It’s exciting to see more and more healthcare organizations getting excited about social media marketing in the past year. Social media marketing is a wonderful way to connect with members of your target market (including your customers, referral sources, patients, and their families and caregivers), the social strategy that extends beyond traditional ‘expensive collateral brochures. to face ‘and old school.

Having experience working with many healthcare clients, the trend we’ve seen in speaking with these various organizations is that many are struggling to get things off the ground. Whether it’s bureaucratic red tape, like drafting social media policy and procedural clauses, dealing with HIPAA guidelines, or simply superiors reluctant to invest time and money in this ‘new medicine’, the pushback has been a common problem.

While time will force these problems to go away, there are many benefits to being an early adopter as a healthcare organization. After extensive research, we have found that many healthcare companies fail when it comes to the use (or misuse) of social media.

Here are some of the reasons healthcare organizations shouldn’t wait any longer when it comes to running a social media marketing campaign:

1. Facebook isn’t just for Starbucks. With its millions of active users (and I emphasize the word “active”), Facebook has a sea of ​​people that you can interact with from within your healthcare organization. These people consume information in all categories, not just mega-brands. Everyone has their space on Facebook. Even better, with Facebook Pages you can fully categorize your organization and set locations and other valuable information for your target audience. Whether your business is local, national or international, Facebook has the ability to create real connections, support customer and patient communications, and help you inform your audience about any event or exclusive information with just a few clicks.

2. Your audience (and competition) is on Twitter. The health and medical community isn’t just on Twitter … it’s active! Doctors, medical companies, hospitals, and many more provide daily updates, event news, guidelines, and more. Another massive and active community, Twitter is a hotspot for information sharing and you need to be in the mix.

3. There is a LinkedIn group that suits your needs … or 50! Simply adding your hospital or business to LinkedIn is a wonderful and important step … but what if you could also add an additional audience of 50,000 to 1 million +? With LinkedIn Groups you can interact with potential clients / patients based on topic and location, and be in front of them on a daily basis. That’s coverage!

4. YouTube is tea promotion portal. The use of video as a promotional tool is essential in the health industry. It is imperative to have the ability to illustrate what your company is capable of in addition to the ability of your team or products. Now imagine having the ability to put this video on the second largest search engine out there – YouTube. Fully branded and packed with information, this vehicle does nothing more than build your profile, credibility, and positive sentiment.

5. Act now or stay behind. As there are many organizations that are understaffed or unable to give adequate time to do social media or even pitch a campaign idea to the CEO … organizations are just coming. But this speed will start to increase at an ever faster rate. By being an early adopter, you can gain more head start on the market and stand out as one of the first organizations in your area to have a wonderful Facebook page, an active Twitter account, a linked LinkedIn account, and a Facebook page. Elegant and elegant YouTube.

I like to end with number 5, as there are many health care marketers who have received a lot of criticism on social media from their organizations. But for everyone, there are many others who are getting their campaigns approved and launching effective social media marketing campaigns and reclaiming their social ownership. My advice is to prepare your plan quickly so you don’t miss the boat.