Energising word of mouth through social media
16th May 2009, 09:54 pm by Matt Rhodes
Image by djfoobarmatt via FlickrWe highlighted Mayo Clinic in a recent post of examples of online communities in healthcare. They are doing great things with blogs, podcasts, video and online communities. That’s why this week’s Required Reading at FreshNetworks is a great presentation from Lee Aase, Manager, Syndication and Social Media at Mayo Clinic. He looks at how the use of social media at Mayo Clinic has progressed and, in particular how it has helped to spread word-of-mouth.
The presentation highlights an important for those of us who work in social media – technology really should be invisible. Whilst the technology you use must meet your needs and aims it isn’t the most important factor in making your use of social media a success. Of much more importance is how you use it, the way in which you encourage people to engage with you and the quality of the content, comments and conversations that you have on your site.
Whether your technology costs zero dollars, or many hundreds of thousands of dollars, it is the way you use it and the way you manage the conversations and engagement that will make a difference.
Some more reading
- Social media experience at Mayo Clinic (fastforwardblog.com)
- Sharing Mayo Clinic Goes to Facebook and other Social Networks (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
- Mayo Clinic launches new culture blog (tissuepathology.typepad.com)
- How Mayo Clinic utilizes Web 2.0 (ivor-kovic.com)
- Health Care Meets Social Networking (designmind.frogdesign.com)
- FIR Interview: Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic (nevillehobson.com)
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Lee Aase:
Thanks for this great review, Matt, and for the links to some related reading. You’ve hit on a big part of what I’ve tried to share, in that our blogs, for instance, are not hosted on our servers, but that is invisible to the user. The other key point is that users can start at no cost or extremely low cost, and let the projects grow in cost as they begin to have success that demonstrates their value.
If companies feel the decision they have to make is whether to spend $100K or more on a program, and if they have legal concerns to boot, it’s likely to hamstring them. They’ll never get out of the gate. But if they can start with existing staff and grow their efforts organically with low-cost tools, they may be able to grow and graduate to more sophisticated platforms. If it’s “all-or-nothing” it’s likely that for many companies the answer will be “nothing.”
17 May 2009, 12:38 pmProving you that online communities in health care really work!! « Fredzimny’s CCCCC Blog:
[...] Post: http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog/2009/05/energising-word-of-mouth-through-social-media/ Artist: Floriane de Lassee [...]
19 May 2009, 5:15 amPutting the ‘RT’ in Marketing | Buzz Study:
[...] for patients choosing a health care institution for their treatment. Lee Aase from the Mayo Clinic presented at the Community 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on how the Mayo Clinic is using social media to share their message with the existing community and [...]
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26 May 2009, 11:51 pmDear Social Media: Sorry I took you for granted | FreshNetworks Blog:
[...] is four times as trusted as TV advertising… Word-of-mouth is the most trusted decision-making tool for consumers. And today, more and more people use the web [...]
5 June 2009, 12:01 pm