Yesterday, February 21, 2012, happened to be a historic day in healthcare social media. The participants at the HIMSS12 conference (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Conference 2012) in Las Vegas tweeted the hashtag #himss12 a total of 6,438 times.

I don’t know about you, but if you had your Twitter client up and running yesterday like I had, you simply couldn’t avoid the steady stream of tweets from healthcare tweeps at the conference. We all experience increased twitter activity whenever a conference is happening, but yesterday’s impact on my stream felt especially big. So, today I took some time to analyze our database and found some interesting facts.

A World Record for Healthcare Conferences

6,438 tweets on a single day from a healthcare conference is a World Record!

We have almost 300 healthcare conference hashtags in our database from around the world. That’s clearly not all conferences, but the number represents those conferences with a good social media presence. I ran some comparative analytics by crawling the database looking for peak tweet volume dates for each conference and then ranked them accordingly. The results are decisive. #himss12 beat the number two (#mh11) by over 1000 tweets or nearly 20%! A clear record.

Top 20 Healthcare Conferences by Tweet Volume

Selected stats from the record day: #himss12 at 02/21/2012

Top 10 Healthcare Conferences in Tweet Volume

See all analytics for #himss12

See all analytics for #mh11

See all analytics for #WH2011

See all analytics for #MayoRagan

See all analytics for #HIMSS11

See all analytics for #tedmed

See all analytics for #health2con

See all analytics for #cisummit

See all analytics for #TEDxMaastricht

See all analytics for #med2

45% Increase Compared to Last Year

There’s been a staggering growth of social media usage within the healthcare industry over the last year. Not only are the number of healthcare conferences with a social media presence growing, but the volume of tweets from these conferences are also increasing. Just look at last year’s peak date for the same conference – #himss11 maxed out at 4,484 tweets. Although it’s a huge peak earning the 5th place, it’s almost 2,000 tweets less than this year. In other words, this year’s peak is about 45% larger compared to last year’s! Congrats HIMSS!

Are you a healthcare conference organizer? Avoid confusion and fragmentation, register you conference hashtag at the earliest opportunity.

Congrats to the record setters!

Learn more about HIMSS12 Sets World Record for Healthcare Conferences in Tweet Volume at Symplur

Blogging Ideas: Medical News

Your commentary on medical news is a great source of blogging ideas and some of the most useful information you can share with patients. Your physician or hospital blog is the perfect vehicle to address what your patients may be seeing or reading about in the news.  By providing your commentary on your healthcare blog, you provide your own valuable point of view on information desired by patients.

By addressing general questions concerning medical news on your blog, your office time becomes much more efficient and concentrated on the patient’s own specific questions.

A great example of healthcare blogging is Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson, also known as @seattlemamadoc on Twitter.

Dr. Swanson is a pediatrician whose blog, Seattle Mama Doc™ , can be found on the Seattle Children’s Hospital site. She explains the purpose of her blog to patients: “I want to help you decipher some of the current medical news I juggle in my life as both as a pediatrician and a mother. I will share my stories and tell how it all feels to me. I will ask my colleagues, peers and friends for help, and uncover powerful lessons to share. I’ll offer online helpful resources, and share methods I learn from patients, friends and family, both in and out of the field of medicine, to help me find answers.”

Why Doctors Need to Embrace their Digital Future Now

Dr. Eric Topol

To illustrate, let’s look at a recent article in Wired Magazine, “Why Doctors Need to Embrace Their Digital Future Now”, which is an interview with Dr. Eric Topol. Dr. Topol discusses ideas from his new book, “The Creative Destruction of Medicine.” There are a lot of ideas that may prompt questions from patients.

One of Dr. Topol’s statements from the interview states: “We are grossly overusing imaging in this country, and that’s really scary to me. The mass use of radiation scans is way out of line with any other place in the world. There are estimates that 2 to 3 percent of cancers in the US each year are engendered by exposure to repetitive imaging. So I present this as a shout-out to consumers. When you’re asked to have a CT scan or a nuclear scan, do you know how much radiation that involves? How many of those sorts of scans have you already had? Is it necessary? Is there an alternative? I don’t think many people know about that. We need tools that let us track our radiation exposure for ourselves, each of us. So that, I think, is an important part of how we can reboot the future of medicine.”

