Healthcare Companies Missing Valuable Opportunities to Engage via Social Media Sites

In the past, I’ve been somewhat puzzled by the reluctance of certain industries and occupations to embrace social media as a way to connect with and engage their customers.

But, I’ll admit, I’m even more baffled when companies remain resistant, even after consumers demonstrate they are eager to learn more about them online.

Case in point: People are flocking to social media sites and health forums for healthcare information, and yet providers of healthcare services are maintaining relatively low social media profiles.

According to a recently released PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report, consumers were 24 times more likely to seek or share health information on community sites than on the corporate sites of healthcare organizations, largely because they found that community sites were more accessible.

Kelly Barnes, US Health Industries leader at PwC, says social media has created a new customer service access point where consumers expect an immediate response.

“Health organizations have an opportunity to use social media as a way to better listen, participate in discussions and engage with consumers in ways that extend their interaction beyond a clinical encounter,” Barnes explained. “Savvy adopters are viewing social media as a business strategy, not just a marketing tool.”

Here’s what researchers found after surveying 1,000 US consumers for this study: 

Patients Turn to Social Media for Support

People with health problems often are hungry for compassion and connection, and many are turning to social media for both, according to a recent study marketing and research firm Russell Herder.

The study, Seeking Social Solace, analyzed almost 63,000 online self-disclosures of an illness. The data revealed that:

• People disclosed their illnesses on weekdays 23 percent more frequently than they did on weekends.
• More than half of the self-disclosures took place on blogs (51 percent), while only 10 percent took place on Facebook, and 7 percent occurred on Twitter. (It’s likely, however, that the Facebook postings were understated due to the fact that researchers couldn’t access the pages with stronger privacy settings.)

Interestingly, the choice of media may reflect various reasons for disclosing a serious illness. For example, patients tend to post comments on blogs, Facebook and Twitter in order to communicate with family and friends. In contrast, they use online message boards to receive support from others who are in a similar situation.

The study also found that the type of disease appears to influence whether a person will announce and discuss it online. Specifically:

• Cancer is disclosed more frequently online than other major illnesses.
• People are more likely to disclose a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS online than cancer. (In 2010, there were 27 times more cancer diagnoses (1,529,56044) than there were HIV/AIDS diagnoses (56,30055), but cancer was only disclosed nine times more frequently than HIV/AIDS).
• The number of patients who disclosed a breast cancer diagnosis equaled the number of patients who disclosed diagnoses of prostate cancer, colon cancer, leukemia, bone cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, lung cancer, skin cancer, pancreatic cancer, testicular cancer and brain cancer combined. This may be because women tend to be social-media savvy and there are so many good online resources and destinations for women with breast cancer.

In a previous post, I noted that although people turn to family, friends, and support networks online, they would still prefer more traditional lines of communication when they need a consultation from their doctor.

What are takeaways for health care marketers?

Using Social Media for Health Care Marketing

A recent survey from Deloitte suggests that US consumers are turning to social media for health-related information.

Among the most intriguing findings in the report, entitled 2011 US and Global Survey of Health Care Consumers, is that fewer people are looking online for treatment options (43 percent, compared with 55 percent in 2010 and 57 percent in 2009), even as a growing number seek information about quality (28 percent, vs. 24 percent in 2010) and costs of services (19 percent, up from 12 percent in 2010). These findings suggest that patients are becoming savvier about how they use the internet for health-related research.

Also noteworthy: Use of the internet for health-related purposes varies among generations. For example: