"...a social strategy doesn’t mean doctors on Facebook"

How's your patient engagement strategy working out for you?  This article might help:  Engagement is a Strategy IV: 10 Reasons Value-based Health Care Orgs Need A Social Strategy.

If you want to influence behavior (which you do or will), you really can’t ignore a social strategy. We’ll need to get really good at engagement and behavior change on a massive scale. Social media strategies may be our best bet at influencing behavior on a massive scale. Not to push behavior in a direction, but to provide systems that let behavior naturally migrate toward the health people already seek."

7:11 AM

Social Media's Biggest Pitfall May Be All Those Missed Opportunities

Says Bryan Vartabedian, MD in this Healthleadersmedia.com article:

Speaking to the great responsibility point, Vartabedian contends physicians are complicit in the controversy surrounding the unproven, but social media-fueled association between the MMR vaccine and autism. "There are 65,000 pediatricians in the American Academy of Pediatrics," he says.

"If all of us just once a year had created a small piece of content, be it a blog post, even a comment, we would have ruled the search engines, and none of this really ever would have happened."

"When we think about social media, and when your institution talks to you about social media, almost invariably it will be viewed from the perspective of risk. All we see is the risk associated with it, and all your orientation and your programs, everything will center on risk and nothing will center on opportunity."

8:46 AM

Et Tu Facebook?

As of today, and assuming you haven’t already given enough of your life to the social networking juggernaut, you can double down with a share or two of Facebook’s common stock.  Now I’m not a licensed investment advisor so I can’t tell YOU what to do. But I will tell you what I’M going to do.

One word: FLEE.

Listening to CNBC while driving to an appointment yesterday, I heard a commentator rave about this “historic investment opportunity,” saying something like:

“Even at this valuation level, Facebook’s stock is cheap.  With that huge behavioral database, they'll find a way to monetize their 900 million users...”

Notice the choice of language.  It's not “They've FOUND a way..."  It's "They'll FIND a way..."  In the future.  Someday.  Hopefully.

But the future's a tricky thing.  All along, I’ve assumed the right sequence of events is this:

1. Find a way to make money (i.e. a business model.)
2. Make money (i.e. prove that your business model actually works.)
3. Go public.
4. Get rich.

Apparently I’ve been misinformed, and the correct sequence actually is:

1. Go public.
2. Get rich.
3. Find a way to make money.
4. (Optional) Make money.

Sounds eerily like the first dot-com bubble back in the 1990’s, when it was all about eyeballs and hits, and investment bankers tossed bushels of cash at every twerp entrepreneur who correctly (if accidently) spelled ‘www,' assuming that, somehow, somewhere, eyeballs would magically turn into earnings.

We all know how well that turned out, yet here they are again, telling us that a good story and hope matter more than bottom line results.

Flee.

7:57 AM

Mayo Clinic's Social Media Strategy

The Social Media Imperative

View more presentations from Mayo Clinic

7:46 AM

A Small Rant

A major teaching hospital (that shall remain nameless because I don't belive in giving the terminally clueless even more attention) has a Twitter account with 1,200 followers. So far so good.

Yet this hospital follows NOBODY. That's right. Apparently in the vast Twittersphere, there's absolutely NOBODY from whom this organization cares to hear. Nobody whose thoughts and ideas matter nearly as much as the hospital's own.

It's as if they're saying "We're not about listening. We talk, you sit up straight and pay attention.  We're about US and that's how we like it!"

How smug. How institutionally narcissistic. How utterly last century-ish.

I wonder what they find unclear about 'social media' - the 'media' or the 'social?'

7:05 AM

"What a bunch of clueless chumps"

Fox News: "Facebook users heap baggage on Spirit Airlines after dying vet refused refund."

That we're living in the age of the Facebook mob assures Spirit Airlines that they'll lose far more in business and customer goodwill than the $197 refund would've cost. And somehow I doubt that many of Spirit's customers are, today, saying "Thanks for looking out for us and keeping fares low."

More likely they're saying "What a bunch of clueless chumps."

There's following policies and procedures to the letter, and then there's doing the right thing. Frequently the two converge. Not this time.

UPDATE:  The chump caves.

1:39 PM

De-Bugging Starbucks

Today's story is about the power of social media and a global company's quick response.  From USA Today: "Starbucks de-bugs its menu offerings."

Recently, Starbucks began coloring its Strawberry Frappucinos with cochineal extract. Sounds innocent enough, except cochineal extract is made by crushing the shells of cochineal beetles. Bugs.

And so a vegan barista tipped off a vegan blogger who alerted PETA who.. .you get the idea.

And now that yummy pink color comes from lycopene, a natural, tomato-based extract. (Of course several species of beetles co-habitate with tomatoes, presumably making it into our food chain at some point, but that's another story for another day and another blogger.)

At least one consultant thinks Starbucks acted quickly and decisively. "That's pretty quick when it come to companies making major changes in ingredients," says management strategist Barbara Brooks. "They were aggressive and didn't set up a commission with recommendations eight months later."

