The Social Patient: How Social Media Marketing Is Changing Health Care

Martin’s Hug For Health Care

Since this post shares lessons from an evolving Internet marketing world without pulling punches; I want to do what a boss taught me. “Martin,” this great boss taught, “Hug more than you smack”.

I can write about The Social Patient because exceptional people dedicate their lives to saving lives like mine. Doctors, nurses and administrators have saved my life more than once. I am a cancer survivor.

I’ve come to know. Dr. Hank van Deventer, my UNC Lineberger Cancer Center oncologist. Dr. Hank is about my age. He is more than my doctor. Hammering Hank is a special man, one of the people who’ve saved my life.

Dr. Hank works in a special place. The more I climb behind the scenes at UNC’s Lineberger Cancer Center the more impressed with their entrepreneurial spirit, openness to change and desire to help becomes.

This ScentTrail Marketing piece on how social media marketing is changing health care is not about a place. The Social Patient is about an attitude, a dangerous attitude. It is NOT an attitude health care providers don't know about. What most health care providers are unaware of is the size and speed of The Social Patient tsunami that is hitting now.

After 12 years in Internet marketing and 20 years as a consumer packaged goods brand marketer I’m familiar with the size and speed of the wave. The wave, no matter how big, can be surfed. Surfing the social media marketing wave in health care, surfing The Social Patient, will take a dedicated effort by special heroes to break a health care mold generations in the making.

My hope is this post provides HOW health care providers can use social media marketing to achieve their goals. How can health care providers wax up their boards and surf something I love like life itself – social media marketing.

How Social Media Is Changing Health Care

My friend and one of the best bosses ever Mary Kay O’Connor created a company called Starting Point. Her company has been working with health care providers for years. Mary Kay, one of the best quantitative and qualitative researchers I know, explains how survey based and slow moving the health care industry has become.

She explains how surveys were/are created to play for government ratings. It was the way the health care game was/is played. Most health care providers survey, summarize, analyze and respond with 2% change every five years. This post is about how global completion and social media marketing and the era of The Social Patient is creating a new health care.

The Social Patient: Patient Stories

Had a person thank me for sharing my “Patient story” recently. After my diagnosis with cancer I made a decision to share my journey. I’m an Internet marketer and so I am more gregarious online than in person (lol). The first wave that hit after hearing, “Martin you have cancer,” was powerlessness.

I felt like one of Martin Seligman’s subjects. Seligman studied what he named “learned helplessness”, the tendency for subjects in his studies to give up. After reaching a breaking point his subjects, usually dogs, would STOP. No matter what Seligman did helplessness was complete and systematic. He could shock the subject almost to death and no movement.

Kubler-Ross On Death And Dying:

• Depression
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

I took an immediate deep dive into Kubler-Ross’ stages. I came to understand these stages aren’t as pretty and sequential as written. Life gets pretty chaotic and crazy after hearing such dramatic news.

One of the reasons I decided to SHARE anything and everything about having cancer in a "damned the torpedoes full speed ahead" way is sharing creates POWER. I chronicle, share and create plans and so am not helpless in the face of the Big C.

The Social “Patient”

I HATE the word “patient’. Patient isn’t how I would describe myself even when I’m being treated. Sometimes I write “cancer patient” in some context and get mad at myself. I’m a “cancer survivor”. I’m an Internet marketer. I’m a cyclist. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m anything but a PATIENT (lol).

I’ve never had any patience either, so “patient” is a double insult (lol). There is no POWER in “patient” and the word doesn’t describe me. I may have cancer and MS, but I’m HERE and NOW. I get to collaborate and participate in my treatment.

Like many people, I don’t passively consume anything anymore. I watch TV with Twitter running. I take pictures or video with my iPhone to support one of 4 blogs, 5 Twitter accounts, Pinterest, Scoop.it and Facebook. I mash, combine, link, share and move content all day, every day (Thanksgiving and Christmas too :).