You can see that Dr. Topol’s statement is a great source for blogging ideas and addressing patient concerns. Your blog post could include your comments about radiation, maybe a visual chart showing levels and/or your thoughts on alternatives. There are many possibilities.

Dr. Swanson says that by addressing realtime medical news on your blog, you save time. You have already presented your point of view to your patients in a space they will visit regularly to find answers. As a result, your office time becomes much more efficient and concentrated on the patient’s own specific questions.

Have you used medical news as one of your blogging ideas? What pros and cons can you share with other physicians? Please share in the comments below!

Learn more about Blogging Ideas for Physicians: Your Commentary on Medical News at Symplur

We are so fond of one another because our ailments are the same. – Johnathon Swift
The number of healthcare conversations taking place on Twitter is truly staggering.  And, as many of you are aware, we’ve made an attempt to organize these conversations via the Healthcare Hashtag Project.  Our initial launch of this ever growing list of health related hashtags for Twitter was focused on the “business of healthcare”.  But we announced early on that it was our intent to add a section that would include disease hashtags to the mix.  However, over the ensuing months a number of individuals began beating us to the punch, submitting disease related hashtags that we readily accepted (i.e., #autism, #diabetes, #rheum, and more).

Patients on Twitter use disease hashtags

Well, we’re finally catching up with a progressive community of patients who are remarkably active in healthcare social media.

Today I’m pleased to announce the launch of a new section on our site that’s dedicated to Twitter hashtags related to diseases, conditions, and other personal health related topics.  Once again, our goal is to lower the barrier to entry for physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare professionals who are interested in integrating healthcare social media into their respective businesses.  And what better way to do that than to invite the patient, caregiver, and healthcare provider communities to collectively join one another in these active discussions where each has an interest, concern, and a contribution to make.

A curated list of Twitter Hashtags for diseases, conditions, and related discussions

To develop this list beyond those related hashtags already submitted to us, we used disease lists from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and other reputable sources.  From there we began conducting manual Twitter searches using the diseases listed.  Then, visually scanning the tweets returned, we looked for all the hashtags being used to reference those subjects.  We screened for critical mass in the conversations, excessive use of the hashtags in a non-healthcare context, and those health hashtags that are overwhelmed with spam.  Lastly, we loosely organized the list based on the related categories for these respective diseases found in the ICD-9-CM.  Having sorted all that out, we’re excited to present an inaugural set of 155 hashtags that are dedicated to meaningful discussions related to over 100 various diseases, conditions and related topics centered on the health concerns of patients in our Twitter community.

However, there were two considerable obstacles in developing this list in a manner that allowed it to be a useful tool for our healthcare community.  And these obstacles may still present some challenges for serious users.

I’m talking about spam and vulgarity.  Read on …

Healthcare Spam on Twitter … #AnnoyingTheConsumer

By spam I’m referring to some health conditions, and their related hashtags, as being overwhelmed on Twitter by the extremely excessive tweeting of products or services for sale to address the related condition.  This is an unfortunate example of organizations who may, or may not, have something of value to offer to those interested in the health topic at hand … but completely miss the the “social aspect” of social media.  Their boorish, even offensive broadcasting drowns out meaningful healthcare conversations … and is actually the “anti-conversation” that pervades a segment of health conditions on Twitter.

Misguided and Offensive Use of Health Hashtags … #Sad

Sadly, perhaps even more troubling than the spam issue discussed above, is the sometimes vulgar use of these disease hashtags.  I’m referring to those who use these conditions as a means of insulting people, putting them down, and belittling them.  This is a sad commentary on a segment of our global society.  I bring this up because I want to warn you that certain hashtags, even though we’ve screened much of this out, are going to find some tweets from the uninformed, crass, and immature members of Twitter at large.

Take Control of health related hashtags on Twitter!

To the issues of spam and vulgarity, I say, “Take control!”  Some people are comfortable directly challenging and confronting those Twitter users who are interfering with the real conversations.  And I personally commend those who do.  However, I’d like to invite our global healthcare community to chime in on possible methods to collectively clear the air of these obstacles.

So, in keeping the Healthcare Hashtag Project social … what are your thoughts?  Should we identify and list the spammers, chastise the offensive, or just ignore it?  Something else?