Why is this newsworthy at all? Well, there's the 'blech' factor of a story about bugs in our food. But, really, the fact that you've read this far just proves the rarity of Starbucks' response, more's the pity.

1:48 PM

Taking Social Media Beyond Marketing

From InformationWeek.com: "Many Doctors Don't Take Social Media Beyond Marketing."

Good article with some interesting ideas. I fear our social media strategy has been a mile wide and an inch deep - all things to all people to put it another way. It's time to build useful communities and solve real problems. It's time to get very serious, very targeted, very outcomes-focused and very conversational.

It's time to think and act 'social,' and NOT like we're controlling the conversation (control that we've NEVER possessed, by the way. We just ACTED like we were in control, to our own detriment and that of our patients.) As a communications strategy, "I talk, you listen and do exactly what I say..." is a non-starter. So what should we do?

"Healthcare organizations in the United States should learn from their peers abroad and expand the use of social media beyond marketing functions, suggests a new report from technology consulting firm CSC.  Around the world, CSC researchers found, healthcare has been less proactive than other industries in embracing social media. Within the healthcare sector, hospitals are furthest ahead in using this new method of engaging with consumers.

[...]

"Caitlin Lorincz, a CSC research analyst and a co-author of the report, told InformationWeek Healthcare that doctors are reluctant to engage with patients in social media because they fear that any health-related information they provide could be "taken out of context and interpreted as medical advice." So rather than increase their malpractice liability, they tend to avoid connecting with patients on Facebook and Twitter.

"The CSC report provides examples of healthcare providers that have used social media for a variety of purposes. Among the 15 categories it cites are marketing, workforce recruitment, brand management, reputation management, consumer education, professional education, healthcare community creation, clinical trial recruitment, and research collaboration.

"Despite the reluctance of physicians to get involved, CSC notes that social media can also be useful in patient care. The report specifically mentions activities related to wellness, population and patient monitoring, care management, and care coordination.

"...the University of Iowa Children's Hospital recently launched a Facebook page that seeks to improve medication adherence among teenage kidney transplant patients.

[...]

"Is there any evidence that social media can improve health outcomes? While it's still early in the game, Lorincz cited two studies with positive results:

• An online community for young cancer patients in the Netherlands has led to "higher patient satisfaction, fewer unscheduled visits to the hospital, and, most importantly, more confident young patients."

• A randomized controlled trial found that, in a program designed to encourage physical activity, the incorporation of an online community reduced attrition from the program."

12:29 PM

"Aggravate a traveler, then hand them a smartphone..."

Especially a traveler who is also a composer and musician.  From Alexandra Samuel, blogging at HBR Blog Network about Qantas Airways' misadventures through the social media minefield: 

"We've been saying this for a while now but it's worth repeating: Social media turns branding into a true (if often accidental) collaboration between company and customer, in the way it enables constant and often bottom-up collaboration within organizations, and in the way it accelerates the pace of conversation and organizational change. Social media tends to flatten hierarchies, disempower gatekeepers, and give a voice to anyone who cares to speak about an issue, or a brand."

Still a doubter?  Maybe you should Google "United Breaks Guitars"  - another airline but still the poster child for customer revenge, and the point that started this post...

3:36 PM

Social Media In the C-Suite

C-Suite denizens have had difficulties warming up to social media.  Most are used to being, if not the entire conversation, at least in charge of what's said, when and to whom.  Social media's democratizing effect threatens that neatly-ordered world.

And it's humbling to learn that your thoughts and opinions aren't crystalline, brilliant or even very persuasive.  Readers talk back, using adjectives like idiotic and clueless, sometimes alone or in very creative combinations.  (Happens to me all the time, in case you're wondering.)

A critical (though common) misperception is that social media is about "Me talk.  You listen.  Me talk more.  You do what I say!"  That never worked with my daughters and I doubt it'll work for many hospital CEOs.

In "Social Media in the C-Suite: Listening, Learning and Creating a  Strategy from the Top Down" Knowledge @ Wharton interviews author Michael Lewis about the opportunities and pitfalls in implementing a social media strategy in the C-suite.

Says Lewis:

"...most people misinterpret what social media's about. They use it as a talking vehicle. Social media is a listening vehicle. It's both. But most people don't understand that the real power is to be able to listen to the customer in a real time and effective way."

[...]

"It (starts) with listening and evangelizing throughout the organization. And enabling (active participation) in social media. And gearing up for the fact that the world is changing at a rapid rate right now. And it affects every business, as Eric said, every aspect of the business. That's not easy, to re-imagine your entire organization in the time frames that social media will affect it. But look, social media can topple governments. It's going to affect your business."

There it is:  "Social media can topple governments.  It's going to affect your business."  

I'd change that last sentence to read "It's affecting your business, right now, today."  Your job, dear C-suiter, is to screw up your courage, don some adult underwear, join the conversation and turn it to your competitive advantage.

10:23 AM