Q&A: How Hospitals are Failing to Engage Patients on Facebook

They’re posting one per day. It’s low compared to other verticals. I don’t think it’s low based on hospitals. Some hospitals in general are lucky to post once a day. They might post once, twice a week. And some do a good job, and have three updates a day. Again, everyone is in a different place. Most hospitals and healthcare systems don’t have a social media or community manager. This is part of someone’s job. Whereas other industries, if you look at the larger brands that do things well, have lots of people on their social media teams. We haven’t seen that in healthcare, specifically hospitals.

I think people have gotten involved with Facebook because they understand it personally, and saw a possible professional tie-in. That’s still there and still true, but 100 percent haven’t tied this back to the growth initiatives of the hospital or understanding what are they are trying to accomplish. They haven’t figure out if they are on Facebook because other hospitals are, of if there is something of value and that can provide value to them.

From what you saw, do providers need to a better job engaging their patients on Facebook, or are they doing enough as is?

As an industry, we need to do a better job. We have allowed Facebook to be a marketing platform, and that’s not what people want. They don’t want to hear from the marketing director. They want to hear from a doctor, a nurse, an athletic trainer. They want to hear from someone who has relevant knowledge to them in their daily lives. If we use these platforms to provide these tools and resources to our communities, we have a much better chance of creating that level of trust that when they do need something, we’re who they come to at that time. We’re really talking more about patient experience, patient engagement, and less about marketing our services. We have an opportunity with these platforms to do that. We just need to take advantage.