (media outreach, responding to story queries, etc), social media tools can compliment their existing efforts. Same goes if you have someone who writes customer (or patient) success stories – re-focus their efforts into sourcing and tailoring that content via SM channels such as blog posts, guest video interviews, etc.

    I definitely agree it's still the single biggest objection for orgs embracing social media, and it's a valid one. No matter how you look at it, it will take time, effort, and focus. Lee's point, as I understood it, is one way to look at overcoming that objection. Mileage may vary in your org, as he might say.

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