I’m still junior in social media marketing, but even I can touch 10,000 people in an instant. My friends can touch a million. Do a six degrees of separation calculation on these numbers and I have the ability to reach more than 5 million people with the right Tweet, blog post or story, and I am still somewhat new to social media marketing. My following is developing. Expect that number to roughly double every year. There are social gurus with much larger tribes of followers and, at some point, each of them will need health care services.

Welcome to the world of The Social Patient.

Health Care and The Social Patient

Many health care practices are and will be impacted, changed and revolutionized by The Social Patient. Here is a sampling of practices sure to change:

• Death of Doctor Knows best.
• Collaboration Rules. 
• Health Care happens in REAL TIME.
• Marketing only as good as Online Reputation Management (ORM).
• Only as strong as weakest piece of social tapestry.
• Platforms not websites.
• Match WALK and TALK or a dissonant rain will fall.
• Speed is always FASTER.

Social Patient: Dr. Knows Best 

When I was a child I remember TV shows like Marcus Welby, MD (ABC, 1969 – 1976) or Doctor Knows Best. In these ordered, black and white worlds life was simple. Each week helpless patients handed themselves over to the God-like father figure who explained complicated things as if the patient (and by extension the viewers) were children. Then magically before the hour was up a life would be saved.  

We live NOW not then. Marcus Welby was an actor named Robert Young who died in 1998. A lot of things were dying in 1998 because the web was cooking Moore’s law (power of transistors doubles even as costs decrease). I launched FoundObjects.com (now RIP) in 1999, bought my first URL in 1993, so the Internet marketing change meme was in town and about to take over the world.

Social Patient: Collaborate

In a globally connected social world where what any patient knows, feels or experiences reaches 5M people in an instant something significant has changed. When other more connected social gurus such as Chis Brogan, Seth Godin or Oprah can reach out and touch the world health care is a different gig.

Patronize patients, talk over their heads, make them feel small and they will do two things to level the field. First they will reach for the most immediate empowering tool – social media. God help the health care provider who ignores an angry tweet. Ignoring @yourname anything is beyond crazy since it is sure to escalate the “complainer”.

People who use social media to complain aren’t trying to hurt a service provider, they are trying to help the provider and empower themselves. Sure there are exceptions to this rule, trolls who just want to cause harm, but trolls are exceptions. Most people just want recognition and a sense of power.

If, as is usually the case, their negative experience is not isolated then the web forms a tribe helping the complainer and hurting the service provider. Once the complaint is published a tribe forms, a self-reinforcing tribe. One person’s negative experience is now being multiplied by a network effect. OUCH!

The health care provider on the wrong end of this social storm is in trouble. A hard rain is about to fall. Collaborate NOW or the storm will rage out of control and cause much more damage. Here are ways a health care provider can collaborate to quell the brewing storm:

• Follow the complainer (or Friend them).
• Respond with appreciation.
• Be empathetic.
• Don’t have to agree to be empathetic.
• Listen carefully; mirror some of the language back.
• Recognize the forming tribe.
• Move the conversation to a less damaging place (your blog, or the phone).

These moves don’t de-escalate. They simply set the stage to de-escalate. Once a health care provider has the conversation happening where they want then they should listen and find ways to be helpful. Listening is the pin that pops the anger balloon.

The tricky part is “listening” online is different.

Listening in a social world means health care providers do “listening” actions such as FOLLOWING. Ever notice how few nonprofits follow many people? I’m a capitalist. I have to worry about my brand looking weak if we follow too many people. When we follow too many, more than are following us, it can feel like we aren’t an authority.

When a powerful nonprofit decides to not follow they miss an opportunity.

Nonprofits who don't follow look like they don’t understand the magical social marketing exemption nonprofits and health care providers get – they can follow more people than follow them and it sends a, “They care,” signal. Following is also the first type of online “listening” capable of cutting off a storm before a drop of rain. Health care providers should FOLLOW and FRIEND EVERYONE.