I’m seriously interested in your comments on this.

This is a Social Project … so contribute, share, and make it grow

The Healthcare Hashtag Project is once again relying on the Twitter community to add new hashtags to the list.  However, as always, we curate these hashtags.  So this is a place to register those conversations that are already taking place.  And please understand that we vet every submission to be sure that it’s appropriate for inclusion, because we want to keep this list clear of stagnant, spam-laden, or multi-topic hashtags.  We do this for the good of everyone.

With all that said … please come step into the first official list of “Disease, Conditions, and Related Disorders Twitter Hashtags”.  And, just like with our initial launch of this project, we invite you to … “take it for a spin, let us know what you think, and to help us build a more well connected healthcare community.”

Disease, Conditions, and Related Disorders Twitter Hashtags

Learn more about Disease Hashtags on Twitter … the Healthcare Hashtag Project: Phase 2 at Symplur

We are all aware of the importance of discoverability on the Internet.

We understand that blog posts which cannot be found, regardless of their quality, will not be read. We therefore take pains to optimise our content for search engines by electing to use natural language search terms as post titles, and judiciously tagging posts and images with keywords.

However, how much thought are we giving to the context within which the content we publish across the social web is considered?

how much thought are we giving to the context within which the content we publish across the social web is considered?

As the number of platforms and services such as Klout, PeerIndex, Kred and Connect.me that rank and rate social metadata proliferate, so it is becoming increasingly important for those of us within the health conversation on the social web to consider the impact that the reception and assessment of the totality of our activities has on our representation.

An assessment of what these services actually measure and the different approaches they take to defining reputation and influence from a practical and theoretical perspective must form the basis of a subsequent blog post. For now, it is sufficient to observe that if these brands succeed in supplanting a more nuanced, holistic assessment of trustworthiness and reputation for an integer, regardless of how unjust or inaccurate our personal perception of their their appraisals may be, the fact remains that services that harvest and analyse social metadata are beginning to have as big an impact on the hierarchy of authority within the health conversation on the social web as they are across all other industries and interests.

The best way to optimise the likelihood that the content we publish across the portfolio of presences we maintain on the Social Web will be received, responded to, and recirculated in the manner that we may hope it will is to respect the defining characteristics of each of the platforms we use.

The objective, therefore, is to promote our strategic objectives through the publication of the content that we wish to share by selecting the platform that we feel will show that material in the best possible light.

The following suggestions are made on the assumption that users have clearly defined the role that Social Media is playing within their integrated communications plan, have alighted upon appropriate qualitative and quantitative measures to evaluate their success, have the tools in place to undertake such appraisals, and are willing to continually refine the activities they undertake and implement such learning as is forthcoming from their ongoing self-assessment. These are some of the fundamental precepts of social business development within healthcare, and whilst I will over time share more thoughts on how to go about defining and implementing them in this blog, I would be delighted to consider your specific needs at your convenience.

So, what goes where?

Twitter

Twitter is where conversation happens on the social web. It is the place to talk about what we are doing.

The platform may now self-describe as a ‘real-time information network’, which to some extent it is, but its capacity to recirculate parcels of information via embedded links is in the last instance the work of automata rather than people, and an exercise in alienation rather than unification.

What Twitter is so good at, as the Symplur project demonstrates, is helping like-minded people across the world find, connect, converse and work with each other. The hashtag is the means by which much of this is achieved, and Symplur provides a wonderful way of exploring the diverse hashtag taxonomy of the health conversation on the Social Web.

Facebook

Facebook is where reflection takes place on the social web. It is the place to talk about what we have just done.

The immediate past tense is facebook’s default mode. The content that elicits the most responses on facebook makes reference to those activities that have been recently undertaken, and which afford our network the opportunity to offer their opinion of them.

Those responses need not always be positive, but that is no reason not to want to hear them. When properly and transparently managed the ongoing experiment in human interaction that facebook presents can provide invaluable, near real-time feedback concerning our undertakings which, if we are willing to listen, can inform our next steps.

YouTube

YouTube is the Internet’s cinema. Flickr is the Internet’s gallery. They are the places where we visualise our enterprise.

