Posts Tagged ‘Interactive’

Five Ways to Test the Strength of Your Hospital Brand

I’m often asked to speak to hospitals around the country. East Coast, West Coast and everywhere in-between, I’m always happy to have those conversations and consequently I’ve gained firsthand knowledge about the struggles many have with their branding. Of course every hospital and hospital system is unique to its market, but there are some key questions to ask before a brand is launched or relaunched to the community.

Tell your stories in a way that communicates a broader benefit.

1. What’s your elevator pitch?

We all know how slow hospital elevators can be but imagine having to describe the essence of your brand between floors 1 and 2. Could you or any of your employees do that? Does your organization believe in its relevance? Would you need more time to explain it?

2. Do you promote your successes?

I’m amazed at how little hospitals do to tout their accomplishments. To some it may feel braggadocios but letting the world know what great things you’ve done helps perpetuate quality inside the hospital and out. Don’t let those high quality scores or those amazing procedures fall by the wayside. Just make sure they’re told in a compelling way. Continue reading »

Google Grows Digital Ad Share in New Categories

News Flash: Google is huge! Okay, so maybe that isn’t so much a news flash, but the fact that Google continues to grow is definitely something that remains top of mind for advertisers.

In the week of May 23, 2011, it was announced that Google surpassed Yahoo! in digital display advertising after Yahoo!’s 16-year stint on top.¹ IDC’s latest “Worldwide and U.S. Internet Advertising Report” stated that “Google’s net U.S. display advertising revenue share grew to 14.7% in 1Q11 from 13.3% in 4Q10, while Yahoo!’s declined from 13.6% to 12.3%.”² Continue reading »

More Ways to Reach Physicians Online

Doctors dig digital. In a recent article published by the New York Times entitled The Rise of Desktop Medicine, Dr. Pauline W. Chen says she and fellow colleagues are finding themselves in front of their computers more than at their patient’s bedside.

Computers offer what a doctor’s “clinical acumen” may not — syntheses of clinical findings and measurements, complex statistical models and risk factor calculations. According to Dr. Chen, using these tools to help treat patients has taken healthcare from traditional, bedside medicine to desktop medicine.

HCB Health’s own Anne Pratt recently told us of the current mobile boom and its expected growth in coming years. Just as they do desktop medicine, physicians rely on smartphones to help care for their patients, with an estimated 81% of physicians using smartphones in their clinical lives. Continue reading »

Making the Most of Your Content Audit

A content audit is a comprehensive review of the content in a website or family of websites. It’s usually conducted using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, with the qualities, contents, hits and misses of each page painstakingly catalogued. The spreadsheet (called a content inventory) is then provided as a report.

Like other reports, it serves two functions:

• It shows your clients (internal and external) that you’ve done due diligence.
• It provides usable data to continue to the next phase of the project.

When conducting content audits, we content strategists often tout the first function without giving much thought to the second. Yes, we’ve exposed issues with the current website. Yes, we can pinpoint a few red flags in the content. But is the content audit usable? Comprehensive? High-quality from start to finish? Most importantly, does the content audit provide actionable, quantitative information?

After auditing a few large healthcare websites, we at HCB Health have learned a few strategies to improve the value of every content audit. Continue reading »

Health, iPads, Gamification: Trends at SXSWi 2011

This year, more than ever, South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) proved itself to be the interactive community’s premier meeting of the minds. Of course, South by Southwest has always been a stand-out occasion. Started in 1987 to showcase the nation’s rising music acts, the Austin event added an Interactive (then called “Multimedia”) conference in 1995.

In recent years, the Interactive festival has grown from a place where fringe entrepreneurs, programmers and marketers meet to show off their pet projects to an event where:

• Industry trendsetters launch services like Twitter and Foursquare
• Major tech companies court potential employees with lavish parties
• News outlets gather to predict the course of interactive industry

With an estimated 20,000 attendees (a 30% increase from 2010), the 2011 SXSWi conference gave us much to consider. What were the hot trends, and how do they affect healthcare marketing? Continue reading »

Globalization in Site Design, Content and Development

Globalization has become a hot topic in the last decade. What are the best SEO practices for reaching such a large audience? How much do companies have to spend to make their sites international? Is simply translating the language enough?

According to “Is Your SEO Strategy Global?” by John Tawadros,

Optimizing your site for just one country might create more challenges in the long run. Ultimately, when you eventually begin thinking about a global strategy, it may even cause you to go back and change what you’ve changed once already.

Continue reading »

Are You Ready for the Mobile Majority?

According to an article published last year by Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley, in 2013, more people will access the web from a mobile device than from a computer. This prediction could dramatically change the digital marketing landscape. And healthcare marketers can’t afford to lag behind.

Many of us wait to test new options, allowing the experiences of our peers — and competitors — to determine whether those options are good for business. Preliminary trends in mobile marketing favor early adopters. Consider these four reasons to invest in mobile advertising: Continue reading »

Twitter Apps: Funny Names, Seriously Helpful in Managing the Twitterverse

Managing social networks for a thriving company is a full-time job — sometimes multiple persons’ full-time jobs. But a company rarely has the resources to hire someone solely to tweet, post on Facebook or maintain LinkedIn accounts.

As my agency twexpert, I am in charge of managing our @HCBHealth Twitter account. In December I put out tweets for @HCB Holidays, the Twitter account for our Healthy Holidays video promotion. Doing this along with my other job responsibilities and over the holidays could have been tough, but I found a few free Twitter apps that made my life much easier.

Top Three Free Twitter Tools You Shouldn’t Live Without

Twuffer
Twuffer (“Twitter with a buffer”) is a great app to use if you have a calendar of pre-written tweets that you want to push out certain days/times. I used this app during our holiday promotion and it was a lifesaver. When I took a week off for Christmas, my tweets appeared on Christmas Eve, Christmas day and New Year’s day — perfect opportunities for our followers to take a much-needed Twitter break. Continue reading »