Gone are the days of social media managers posting the same or similar content across one, two, or three social media profiles and calling it a day.
Social media marketing in the present and future is returning to a one-on-one approach of engaging with audiences directly, be it in a private message or in response to a recommendation. Users are eschewing the spotlight in favor of smaller, niche communities where their presence is valued and they are not just a number.
The 4 Best Practices for Healthcare Social Media Marketing in 2020
Based on the report, here are the 4 best practices of healthcare social media marketing that will help you set your strategy in the right direction this upcoming year.
1. Diversify Your Channel Mix Beyond Facebook and Twitter
Our research found that hospitals post on Instagram less than once every two days, but publish to Twitter and Facebook at least twice per day on each channel. Based on posting frequency, Instagram and YouTube are as secondary channels, despite these audiences being more engaged.
2. Vary Your Content Mix to Optimize Audience Actions
More than half of the best-performing posts included photos of people. Twenty-seven of the best 50 posts clearly showed the faces of people or babies. The number of people in photos does not appear to impact engagement — 18 images had a single person, and 18 images had 2 or more people.
In addition, curated content links have higher engagement: 35% of links shared by hospitals are curated, meaning they are not from the hospital’s own domain. Posts with curated links earned an average of 0.033% engagement per post, while links originating from the hospital’s own domain generated half as much engagement, at 0.015%.
3. Boost Top Performing Posts Organic Posts
While engagement is trending down across social media as a whole, brands are circumventing declining organic reach by spending money to ensure their content is getting seen. In fact, 5.5% of all hospital Facebook posts we analyzed are signaled as “likely-boosted”, according to Rival IQ. Of those likely-boosted Facebook posts, the engagement rate per post was 177% higher than the non-boosted posts.
4. Connect with Niche Communities
While Facebook Brand Pages continue to be used by patients and hospitals, some hospitals are beginning to leverage Facebook Groups and Messenger to create deeper connections with audiences.
In fact, 30% of the top U.S. hospitals are making Groups part of their Facebook strategy. Twelve of the 54 hospitals (22%) are currently or have recently used Groups as part of their Facebook outreach. Four hospitals are in the pre-launch or initial-launch phase of deploying Groups.
