Five social media lessons for hospitals

We published an article yesterday about a Greystone.Net survey that reported nine in 10 hospitals use social media, but most of them are not having any luck attracting new patients with it.

“It is impossible to ignore the effect that social media is having on the Internet in general, and on hospitals and health systems specifically,” said Mike Schneider, executive vice president of Greystone.Net. “Organizations that have a formal plan to manage their social media interactions are more likely to be successful, and we expect more and more hospital Web departments to embrace this strategy moving forward.”

HealthLeaders Media senior editor Gienna Shaw has written extensively about the topic of hospitals using social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Here are five articles that can teach your hospital how to best use social media:

• This article looks at how hospitals can get social media buy-in from CEOs.
• This column explores the trend of businesses communicating with their employees through social media.
• Should hospitals use Twitter to describe surgeries in real time? Gienna interviewed Marc Battaglia, associate creative director at Demi & Cooper Advertising in Elgin, IL, who said the benefits outweigh the negatives.
• The headline of this article says it all: OK, We’re on Facebook. Now What?
• Here is one of the most widely read articles on our site in 2009. Gienna describes ways in which hospitals can use social media effectively and a few examples of social media missteps.