The third and forty-second most popular sites on the Internet respectively, YouTube and Flickr are the digital spaces within which we utilise the power of the moving and still image to describe what we do and define who we are.

Highly visible and widely used, both sites attract a great deal of traffic and comment. They offer opportunities to connect with new members of interest within the communities that we serve, as well as to strengthen, deepen and increase the frequency of contact with those we are already associated with.

The credentialing potential of social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and StumbleUpon to demonstrate our deep understanding of our healthcare specialty subjects, Q&A forum Quora to manifest our authority to speak about them, curation service Scoop.it to show that we know where to discover the best information on the Internet about our subjects, and content management services such as WordPress to bring all of the above together through a socially-optimised blog are other considerations to bring into play.

However, it is the three platforms identified above that most frequently form the foundations of effective social presences across the many constituencies of the health conversation on the Social Web that utilise them.

I look forward to hearing more about your own enterprise, and to better understand how I may help you achieve your social business development and health communications goals.

Learn more about Speaking personally: where to give voice to healthcare interests on the social web at Symplur

In this rapidly changing business environment, it has not been unusual to hear of healthcare executives smartly taking a step back from their big hairy audacious goals to revisit their innovation strategy.  Chances are, they are looking for solutions beyond market presence, and cross pollinating industry segments to tap new knowledge – in other words looking for social inputs to expand their innovation vision.  As an innovation is social enthusiast, social media is an excellent vehicle to identify strategic alliances and to generate ideas from both inside and outside company walls.

Whether you are seeking random or more specialized insight, begin by choosing an effective model. The Four Lens of Innovation, by Rowan Gibson is an excellent starting place to harness fresh views:

1 Challenging orthodoxies

Questioning deeply held dogmas inside companies and industries about what drives success.

2 Harnessing discontinuities

Focus on identifying changes underway in the external environment that your competitors have either underestimated or ignored.

Learn more about Innovation Insight Through Healthcare Social Media at Symplur

Treating patients, keeping up with the latest research and running a business means squeezing the most out of minutes. Adding social media into the mix seems a contradiction – it might seem like chitter chatter and time-wasting.

There is also the question of mixing private use of social media with work – maybe you’re on Facebook – no way do you want patients to find you, or know anything about your private life, but you would like an easy way to stay up-to-date, and let people know what your professional expertise is.

Or perhaps you keep meaning to ‘do something about that Facebook stuff’ (does anyone get Twitter anyway?), but you reflect that your world is not going to stop turning if you do not use it – it’s not like you are going to run out of patients.

What you would like is to make sure that when people search for you online they find the right information about you. What you want them to know. This is taking control of your professional digital footprint.

If someone google’s your name what do they find? What would you like them to find?  There are simple steps you can take to make sure that search engines list your professional profile first on the search results.

Start with LinkedIn.  Have you noticed that if you google someone and they have a LinkedIn profile this is the first thing that comes up? If you then want to go further this forms the first step of an overall strategy for you and your business.

Setting up a healthcare digital footprint strategy has several different components

1 Professional website visibility

Getting the right information out

2 Social online visibility

Gaining the maximum benefit from social media sites on your topics

3 Listing on Professional sites

Exposure on sites that are relevant to your area

4 Listing on Social sites

Exposure and building up a community on key social sites

The adoption of healthcare social media

We’re just at the beginning of social media adoption by health professionals, so if you feel that you are out of the loop you are not alone – the average corporate social business program is only three years old.

So if you have half an hour a week, this is enough to get you started with your professional identity online. And its quite simple, once you know how.  Honest.

Learn more about Take control of your healthcare digital footprint at Symplur

Few things are as captivating as a good story. 

A blog is a vehicle to share stories. Sharing a relevant story is the 21st century way of engaging desired consumers, patients and stakeholders. Individuals in a practice or healthcare organization can build trust online through stories that share their knowledge and personal experience.

Sharing your story also makes you “real.” Think of your blog as a hub for your online engagement.

69% of businesses attribute their lead generation success to blogging.

Making sure your ideas can be found. Through blogging, you also increase your visibility online. A blog is the best way to provide the fresh content required by today’s search engines and valued by consumers. In 2012, understanding how search plus social works is critical to your online success. In reality, physicians and hospitals not updating content consistently risk that smart competitors will rank higher or may even obscure them in search results. By blogging regularly, you stay relevant, and people can find and engage with you online.

