In the past decade, the ability to leverage social media has become an indispensable part of hospital marketing strategy. Becker's reached out to 23 health systems across the country to learn more about how they plan to use social media in 2022.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and style.
David Feinberg. Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Mount Sinai Health System (New York City): Our social media team at Mount Sinai continually finds new ways to connect with consumers, physicians, scientists and others while staying abreast of social media trends. Our team's findings last year have informed how we are approaching social media content in 2022.
YouTube, Instagram Reels and TikTok now shape how consumers interact with and absorb health information. Through these platforms, we plan to continue to build health video libraries that address frequently asked questions by patients. Our team is now training experts from various service areas to develop organic, short-form video for Mount Sinai on these platforms.
Additionally, our team is recruiting students and faculty members from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to become social media ambassadors. By establishing their voices on platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn, our ambassadors will share content relevant to our scientific and medical education communities.
Mary Renouf. Vice President of Community Engagement at Providence (Renton, Wash.): Like everyone in healthcare, Providence was hit hard by the pandemic. As we hope to move into the endemic phase, we understand the importance of streamlining our efforts to focus on efficiency and reach. Expanding our current TikTok presence to leverage the increasing trend of consumer consumption of short-form video will be a top priority. Our plans also include increasing our streaming radio and podcast presence; we were excited by the success of our Future of Health shows at providing consumers with factual health information on this growing media platform.
Providence will continue our influencer strategy, focused significantly more on content creators, micro influencers and LinkedIn influencers. There will be a greater emphasis on user-generated content to help share our stories in more authentic ways. Our team plans to increase our social support services for patients and consumers. We are also learning more about augmented reality/virtual reality for patient education and hope to explore those possibilities later this year.
Devika Mathrani. Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at NewYork-Presbyterian (New York City): In fall of 2021, NewYork-Presbyterian launched its first new brand platform in 10 years, Stay Amazing. Our new voice and consumer commitment created ideas about how we can efficiently reach customers and prospects in the channels where they are engaging and be a trusted source of information and partner in their wellness journey. Stay Amazing is about showing consumers how accessible healthcare can be and that we are here to be their health and wellness partner for both their urgent and everyday needs.
To reinforce NewYork-Presbyterian's refreshed positioning and messaging, we are evolving our social media strategy to be consumer-first with more visual content that is everyday relatable and easy to consume. While we will continue to highlight our amazing physicians, service line strengths, patient stories and other NYP Brand Ambassadors, we are also starting to work with third-party influencers and partners to broaden our following, all in the spirit of being where our customer is. Instagram is a priority channel for us and we're excited to launch new features such as Instagram Reels, get more creative with Instagram Live, as well as explore other platforms that you might not expect from a healthcare provider. And of course, best-in-class analytics is essential to make data-driven decisions to ensure we're reaching consumers with the right content and efficiently leveraging the channels to drive growth and engagement.
Cristal Herrera Woodley. Director of Marketing, Communications and Customer Engagement at Renown Health (Reno, Nev.): At Renown Health, we use our social media to provide real-time updates and to encourage better health. We use it for two-way communications, encouraging people to provide us feedback and providing 24/7 monitoring of our channels. This year we will encourage 50,000 more people to join the Healthy Nevada Project, a no-cost genomic study where participants can learn more about their genetic links to heart disease and certain cancers and work to prevent illness.
Chrisie Scott. Chief Marketing Officer at Virtua Health (Marlton, N.J.): In 2022, Virtua Health will continue to build its brand with social media as a dynamic channel in many ways. It is a critical strategy for listening to consumers to understand what is important to them and to learn how we can engage in two-way dialogue to enhance their relationship with Virtua. Social media allows us to be relevant and targeted in moments that matter and with targeted audiences. Depending on the channel and specific goal, these distinct audiences will encompass internal colleagues, millennials, health seekers and more. We see social media as an integral way to tell our story of being here for good and for motivating people to share their own ways of seeing good in the community.
In addition to these brand engagement objectives, social media is an important part of our content and patient acquisition strategies with paid advertising and customer relationship management. While we work to be timely and relevant with trends and micro-moments, we also plan out ways to help people connect to services they need and to engage them in trusted information they may be looking for. Again, this may come from Virtua as a brand as well as a broader universe of user-generated content that people share on their own. They create their own communities and dialogues and we want to foster those discussions about health beyond our services in how we support people to be well, get well and stay well.