My whole life is online. My connectedness may be an exception (not for long), but 90% of the people a health care provider treats have LinkedIn profiles. The first health care provider that looks at my LI profile visits ScentTrail Marketing, my marketing blog, and asks a question about this or any other post wins advocacy and loyalty forever.

“We don’t have the time to know and treat patients,” I can hear the objection now. To treat me a health care provider MUST know me. The fact health care providers think medical knowledge is more important than their patients’ lives keeps "customers" in the straight jacket of “patient” instead of the relation sought - collaborative partner in our care.

Social Patient: In Real Time

As health care providers treat patients those patients can communicate what is happening to an army capable of communicating to another army. Authentic, honest and real health care providers will prosper because they are aligned with The Social Patient.

This doesn’t mean there is a gun to health care providers’ heads. It does mean if health care providers have someone in their system that shouldn’t be dealing with people the potential brand damage of a consistently BAD node (employee or team) can’t be calculated (but it is easily in the millions of dollars).

In our brave new social world surveys don’t cut it. I don’t fill out surveys. I tweet, blog and pin. Increasingly the only people who will fill out a health care survey will say nice things because the sample has shrunk to people who are willing to answer surveys.

Social Patient: ORM

Health care providers who don’t have Online Reputation Management (ORM) tools dance with the devil. Any health care provider MUST know about conversations happening on Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and a million blogs in real time.

The most powerful side of ORM is to use what can be learned to go on offense. Learn the language and sentiment customers use to describe your marketing and the top of the health care marketing funnel meets the conversion points at the bottom.

Health care providers don’t need an expensive tool such as Radian6 either. Topsy or Google alerts can be great ORM tools. If any health care provider doesn’t understand how to set up an early warning ORM I will help free of charge (Martin.Smith(at)Atlanticbt.com). In the age of The Social Patient ORM is critical. Health care providers must know what is being said, the context or sentiment of what is being said and the language being used (especially the keywords).

Social Patient: Tapestry

I don’t envy health care providers. Health care is a business that MUST use every social tool almost the minute a new social tool is born. To be absent is an unpardonable sin, so Facebook, Twitter, Scoop.it, Hunch.com, Pinterest and several blogs is the current cost of health care provider social poker.

The social tapestry any health care provider builds is only as strong as their weakest link. No marketing team can be equally adroit at all social platforms nor should they. Health care marketing teams need to be strategic about selection of their main social tool. Pick the open one, the social tool competitors don’t like.

Watch social analytics like hawks on wires looking for dinner. Move emphasis when a tribe of supporters moves. If a practice is 90% breast cancer then Pinterest with its 70% women is a must. If a health care practice is more evenly divided and Facebook is an open field then select it as the primary social media weapon.

Don’t be fooled by social media marketing’s smiley faces. Social media is a loaded gun firing SEO bullets. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) controls traffic and traffic is a proxy for people and money. Treat social media like the loaded gun it is and health care providers may fend off wolves and not blow off their toe :).

Social Patient: Platforms

Almost two years ago I wrote what became a “tent pole” piece (a viral piece of content). Platforms vs. Websites was about the death of the closed loop, nonsocial website. Health care providers are in the platform business now. Platforms are different than website in these ways:

• More social.
• Generate more User Generated content.
• Multi-author.
• Store and solicit OPC (Other People’s Content).
• Incorporates feeds.
• Curate 90% more content than is being created.
• Be mobile friendly.

I can hear my General Practitioner thinking, “Marty isn’t talking about our 10 doctor practice.” Sorry Lisa I am talking about your practice. Platform or risk not being found because your young son and daughter will manage their entire life online via mobile. If your practice isn't a content marketing platform your son and daughter may never know it is there.

Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing, the way a doctor’s practice has always been built, is still important but social media amps WOM. Social media amplifies the good and the bad. Only platforms have the muscle needed to keep good and bad in check. Only platforms can win enough space in the largest content network ever created (the web) to do the job of helping a practice find the next generation of patients.

