Five Online Marketing Trends for Hospitals in 2010
On the heels of the first ever Social Media Day, it seems all too fitting that hospitals, too, are utilizing social media as marketing tools. 
At the end of 2009, there were more than 350 hospital accounts on Twitter and nearly 220 hospital YouTube channels. With the year now half over, below are five trends that have already impacted hospital online marketing in 2010, and are likely to stick around:
1. Location-based SEO through mobile marketing
As Smartphones like iPhones, Blackberry, and Google Android become the norm, so is searching for information via cell phone. Therefore, to stay relevant, hospitals should:
• Optimize their websites with localized keywords/terms
• Develop links to local directory listings
• Geo-target SEM ad buys (advertising on cell phones)
2. Directly reaching consumers in their market
We all know the saying, “There’s an app for that!” Well, apps have now moved away from being strictly cell phone-based, and are now available on printers, TVs and even car dashboards. Hospitals should also use geo-specific cell phone applications like Foursquare, to help develop their own presence and successfully interact with consumers. Other successful healthcare-related phone applications include:
• Medical Encyclopedia, UniversalDoctor Speaker, iChart EMR & Allscripts Remote
3. Doctors managing their own reputations with online physician marketing
Many patients are researching their own healthcare needs online, and hospitals can reach this audience in their environment by:
• Using YouTube to broadcast a short video introductions from each of their doctors
• Featuring those videos on hospital physician profile sites to further promote their medical staff
4. Online Privacy
With major changes in online privacy, sites like Google now offer real-time searching, allowing Twitter content to be seen in search engine results. This availability of information means that:
• Hospitals now have an increased knowledge of patient behavior online
• Patients will have to choose between how much private information to share in order to receive targeted information, while trying to separate accurate, authoritative content from spam
5. Measuring ROI
Though there is a low-cost entry associated with social media for hospitals, tracking patient behavior on these sites was originally a challenge. Some tools have since been developed to measure ROI on these sites, and more are expected to surface in 2010. The following are tools that have been developed to help track ROI for social media sites:
• Klout for Twitter
• Insight for YouTube
• Google Analytics for blogs
Have you ever used Google to search for medical information? If on-the-go, have you ever used a healthcare-related phone app?
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Kim
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Terence Coughlin
