Keeping the Blogosphere (and Everyone Else) Healthy
Cruising through the blogosphere I stumbled upon (pun intended) Diva Marketing Blog and her July 16 post on “Where Are The ‘Social Media’ Healthcare Organizations?” As I learn to love Social Media, and discover which companies have and have not embraced Web 2.0, I ponder the same question that the Diva raises: “Should healthcare organizations go ’social’?” 
We’re not talking about physicians here. The Diva claims that “thousands of physicians are active in social media.” I’m not sure if she means these docs have a Facebook or MySpace page to keep up with their friends or if they engage in online conversations with their patients.
The Diva is referring to healthcare organizations–hospitals, drug companies and corporations–which she writes treat social media as “more of a revolutionary strategy than an evolutionary way to reach customers.” I think she’s on to something. Shouldn’t healthcare practitioners go where their customers are?
Wouldn’t it be great if you could log on to the website of your local hospital and have a conversation with a nurse, department head, physician or some other representative to answer your specific questions about an upcoming procedure and your hospital stay rather than scrolling through the FAQ and not finding the information you are seeking. Reading the blogs of a hospital’s administrator or one of its doctors might give you a better sense of that organization’s philosophy or bedside manner.
Several of the hospitals that serve the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area where I live mail monthly or quarterly newsletters to local residents. These printed marketing tools provide updates on technology, treatments, personnel changes and public programs. Perhaps these institutions should save postage and help the environment by shelving the paper and going digital.
The Diva notes that those hospitals and drug companies that do have blogs have reaped the benefits. One Web 2.0 convert, Nick Jacobs, president and CEO of Windber Medical Center, credits his blog posts for speaking engagement invites around the country.
Nick Jacobs
Because of these presentations, Jacobs says he “was exposed to the magnitude of not only blog power, but also You Tube, Facebook, Twitter…” Jacobs tells the Diva that his blogging led him to write two books and four newspaper columns “that have increased our business by double-digit figures.”
Johnson and Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline are two corporations that use blogs to communicate with the public. The J&J site notes that “everyone else is talking about our company, so why can’t we?” Recent posts have focused on nutrition, first aid and the company’s health channel on YouTube. The GSK site is built around its alli weight-loss product.
How many people have logged onto WebMD at one time or another? Quantcast, the media measurement service, ranks the medical information site in the top 50, with more than 15 million people in the U.S. visiting each month. With so many consumers in the marketplace for health and medical information, doesn’t it just make sense for these organizations to join the Antibloggergirldc and step into the 21st century?
S is For …
So many countries, so few blogs.
For my Social Media class we are tasked with reviewing blogs from a country that begins with the first initial of either our first or last name. The Global Voices website gave me 22 choices for the letter S, including the Caribbean nations of Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and St. Kitts. Maybe I was dreaming of a beach vacation when I decided to explore the online conversations in those countries. Surprisingly, or maybe not, there were very few blogs, irregular posts and limited topics.
In their book, Naked Conversations, Robert Scoble and Shel Israel write that culture plays a key role because “Some countries are conducive to the openness required in a successful blog. Others are less conducive.” Economics and politics are also important factors.
Since I have always wanted to visit South Africa, I decided to tour that country’s blogosphere through Global Voices. Again, I saw that economics and politics are key influencers. On one hand I was surprised to find limited posts in general but not surprised that the blogosphere heated up around political topics including the Spring elections in Zimbabwe and the recent spate of attacks on foreigners in South Africa. One regular blogger, Muhammad Karim wrote on May 31 that bloggers need to do more than just write about xenophobia. Karim is a freelance writer and South African blogger who dishes on a number of topics including Playboy’s ‘Hottest Blogger’ contest.
Some of the interesting items I discovered was that South Africa has its own answer to YouTube. Zoopy was launched just a few months ago and has already attracted 120,000 visits a month (compared to the 120 million monthly visits to YouTube. Even the Cape Town mayor has gone digital: http://www.zoopy.com/helen.
A posting on the annual South African blog awards took me to thought leader, winner of both the best political blog award and Blog of the Year honors. The blog is affiliated with the Mail and Guardian newspaper, supporting Scoble and Israel’s claim that the most interesting blogs reside in either very large or very small companies.
Politics, religion and criticizing the media were all popular — and frequent — topics. Maybe our cultural differences aren’t so far apart. Even in advertisements. On one post discussing religious issues there was an ad for an online Muslim marriage service followed a few paragraphs later by an online dating site for Jewish singles.