John Eckroth. Vice President of Digital Marketing and Innovation at NorthShore University HealthSystem (Evanston, Ill.): In early February, we launched our Pay It Forward Together campaign, which highlights the idea that when we all join forces to honor our healthcare team members, we can make our local communities stronger and healthier. During the recent omicron variant surge and after our organization's merger last month, we wanted a campaign that encourages our communities and team members to express their gratitude on social media by using #payitforwardtogether.
Through our new microsite, we're able to aggregate and curate gratitude posts, receive non-social media submissions and encourage other ways to give, such as donating blood and making local contributions. We also aligned our promotion with a Winter Olympics opening ceremony and Super Bowl commercial and created hard-copy printouts of the gratitude posts that will be shared with team members who were named in those posts.
Frank Lococo. Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Nebraska Medicine (Omaha): Our guiding principles remain unchanged. The marketing and communications team does an exceptional job delivering engaging content through an authentic voice that supports the brand. To do that, we continue to leverage our reputation as subject matter experts in a number of clinical areas of focus, using data and insights, to drive stories that resonate with consumers. To further deepen connections, the team does a great job responding to comments and questions, and they foster conversations in our social media channels to deepen connections.
We are data informed, monitoring the news, looking at engagements, conducting more social listening and directly asking consumers for their input through a well-received "You Asked, We Answered" functionality to develop meaningful content.
One insight is that data shows our Facebook audience engages more strongly with photos rather than video; so while we often use video, we seek out compelling photos and create graphics to tell a story at a glance.
We also evaluate emerging platforms, such as TikTok, for opportunities. The team is doing further research and assessment of how our brand fits into possibilities in order for us to achieve our goals and objectives. We want to be thoughtful about our approaches.
Kelly Perritt, PhD. Director of Marketing Campaigns at MUSC Health (Charleston, S.C.): We want to enable more user-generated content. We advocate for patients to take control of their health and want to allow them to use their voices to authentically tell their own unique, engaging stories. We also want to continue using our social platforms to highlight members of our care team giving our followers a glimpse into who we are and what we do. Both of these goals will further build our authority as a best-in-class healthcare provider, inspiring trust with our stakeholders.
Winifred "Wini" King. Chief of Communications, Inclusion, Diversity and Equity at Cook Children's Health Care System (Fort Worth, Texas): Social media plays a critical role in how we inform, educate and connect with Cook Children's stakeholders. More importantly, it gives us an opportunity to listen. Two-way communication has always been a priority for us, but we plan to take this strategy to new heights in 2022. For example, this spring we are launching a new podcast called "RaisingJoy," which will focus on mental health for both children and parents. However, we don't want to push out messages without giving the audience a place to react and respond, so we are creating a Facebook group where listeners can connect, discuss and provide feedback.
We also plan to leverage the social media power of our physicians in new ways. In January, we welcomed two new digital medical advisers to help guide our content and social media strategy for both English- and Spanish-speaking audiences. Both are pediatricians who have built reputations online as authentic and trusted voices in healthcare. They also serve as ambassadors for our team and advocate the value of doctors having a strong social media presence.
Lastly, we are using social media to elevate our focus on inclusion, diversity and equity. Cook Children's has made a commitment to fostering a sense of belonging and value to all within our organization. Our goal is to extend this commitment to our digital spaces through storytelling, highlighting achievements and recognizing significant events and holidays. In 2022, social media will help us build the change we want to see in the world.
Judith Ward. Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Baystate Health (Springfield, Mass.): Two example strategies that have been successful in the past that we plan to continue and leverage in 2022 are: using specific channels that have been successful in multilingual campaigns and leveraging social media to find unique patient stories that are then pitched through social channels for national earned coverage.
Gregg Moss. Vice President of Communications at SCL Health (Broomfield, Colo.): No longer a place to just connect with friends and share photos, social media is now a driving force in the healthcare community for disseminating information, advocating for change and connecting the communities we serve in the pursuit of better health. Our social media focus in 2022 will be on leveraging LinkedIn; embracing short-form, vertical video content; always being authentic as we connect with our social media audience; providing new ways of disease awareness and support; and being creative in how we connect our healthcare professionals. The bottom line, at the heart of what we will do is to connect the right content with the right platform to engage with the right audience.