If you decide to commit to a blog, you should be prepared to post at least weekly. Some popular physicians and healthcare bloggers post several times per week. However, what is important is that you stick to a plan that will work for you.

While it is highly recommended that you feature your own voice and point of view on your blog, you may need a little help to keep postings regular and to get fresh ideas.

How can you supplement your healthcare blog content?

Supplementing your own blog content with experts is a great way to keep your blog on track. It takes time to curate and create content. For example, you may commit to creating three posts per month, and would like expertise for a fourth post. There are two ways to supplement your content that also grow your digital footprint organically.

1 One strategy is to invite colleagues and other experts in your field to guest post

Guest posting benefits you and your guest blogger. Natural links are created to each other’s websites and social sites around shared medical topics and interests. You should consider returning the favor by guest posting on other healthcare blogs as well. Both strategies will expand your digital reach and thought leadership beyond your own site. Plus, you develop relationships and grow your network!

2 Another strategy is to outsource a monthly or bi-monthly post to a professional blogger

My expertise on Symplur is to help you stay consistent with healthcare blogging and to provide ideas around your medical specialty. I have proven results for idea generation and blogging on current healthcare trends, and have written for the leading healthcare market research organizations. My posts are interesting, engaging and have naturally ranked high in the search engines. My established social network can also help you get started and maximize reach.

Authenticity is a crucial component of the social web. My posts would add to the posts you would already be creating.

Healthcare blog coaching

In addition to writing, I can help you find your own blogging voice and develop an editorial calendar with ideas for posting. I can also simplify the process, so you can easily curate news (Google Alerts, Scoop.it) and learn how to create short video (YouTube) and downloadable audio (SoundCloud) posts that save time.

With coaching, you and your team will learn what makes content interesting for your community. One of the biggest mistakes is posting the same content to all social sites. Just because tools allow you to automate posting does not mean you should. Creating content for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ requires an understanding of each platform. But that is another post!

Please post comments below with any questions you may have related to healthcare blogging and content strategy, and I will happily address them in future posts.

Learn more about Healthcare Blogging 101: How A Blog Can Help You Engage And Be Found Online at Symplur

An informative piece circulated on Twitter recently caught my attention. The post by Jeff Bullas, Social Media Marketing: 10 Inspiring Infographics shares some good examples of the power and influence social media has on the behaviors and buying patterns of consumers. Jeff also discusses the conversation related to the shift from outbound marketing efforts, or what I like to call “shameless self-promotion”, to more appealing, conversational inbound marketing tactics. This article was of great interest, being I led a discussion on the move to a more educated consumer, new buying behaviors and how social networking is a driving factor behind these shifts during my session at the Practice Management Institute national conference.

Healthcare Social media and Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing

With consumerism abound in healthcare, these same shifts in patient decision-making behaviors and choices in physicians/institutions are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. With this adjustment in action, to be effective at reaching your patient (or referring physician, organization, etc) one must understand the difference between these two approaches to marketing. My friend and colleague Howard Luks, MD, does a great job of outlining these differences in his recent post: Social Media and Healthcare: Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing (be sure to check it out!). In his post he poses the question, “does your marketing professional understand the difference?”

How to do Inbound Healthcare Marketing Right

As a marketer in the healthcare field, I have a few additional thoughts and tips to consider in building your organization’s marketing strategy and looking to undertake more inbound concepts verses the “shameless self-promotion” approach I mentioned earlier.

1. Don’t put all your marketing eggs in one basket; it’s crucial you STILL diversify your marketing mix! It’s true; there is still room for more traditional forms of marketing such as TV, radio and print. It’s all about your message! You can engage an audience and provide educational content through these traditional mediums; it doesn’t all have to be about solely promoting services or providers. However, for a healthy balanced marketing strategy, you must use these more traditional methods in conjunction with fresh inbound tactics, including social media.

2. You’ve got to make it real for your audience! Consistent research shows your patients look to peers for recommendations, not to the advertisements they hear and see. Your patients are now on Facebook, Twitter….and other social networking sites! So, engage in these sites and make it easy for patients to sing your physicians’/institutions’ praises to their peers. Patient testimonials make it REAL for your audience; they can connect with your current patients, their stories and their reasoning behind choosing you. Stories sell. Period.