Social Patient: WALK and TALK

As a capitalist my companies can generate some dissonance and survive. The web is a huge lie-detecting amplifier. If an ecommerce website or brand makes a mistake, but honestly admits the mistake and works hard to reinforce core positive values they can survive.

Health care is different. Health care is about saving people’s lives and that is both the good and bad news. If health care providers make a mistake and create harm the least of their worries will be the lawsuit. The lawsuit will feel small and feeble compared to the hard rain that can be come after even an honest mistake in social media.

A health care provider’s best defense is when brand advocates stand up for them, yet another reason health care providers should create PLATFORMS and FOLLOW EVERYONE. Health care providers want brand advocates to step in and correct the social record. Brand advocates can more easily point out yes the provider may have made a mistake but today’s mistake is the exception.

I recognize, as I write this, the idea that THEY (customers and patients) are in control will be a TOUGH concept for health care providers to get hands around. All brand marketers are getting our hands around how social means less marketing "control". Any health care provider's online presence and properties are AT LEAST AS IMPORTANT in a social, global world as the care they provide.

If a health care provider’s great care doesn't translate online patients are up for grabs and the health care provider will not survive a negative PR storm because there won’t be an army of brand advocates to fight for the provider. Health care providers ignore Internet marketing at their peril.

Social Patient: Speed = FASTER

Hospital time is the slowest unit of time on planet earth. Internet time is the fastest unit of time on earth. One of these two TIMES is going to win. Guess which one? If a health care provider is reading this post thinking, “These social media things are fine, but they don't apply to us” they may be right for now.

They will be right up to the moment their crosstown competitor hires an Internet marketing consultant. At a lunch last week with two of my Internet marketing friends I realized we only think one way – ATTACK. We've been trained to think this way by years of Internet marketing.

When I managed a $6M website we looked at $2M websites much like a hawk looks at a field mouse. Any innovative thing they did we could steal, solidify and gain from. We had to fight a two front war because the $20M site above us looked down on us with hungry hawk eyes too (lol).

We learned to steal from the small and attack the large. There is no effective online defense against a scaled website. They have the high ground, so smaller websites must, must, must disrupt and attack. There will be miserable defeats, carnage of ideas like never seen, but even defeat is good in the unique ecosystem of Internet marketing.

This is NOT to say we didn't have our own great ideas. We did. You know how we knew the GREAT ideas from the less great ideas? Great ideas were stolen instantly. We could post an idea on Monday and see it on competitive sites by Tuesday.

Everything is in constant motion all the time now. After a health care provider joins the battle they become smarter. Health care providers should exploit any crack immediately and ATTACK because defense and attack require the same resources but attack pays better :). Health care providers might attack and then immediately need to defend, but that is to be expected. Don’t get discouraged or lose focus before attacking again.

The only choice a tuned Internet marketing team has is to ATTACK and then ATTACK some more. In fact, Internet marketers learn to attack more, faster and better while building a platform capable of generating content at rates only dreamed of now. Health care providers must tear down and reassemble every preconceived brand notion and business process more, faster and better.

Even as I write this I recognize few health care providers will believe or care about The Social Patient. I know a group who will. Between 200 and 500 people read ScentTrail Marketing daily and between 50 and 100 are from India.

As I write smart fast techies in India are taking notes. By tomorrow they will have the first pieces of a platform built. By next year that platform will have scale and three years from now something that is currently a blip on the US Health Care Radar, health care tourism, will be a flood.

Why? Because the innovative, hungry, smart and FAST techs reading this post in India have nothing to lose. They create or they die. They create or they never were. I hope this post helps US health care providers understand how to up their Internet marketing game.

Stay In Touch, Share Your Ideas

Hope The Social Patient can become a movement (of sorts). If you have ideas and want to help develop The Social Patient into something larger (book or a website) leave a comment or do one of these:

Follow @ScentTsrail

Email: MartinSellingZoe(at)aol

Follow Digital Revolutions on Scoop.it

Join ScentTrail Marketing (on the upper left)

Thanks, Marty