Christine Albert. Chief Marketing and Experience Officer at LCMC Health (New Orleans): This year, we're focused on storytelling and harnessing the power of social media for spreading positivity. We know many social networks are prioritizing inspirational and uplifting content to feed their algorithms based on direct user feedback. This not only aligns with our brand, it also supports our strategic goals to grow our social media presence and to increase engagements and actions from our social media followers.
We're also exploring Facebook Groups as a way to connect with both patients and employees. Social media is a social space, and by finding these pockets of commonality through Facebook Groups, we hope to engage more authentically with our internal and external audiences. We also know that content from Facebook Groups will often appear higher in users' news feeds, and we hope that leads to stronger connections with our community and our workforce.
Vineeta Hiranandani. Vice President of Marketing and Communications at El Camino Health (Mountain View, Calif.): We've always used our social media channels to share important updates with our community, offer health and wellness tips and highlight exciting health innovations from the El Camino Health team. This year, we're focusing more on two-way communication. This means spending more time listening to community feedback and ensuring that it reaches the right stakeholders in our organization, so that these voices are heard. Social media for healthcare organizations is becoming an important way to understand how segments of your market engage with and experience healthcare in their lives. By leveraging social listening tools as part of our operations, we are finding new ways to increase community engagement and learn more about the needs of our patients and community.
Melody Bradley. Digital Media Supervisor at Southeast Georgia Health System (Brunswick): We're leveraging our social media this year to share positive team member and patient stories with the community. With the pandemic being top of mind, it's easy to push updates at the community, telling them facts and figures instead of showing them that we're a part of the solution. Through on-site photos, patient testimonials and engaging videos, we're excited to showcase the smiles and perseverance behind our team members' masks. Whether patients are fighting COVID-19, cancer or any other illness or recovering from an injury, we're in their corner.
Amy Stevens. Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Tidelands Health (Murrells Inlet, S.C.): In the more than two years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Tidelands Health has seen a dramatic increase in engagement across all our social media platforms. Now, as we look to the remainder of 2022, we have an incredible opportunity to build on that engagement. Consumers who came to us in search of reliable, accurate COVID-19 information will stick with us if we continue to provide content that brings value to them and helps improve their health and wellness.
At Tidelands Health, we're using a mix of formats — videos, podcasts, feature stories, infographics and more — and a host of social media platforms to deliver compelling, engaging content to a wide range of consumers. Importantly, we encourage consumers to not only engage with us but also with each other via our social media channels. When we see consumers posting and chatting with each other via a Tidelands Health channel, we know we've created "sticky" content that resonates and will keep our audience coming back.
Joel Philippsen. Director of Marketing and WellConnect at Columbus (Ind.) Regional Health: Featuring video of our healthcare providers and workforce members continues to be one of our strongest opportunities on social media. COVID has elevated the need to show and hear what our team members are facing both personally and professionally. Video allows us to share their words and feelings in a way that conveys their expertise but also presents authenticity that has resonated with our community on social media.
Another way video will continue to be an area of focus this year on social media is the use of Facebook Live. We've used this tool as a way to continue our outreach initiatives and have a moderated conversation where our providers and team members can share key information about service line activity, new procedures or create awareness about different health-related topics with opportunities for real-time Q&A with the public.
Kassie Roussel. Director of Marketing and Foundation at St. James Parish Hospital (Lutcher, La.): We utilize social media to engage with our community. Social media isn't all about advertising. It's about interacting, and we leverage this friendly approach when recruiting. We've run ads for nurses with a simple "Let's Chat" headline. Nurses could choose to schedule a quick tour or message us questions during the moment their curiosity was sparked. By the time the online conversation turned into a meeting, a relationship was already formed. We've hired some of these nurses and plan to continue to use social media as a recruiting tool.
We can no longer effectively manage emergencies without social media. Social media kept us connected to our community throughout the pandemic and was one of our only sources of outside communication when our phone lines failed after Hurricane Ida; we used it to reach our staff and community.
We leverage social media to capture on-demand feedback from patients by running ads that link to a simple feedback form on our website. Ads encourage patients to take a minute to rate their service after every visit. Feedback is sent to department leaders the moment it is submitted (often as a patient is leaving an appointment). While not a high-tech solution, it is simple, affordable and timely — perhaps even more valuable.
