Key takeaways:
- SocialMedia.org Health Members Kelly Macejewski at Children’s Health, Katie Kelty at ScionHealth, and Laura Simson at Children’s Wisconsin give insights about the key stakeholders you should engage with for your social media strategy, including marketing teams, clinical teams, and executives.
- Using specific metrics like engagement rates, click rates, shares, and likes can help business leaders understand the importance of your social media strategy.
- It was noted that using data and reporting how social media is helping overall strategies can help get senior leadership teams more involved, which can encourage all business units to be more involved.
Getting buy-in from all key stakeholders in your hospital is critical to achieving social media and larger marketing goals. Your social media initiatives are essential in increasing brand awareness and supporting patients by providing vital health information.
We spoke to social media leaders at the nation’s largest hospitals on how they’re engaging with different business units, using metrics to gain buy-in early on, and commuting the importance of social media in healthcare.
Engage with Different Business Lines for Your Social Media Campaigns
Gaining stakeholders’ support for specific social campaigns plays a crucial role in ensuring your team is aligned and all business units understand the goals you’re trying to achieve.
SocialMedia.org Health Member Kelly Macejewski, Senior Communications Specialist at Children’s Health, shared some of the teams she meets with to align their social media strategy.
Before the awareness month, we meet with the different teams, set expectations, and tell them all the different things we do and their options.
Kelly Macejewski, Senior Communications Specialist at Children’s Health
She said she meets with her managers and clinical teams to communicate their priorities for their monthly initiatives.
“For example, for an awareness month, we have multi-pronged campaigns,” Kelly said. “Before the awareness month, we meet with the different teams, set expectations, and tell them all the different things we do and their options. Then, we’ll create a plan and send it to them so they have that awareness.”
SocialMedia.org Health Member Katie Kelty, Director of Creative Services at ScionHealth, shared how her team has monthly marketing meetings with embeds across their community hospitals.
“We talk through the overarching campaigns, and they put in requests, and we design collateral for them,” Katie said. “The social team does a really good job of making sure they meet our embeds and our physicians to get them from point A to point B.”
Katie said these monthly meetings include getting input on brand voice, design, and how the industry leaders at ScionHealth use social media to speak to their mission and values.
The social team does a really good job of making sure they meet our embeds and our physicians to get them from point A to point B.
Katie Kelty, Director of Creative Services at ScionHealth
Which Metrics Help Secure More Buy-in?
Kelly stated that her team focuses primarily on organic social metrics, including impressions, engagement, and click-through rates. She noted how it’s important to recognize that not every piece of content will have outstanding results in all three areas. For example, an article with strong impressions may have lower engagement and click-through rates.
“If your goal of a specific post is to drive people to your website, it’s OK if the engagement isn’t as high,” Kelly said. “You want to see the click-through rate. I think the most important thing is just knowing the goal of each post because you might get upset by looking at some numbers on a particular post where that wasn’t the goal.”
SocialMedia.org Health members shared some of the other important metrics to share with leadership teams to understand what’s working well for social media strategies. Members noted how growth metrics such as shares, likes, total shares, impressions, and audience views across all channels could help analyze your initiatives.
Get Senior Leaders More Involved
It’s critical to ensure all business lines across your organization understand the importance of social media, specifically senior leadership teams. It also helps to explain why executives should be active on social media and how creating an online presence boosts overall brand awareness.
SocialMedia.org Health Member Laura Simson, Advertising and Brand Manager at Children’s Wisconsin, shared how using data to inform decision-makers can influence their participation across channels.
“I think the most important thing you can do to get people aligned is to lead with data,” Laura said. “We’re trying to adjust our strategy right now in real-time and invest more in short-form video and divesting in Facebook.”
She said she also informs executives on how they can take advantage of the strengths of other social channels and understand where their patients interact the most with their brand.
I think the most important thing you can do to get people aligned is to lead with data.
Laura Simson, Advertising and Brand Manager at Children’s Wisconsin
Communicate the Importance of Healthcare Social Media Across All Teams
Laura and Kelly noted most business lines understand how social media supports overall marketing efforts and shared how understanding audience personas can inform internal teams on how they can increase engagement.
“We have to get the right message across to reach [our patients],” Laura added. “It starts with reminding people that social media is intended to support business needs and create brand awareness.”
Kelly explained how her team gets more internal involvement on social media by highlighting teams, providing articles for resources within their campaigns, and reporting on how content performs.
“When you can deliver and report how many people saw a page or visited an article, those are powerful things to share,” Kelly said. “That’s why reporting is so important. Because it does show exactly how many people you’re driving to different places.”
Laura added how most of her efforts in informing others on the importance of social media are explaining how it helps their consumers and acts as another resource for critical health information.
Gain Unbiased Peer Insights to Advance Tour Strategy
Kelly, Laura, and Katie are all members of SocialMedia.org Health and meet every week to benchmark their toughest questions with other social media leaders at the nation’s largest hospitals.
If you lead social media at a major hospital, you have the opportunity to join real-time leadership conversations with your peers in SocialMedia.org Health’s Board Meeting on May 17, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois.
You’ll get unbiased insights on topics like adjusting your TikTok strategies, standing up employee advocacy programs, navigating political challenges as a hospital social media team, and more.