3. Take the time to know your audience! Even with inbound marketing tactics, you can still miss truly interacting with your audience. Take time to find out who you are talking to, who you want to attract, who you want the information to engage and ultimately who you want walking through the doors of your office.  Marketing your practice can be a daunting task, but keep in mind, your goal as a healthcare provider should be to provide educational content to your audience. Continuing to focus on providing educational information and becoming a health resource to patients, potential patients and the community will bring success in reaching and engaging your audience.

One must understand, you cannot be everything to everyone, even with the use of social media channels. Stick to your message, engage your audience and produce quality content within your physicians’ or institutions’ realm of expertise.

Learn more about Inbound vs. Outbound Healthcare Marketing Strategies at Symplur

Learn more about We’re going to connect the dots and simplify the process at Symplur

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow. – Margaret Fuller

It was 1:20 AM, one year ago today … October 26, 2010.  Audun Utengen and I were communicating via IM as we were placing some final touches on a little side project that we had been feverishly working on.  It seemed about as ready as it ever would, so we hit the publish button and shared the project openly for the first time just as our European friends were starting their day.  Then our tweet announcing the launch went out …

As the rising sun made its way around the world, discovery and chatter about the healthcare hashtag project slowly began to emerge.  It was the most comprehensive list of hashtags dedicated to the healthcare conversations taking place on Twitter.  And it was a list that was both interactive and social.  In the ensuing days we began to receive submissions of hashtags to add to this list from various members of the healthcare Twitter community.  The first three of which were #naturalhealth, #casemanagement, and #healthlit.

A birthday that celebrates ‘community’ on Twitter

From the onset the Healthcare Hashtag Project has been about lowering the barrier to entry, facilitating discussion, and creating an environment in which the users are able to participate and make their voices heard.  And it’s that third point that dedicates this birthday party as a celebration of what the Healthcare Twitter Community at large has contributed.

A special thanks, once again, goes to those individuals whose consultation helped us to formulate our initial thoughts on how to present this project and to make it a social experience.

• @PhilBaumann
• @andrewspong
• @MarkHarmel
• @hjluks
• @dermdoc

And thank you to the many other members of the community who have provided us with additional great feedback, ideas and inspiration about how this project can better meet the needs of healthcare professionals and patients alike.  Some of the additions, inspired by you, that have been deployed over this past year include …

• A specific section for Tweet Chats and an accompanying interactive calendar with a Tweet Chat schedule embedded on it.
• The provision of hashtag transcripts, on demand, with customizable date/time ranges and more.
• Hashtag analytics including top ten users by mention, top ten users by number of tweets, most shared resources and more.
• A specific section for Healthcare Conference Hashtags to help facilitate the conversations at those events, and to better share with those who are not in attendance.

Healthcare Hashtags by the Numbers

What a difference a year makes …

• 172 -  Number of hashtags introduced on the first day.
• 292 -  Number of visits to main hashtag page on the first day.
• 38 -  Number of times that the #hcsmeu page, the most popular of the day, was visited on the first day.
• 418 -  Number of “regular” hashtags tracked in the Healthcare Hashtag Project as of today.
• 36 -  Number of Tweet Chat Hashtags tracked as of today.
• 165 - Number of Healthcare Conference Hashtags listed as of today.
• 33,000+ -  The average number of healthcare related tweets being added every day to our database.
• 14 Million+ -  The number of healthcare related tweets currently in our Healthcare Hashtag database.

The Healthcare Hashtag Project is still growing

While there’s been some considerable growth in the usefulness of this project, we realize that needs and interests are rapidly changing.  Consequently, we’ll continue to search for new ways to meet the evolving expectations of healthcare’s Twitter community.  And, as always, it’s our desire to keep this project social.  So your thoughts and suggestions are very welcome here.

Lastly, we so very much appreciate the support and all the terrific relationships that we’ve made through our work on, and use of, this project.  And I think for everyone that’s the best part about it … the new connections that these hashtags help foster.

Learn more about The Healthcare Hashtag Project Celebrates a Birthday at Symplur