Laura Boyd DeSmeth. Assistant Vice President of Digital Communications at Medical City Healthcare (Dallas): LinkedIn is Medical City Healthcare's fastest growing social network, with 30 percent growth in followers and 100 percent growth in engagement year over year. As the world's largest online professional network, it is an ideal platform for us to share thought leadership, highlight the outstanding work of our colleagues and reach other professionals interested in joining Medical City Healthcare to unlock possibilities in their own careers. Building on this strong foundation, our strategy will focus on growth and advocacy as we mobilize leaders, internal influencers and colleagues to engage with and share our posts on their own networks and create original content. We look forward to expanding this important platform to complement our strong social media presence.
Victoria George. Director of Marketing and Community Engagement at Boulder City (Nev.) Hospital: As a critical access hospital in a rural community on the outskirts of the greater Las Vegas Valley with a population of approximately 16,000, we use a variety of digital and traditional advertising channels to reach our in-market constituents as well as target fringe ZIPs where residents are actually in closer proximity to our hospital than larger city hospitals. We rely heavily on our social media channels to increase awareness and consideration and in 2022, we will continue to promote daily posts targeting health topics, brand and career messaging and our foundation events.
Additionally, we plan to incorporate and publish podcasts, video snippets and blog posts on our social media channels to help enrich the well-being of our community members. We'll also look at retargeting and mobile geofencing, improving our online reputation, ensuring consistent messaging and impactful creative across all platforms, and continually improving our user experience across all channels.
Laura Jasso. Administrator for Marketing and Community Relations at Hurley Medical Center (Flint, Mich.): Historically, we've used social media as a means to create brand awareness and to promote our services. Through the pandemic, our goal shifted to helping our community navigate this healthcare crisis with education, understanding and guidance.
As we transition into a post-pandemic world, we plan to continue reaching out to patients with a variety of health information posts, infographics, video and live-stream broadcasts. We also want to share our human side, letting the public see the Hurley family from within. In January, we launched "52 Weeks at Hurley" to provide behind-the-scenes access to various areas within the hospital while highlighting our services and incredible team members.
Eric Steinberger. Chief Marketing Officer at Atlantic Health System (Morristown, N.J.): In an effort to engage younger consumers and local growing families, Atlantic Health System is using platforms like Reddit and Nextdoor to share relevant health and wellness content and the value of having a relationship with a primary care doctor. We will also continue to use Waze in campaigns that build awareness for new locations, such as urgent care and physician practices.
Lewis Clark Jr. Vice President of Marketing, Media and Public Relations at Deborah Heart and Lung Center (Brown Mills, N.J.): We use social media as an educational and engagement tool and are constantly reevaluating our use of video, articles and links to see what is really working (or not working) with our audience. We have built a fairly robust program for tracking the return on investment on our organic posts similarly to how we would track paid advertising. This, again, helps us tweak our messaging to resonate with our audience and in three years has raised our engagement from 10 percent per post to 30 percent per post. This is paired with steady growth of followers every month. It is always important for us to gain new followers, but it is much more important that once we have them that they continue to engage with us on our page.
This year we have several strategies for our social media. In addition to continuing to build accurate tracking measures separate from the Facebook and Twitter platforms themselves, we are also growing our professional outreach on LinkedIn. The business to business focus is helping raise the public profile of our specialists as well as helping with recruitment. This gives us a great space to share very specific professional accomplishments that wouldn't necessarily appeal to our consumer audience. We are also looking to grow our Instagram footprint, adjusting our messaging to the short visual snippets of the platform, and a different demographic. We're excited for these new opportunities for growth.
Julian Gutierrez Jr. Social Media Manager at UNM Health Sciences (Albuquerque, N.M.): In 2022, UNM Health Sciences is investing more resources into leveraging short-form video content, TikTok and social media as a customer service tool. While Instagram and Facebook are still firm favorites among our audiences, TikTok is moving up in the social media ranks. TikTok will potentially allow us to engage more effectively with Generation Z on a range of health topics, utilizing our healthcare workers as the content experts and furthering our message of being the only academic health center in the state and only level 1 trauma center.
Furthermore, we understand that video content will continue to dominate this year, especially in short form. Simply look at the success of Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels and TikTok to realize that engaging short-form videos are now the preferred choice of consumers. This has prompted UNM Health Sciences to make videos in short-form more significant part of our content strategy in 2022.
Over the last several years, social media has increasingly become a customer service channel for our organization. To help use our social channels more effectively for customer service, our team is beginning to invest more time and resources into templates, FAQs and potentially a chatbot to boost our response time as this customer service channel continues to grow.