“Our hospital’s Facebook page’s likes and engagement have been flat for three months,” the hospital’s director of marketing said. “Can you create some contests and ads to spice it up?”
When the question was posed during a client call, I felt an internal yecch.
Not because Facebook advertising isn’t important – it is essential for building audience. Not because fun, creative contests don’t engage fans – they are a wonderful tool to do so. But because quick tactics to juice likes are not an editorial strategy.
And without an editorial strategy, you won’t solve a hospital’s marketing problem, either.
Facebook is a brand magazine
While many hospitals view Facebook as a channel through which to push “aren’t we great” content, we view it differently.
Facebook, in our view, is a brand magazine. Magazines know who their readers are and act as their best friend or wise older sibling. Magazines offer editorial content that informs, entertains and inspires. Magazines have a personality and voice. For most hospitals, which exist to serve a local area, magazines are unmistakably grounded in place – through color, subject matter and photos.
This hospital’s Facebook page felt like a free supermarket wellness magazine. It had generic recipes and advice; public health messages (such as a reminder of the Great American Smokeout); and employee recognitions.
The external audience had stopped engaging because the page felt self-focused and generic. It was blah.
How to turn this ship around
Step one is to recognize the problem and ask: Who is our audience? What do they care about? What content can we offer that distinctly reflects our expertise and our audience’s information needs?
This hospital is located in a suburban area with a lot of new families. Because women make family healthcare decisions, mothers are one audience.
Next, the hospital could experiment with various types of content. The AHA Media Group offers great tips on hospital Facebook marketing, and yet we feel they must be further tweaked, given this hospital’s needs. We believe the hospital would be very successful if it:
- Shared prevention and wellness content specifically for Moms, reflecting Colorado’s weather and school schedules, such as:
- A guest blog from the director of maternity services
- A podcast from a school nurse
- First person stories from Mom-patients who had conditions treated at the hospital
- Videos or narrative photo series taken during classes for Moms.
- Fostered community pride
- Taking photos of staff in Bronco’s hats for game day
- Celebrating game wins with photos of confetti at the facility
- Showing participation in community events such as Colorado Gives Day
- Fostering wonder about our beautiful state through photos of sunrises, sunsets, first snowfalls, signs of Spring.
- Used photos to convey joy, gratitude and hope
- Deliveries of flowers and babies
- First time walking after a new hip
- Opening a new wing or unveiling a new ambulance
- Offering thank you’s to the community, to employees, to neighbors
- Played with headlines
- Keep it short, ask questions, aim for an element of surprise
- Tracked what works
Turn to magazines for inspiration
Maybe it’s because we at Brand Communications have backgrounds in journalism, but we believe a quick trip to a magazine stand can offer lots of Facebook inspiration. Magazine editors put days into identifying and editing content so it absolutely hits their audience. You can ask yourself:
- Are we more like Scientific American, Family Circle or Parenting?
- If our internal experts (nurses and doctors) were our authors, what 5 questions do they consistently answer from patients, and how can we make those into blog/Facebook posts?
- How do these editorial experts use photos and infographics to tell stories?
Buy a few magazines and come back to your office and brainstorm, pulling ideas into a 30-day calendar.
Create success with your hospital Facebook page
We hope you find these tips helpful. For us at Brand Communications, mastering Facebook is as much about having an editorial point of view as about simply trying lots of different, creative ways to get your message out.
The more you develop content that your readers like, they more they will engage with your page, and then will be more open to attending your events, visiting your clinics and choosing your hospital. What’s more, the more they engage with your content, the more you will gain data and metrics about what your audiences like, which will inform pure play marketing in the future.
As we end this post, we leave you with a few quick tips to remember:
- Be local – avoid generic posts and generic stock photos
- Connect to your audience
- Be emotional – hopeful, proud, joyful
- Take lots of photos and videos
- Post often
- Measure
- Have fun!
Want to brainstorm your Facebook editorial content? Brand Communications can help. Schedule a free one-hour creative session now.