Subtopics: Brand Management, Online Branding, Reputation Management
Like many hospital websites, the Genesis Health site saw a significant increase in traffic from mobile devices last year and the digital team knew it was time to move to a responsive design. The new mobile-friendly website went live earlier this year. “You can view it on a smart phone, tablet and PC and it Read More
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // Google dropped a bomb on website owners in February, announcing that mobile-friendly websites would get favorable treatment in search results starting on April 21. “Users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices,” said Google. Good news for users, but Read More
More and more people are using mobile devices to access and consume digital content. In response to this growing trend, Google is now giving preferential treatment to mobile-friendly websites in search results from mobile devices. So if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, how big a problem is it? Has organic search fallen off a cliff? To Read More
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // On April 21, Google’s new algorithm was released. Mobile-friendly websites will now be preferred for mobile searches. Was this the beginning of Mobilegeddon? Are non-mobile-friendly sites getting punished? We asked Chris Boyer, Senior Vice President, Digital at ReviveHealth (former AVP, Digital Strategy at North Shore LIJ) to weigh in Read More
The results of an Economist Intelligence Unit survey, commissioned by Marketo, indicate that 99% of marketers plan to invest in marketing technologies in the next year. Here are other key findings: Impact on Revenue Of the B2C marketers surveyed, more than half (55%) feel that their marketing departments are regarded as little more than a Read More
Columbia Memorial Health (CMH) in Hudson, New York is about two and a half hours from New York City and Boston, and a 45-minute drive from Albany. How does a small community hospital in upstate New York compete, when patients have easy access to their pick of world-class hospitals like Mt. Sinai and Mass General, Read More
What if you could reduce cost per acquisition by $200 or more compared to industry averages? “We’re running anywhere from 400 to 500 campaigns at a time across the country,” says J.K. Lloyd, President and Co-Founder of Eruptr, a Washington, D.C., digital marketing agency focused on healthcare. “We typically see campaigns that will convert for Read More
MidMichigan Health was succeeding at getting people in the community to participate in health risk assessments. The problem was, they were reaching the “worried well” and not people who needed intervention. To remedy the situation, MidMichigan launched an advertising campaign, working with creative agency Neathawk Dubuque & Packett. The centerpiece of the campaign is an Read More
We’ve all done it. A strange symptom appears out of nowhere and we go straight to the Internet to diagnose it, usually coming up with something far scarier than it actually turns out to be. That insight about human behavior provided the creative inspiration for MidMichigan Health’s “Ask Dr. Internet” TV commercial, the centerpiece of Read More
When Dr. Tif Siragusa asks new patients why they chose him they say, “Because you had good reviews.” Siragusa’s reviews on Healthgrades and Vitals have more than doubled in less than two years since he began using a reputation management service developed by Boston-based MDConnect. The service, ReviewMD, is built around a dedicated review website, Read More
As if there weren’t enough pressures on providers and health systems, now they have to worry about competition from retail health clinics. Attention-grabbing headlines like this one from Forbes makes you wonder where all this is leading: “Healthcare for $4: Are You Ready For Wal-Mart To Be Your Doctor?” Health clinics operated by drugstore chains Read More
Late last year, Facebook announced on its blog, “Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time.” In a related post on the same day, Facebook assured businesses that, “Pages still matter — a lot,” and for emphasis, added, “In October, for instance, nearly a billion people visited Facebook Read More
Ask the Expert with Ben Dillon In a recent discussion on the SHSMD list serv, a member asked: “For those of you with more than one hospital and/or multiple facilities…are there multiple Facebook pages for each hospital or do you consolidate your Facebook presence into one location? Do you also have service line or departmental Read More
If your service area covers three states, and your health system’s name only includes one state, it’s time for a change. That’s what Iowa Health System concluded in 2013 when it changed its name to UnityPoint Health. The change was more than just a solution to a geographic misnomer. It represented an overhaul of the Read More
If you Google “deadly cancers” you’ll probably find a link to the Top Five Most Dangerous Cancers in Men and Women on page one of the search results page. The article and infographic was posted by Iowa-based UnityPoint Health, the fourth largest nondenominational health system in the U.S. UnityPoint has been busy optimizing its website Read More
By Spencer Hunt What’s the best strategy for hospitals using LinkedIn? Consider these two examples. The updates Vanderbilt University Medical Center posts on its LinkedIn page frequently congratulate doctors on their awards and promotions. Advances in malaria and scoliosis research are celebrated, and job openings at the Nashville hospital—particularly for nurses—are featured. Almost 500 miles Read More
by Jennifer Redmond Only in this day and age would a high school student’s tweets garner the attention of White House staffers and earn a spot in national headlines. But that’s exactly what happened as the hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama made its way up the trending charts in mid-November 2014. Accompanying the sardonic hashtag were unappealing photos Read More
by Sheryl S. Jackson How does a healthcare marketer cut through the noise of all of the advertising and promotional messages directed at consumers today? Obviously, the answer involves sending the message through the right media at the right target, but some health systems are adding a new tool to the marketing mix—brand journalism. “This Read More
by Cheryl L. Serra What can you do with five minutes? As healthcare marketers are discovering, you can pack a lot of tears and tissue-grabbing—or guffaws, giggles, and sing-alongs— into five minutes. Healthcare organizations are increasingly turning to the power of video to showcase the emotional aspects of what they do, leveraging the relatively short Read More
by Ted Balowski Having an effective Web presence is critically important for a hospital or healthcare organization, but how should that presence appear for a brand with more than one location? Is it a good idea for a brand with multiple locations or offerings to consolidate efforts? In the past decade, there have been profound Read More
by Peter Hochstein A surgical team in blue scrubs stands silently in a circle under the intense lights of an operating room. They reach out to hold hands. Then one of them speaks: “Lord, we invite you to be the center of everything we do this morning. We ask you to be our hands and Read More
by Mike Maloney and Katrina VanTyne In 2012, Google published a landmark study about the hospital selection process, “The Digital Journey to Wellness.” According to the study, 75 percent of searches by prospective patients revolve around four specific areas: conditions, diseases, symptoms, and departments. Our web team at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, VT, Read More
by Mark S. Gothberg Conventional Thinking Often Wrong With its total national awareness far below that of Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medicine, Cleveland Clinic decided to take a novel approach to building the brand. In March 2012, Cleveland Clinic launched Health Hub, a site very different from the organization’s primary website at www.clevelandclinic.org, and Read More