Healthcare Matters

You say you know what social media is and that you know it works, but can you articulate a coordinated strategy? Having a branded version of your website on Facebook and Twitter feeds are nice, but can you lead a discussion around how your organization can better use social media to enhance brand recognition, drive sales and make sure that it is supportive of your organizations strategic goals and broader marketing objectives?

Knowing that something works and understanding how it works are clearly not the same thing. For my money, I think it’s a good bet to suggest that most of us have no idea how to powerfully exploit social media. And that’s a shame, because social media’s potential in the healthcare industry is a game changer –far richer in potential for providers, pharmaceuticals and medical device manufacturers alike, than for most other industries. The opportunities in healthcare to use social media in clever ways that will surely result in meaningful competitive advantage are ripe for the picking, so it may be time to engage some expertise if you aren’t fully satisfied with your current trajectory.

We know that consumers go online to conduct research, seek advice and share their experiences. And we intuitively know that encouraging this activity is a good thing. Of course, we also understand that none of it is of value to us if we don’t know where these conversations are taking place. Ideally, we would like to be active and helpful in these discussions so that we can develop ways to influence their outcomes. But at a minimum, we want to know what’s being said.

The folks at McKinsey have identified what it believes are social media’s four primary functions: to monitor, respond, amplify and lead consumer behavior. A nice summary. The objective, of course, is to link those functions to the consumer’s purchasing decision process. “Being able to identify exactly how, when, and where social media influences consumer behavior…” is the key to developing ways to measure and demonstrate the financial impact of social-media campaigns.

What follows was heavily sourced from a McKinsey Quarterly publication to which I subscribe. As always, McKinsey is an excellent source. The article is entitled: Demystifying Social Media.

Here’s a summary of the four primary functions of social media, according to McKinsey:

Monitor –Simply knowing what’s being said about your products and services should be taking place constantly. Even without engaging consumers directly, companies can learn a great deal from disciplined monitoring programs. Whoever your organization has charged with brand monitoring must ensure that the information is instantly played back to the relevant departments, such as public relations, marketing and executive leadership.

Respond –Broad and passive monitoring is only a start. Pinpointing conversations for responding at a personal level is essential. This kind of response can certainly be positive if it’s done to provide customer service or to uncover sales leads. Most often, though, responding is a part of crisis management. “Responding in order to counter negative comments and reinforce positive ones will only increase in importance.”

Amplify –Designing your social marketing activities to motivate conversation and sharing back in ways that motivates further engagement is the name of the game. It’s more than merely thinking that “we should do something social”—say, uploading a television commercial to YouTube. It means that the core concepts for campaigns must invite customers into a social experience –on an ongoing basis.

Lead –Social media can lead consumers toward long-term behavioral changes. But it can also fundamentally change the nature of the content you publish about existing products and services. The ability of social media to drive feedback after a purchase informs future approaches to ideas defining product design and launch.  The ability to gain product-development insights from customers is emerging as one of social media’s most significant advantages. “Starbucks uses MyStarbucksIdea.com to collect its customers’ views about improving the company’s products and services and then aggregates submitted ideas and prominently displays them on a dedicated Web site. That site groups ideas by product, experience, and involvement; ranks user participation; and shows ideas actively under consideration by the company and those that have been implemented.”

We all know that actions beget results/consequences. Social media provides an inexpensive and fluid means to determine what begets consumer action. The inability to measure social media’s impact is a legitimate concern. But it is not a reason to suspend programs or shy away from the requisite investments. Rather, if you’re on the fence concerning your organization’s use of social media, allow it to serve as a wake up call to take a step back and invest in the development of better approaches that produce results that can be measured.

As the article states: “The time is ripe for executive-suite discussions on how to lead and to learn from people within your company, marketers outside it, and, most of all, your customers.” As the saying goes, it’s tough to teach old dogs new tricks, but social media isn’t a passing fancy. The old dogs –your most senior leadership– need to get in the game.

—Tom Finn