Social Media in Healthcare: Benefits and Best Marketing Strategies

When you think about the healthcare industry, public platforms like social media don’t jump to mind first. Privacy is foundational to the industry, but social media profiles can still be used very effectively to market healthcare services. 

After all, who hasn’t turned to the internet with a medical question? 

Here’s an overview of social media marketing in healthcare. Find out why a healthcare business needs a social media strategy along with what type of content to share and where to do so. 

 

Why Healthcare Companies Need Social Media Marketing

Sprout Social’s Social Media Benchmarks for Hospitals & Healthcare: The 2023 Playbook reveals that social media has a significant impact on our healthcare choices.

41% of people said social media affects which hospital, medical practice or doctor they choose.

Whether it’s through education or engagement, social media platforms can be used to create public awareness about health matters and build and manage your reputation to encourage people to seek medical help. 

For example, Mayo Clinic has launched a number of campaigns that use social media to position itself as a place where patients can find hope. 

Their recent video campaign shared on YouTube used technology to remove the word “un” from words like “uncurable”, “untreatable”, “unpredictable” and “unfixable”. It shows that you can focus on innovation and hope at the same time, combining the scientific nature of healthcare with the human side of its target audience, one of the challenges of healthcare marketing.

Source: YouTube

Over the years, they’ve challenged what healthcare digital marketing can and should look like. The result is a huge online community with over 1 million followers on Facebook and YouTube and hundreds of thousands more on Instagram.         

How Healthcare Social Media Marketing Differs from Standard SMM

It’s crucial to understand that you can’t take the same old approach when you want to use social media for healthcare marketing. Here are the main differences to plan around:

• Unique Regulatory Challenges: Unlike standard social media marketing, healthcare marketers must comply with strict regulations set forth by organizations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States. These regulations ensure patient privacy and data protection, meaning that you must be extremely cautious about what you post and how you interact with your audience.
• Need for Accurate Health Information: Inaccuracies in health information can have serious consequences, including legal liabilities and harm to patients. Health marketers also have the added challenge of combating misinformation and myths about health topics.
• Crisis Communication: Healthcare organizations must be prepared to handle crises, whether they are related to public health concerns, medical errors, or other emergencies. Effective crisis communication on social media is essential to maintain trust and credibility.
• Healthcare-Specific Metrics: A healthcare digital marketing agency will be more concerned with patient satisfaction and net promoter score (NPS) than measuring likes. Credibility is favored over popularity when it comes to brand management. 

Key Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Healthcare Providers

Increased Patient Engagement 

Social media platforms can boost patient engagement in a number of ways. By posting healthcare tips and updates about new services or treatments, you can encourage patients to take a more active role in their health management. 

They can also use features like commenting and direct messaging to share experiences or ask questions. The fact that platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow users to send direct messages (DMs) is especially useful in the healthcare industry where questions are often of a personal nature.   

84% of patients use social media to find health information and connect with healthcare providers.

Enhanced Brand Reputation

As social media is inherently visual, healthcare practitioners can break down complex procedures to showcase their expertise. You can also use social media to share updates about advances in treatments. This not only further enhances your expertise, but also communicates that you stay abreast of new developments helping to build trust. 

Social media platforms also often serve as spaces where patients leave reviews. By actively managing and responding to these reviews, you can protect and build your brand reputation.

71% of patients say that positive reviews and a strong social media presence are important when picking a healthcare provider.

Improved Patient Outcomes 

Social media can be an effective channel for health education. Providers can share educational content about, for example: 

• Common health issues
• Warning signs
• Preventative measures
• Weight maintenance tips 

These types of posts can empower patients to make informed decisions about their health or encourage them to adopt healthier lifestyles. 

Essential Social Media Platforms for Healthcare

Like a doctor would typically prescribe more than one medicine at a time, it’s also good to take a multi-channel approach when it comes to using social media for healthcare organizations. You can think of the following five platforms as the main food groups to grow your social media presence:

Facebook

Facebook remains the most popular social network across the world when using the number of monthly active users as the benchmark. Just in terms of potential reach, it makes sense to include Facebook in your strategy. 

Healthcare organizations that use Facebook for marketing and outreach typically see a 45% boost in website traffic and patient inquiries, proving it to be an effective promotional tool.

Popularity aside, its in-depth analytics and advertising options make it a powerful tool for targeted outreach and engagement. 

When using Facebook for healthcare marketing, educational content works best. You can mix it up by sharing blog posts, infographics, and videos. 

For example, Mayo Clinic regularly shares links to educational articles on their blog. This way, they effectively use Facebook to boost their website traffic.

Source: Facebook

 

YouTube

After Facebook, YouTube is the second-most popular platform. 

Most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2024, by number of monthly active users:

Source: Statista

Not only can you reach a huge active audience, but you can also do so using one of the most engaging formats—video. 

What makes video marketing so effective for healthcare social media marketing is that it makes it easy to explain difficult (or scary) medical procedures. You can also use it to introduce your facilities and team, helping to set potential patients further at ease. 

Here’s an example of how you can do that:

Source: YouTube

 

What makes this video such a great example of effective ​​medical social media marketing is that it also doubles up as a way to attract new healthcare professionals. With this video, Children’s Mercy Kansas City achieves three things: 

• It touches upon what you can expect when you need to come for an operation.
• It introduces their nurses. 
• It showcases their hospital as an appealing workplace to other healthcare practitioners. 

Instagram

Instagram’s visual-centric approach makes it ideal for sharing images and infographics. 

Source: Instagram

You can also use it for video marketing, but here your videos will be shorter. As such, it’s better for short staff intros, health tips, or behind-the-scenes peeks.

Because of its visual nature and target audience, it’s a great platform for humanizing your healthcare brand and connecting with a younger audience.

LinkedIn

Where Facebook and Instagram are better for reaching patients, LinkedIn is more geared towards B2B social media marketing. As it’s the go-to platform for professional networking and industry-specific content, it’s ideal for healthcare professionals looking to connect with peers, share their expertise, and stay updated on industry trends. 

Manufacturers of medical equipment can also use it to reach medical staff at hospitals and other institutions. 

On LinkedIn, the focus will be on credibility. Medical content that works well on this platform includes research findings that can help to establish yourself as a thought leader. You can also use it to introduce your team or highlight individual achievements. 

You can even combine these two post types, like Mayo Clinic has done.

Source: LinkedIn

With one post, they introduce key team members as well as shine the light on new therapies. 

X (Formerly Twitter)

X is particularly useful for sharing timely updates, health news, and participating in industry-related conversations through hashtags. You can use it to post short tweets about health tips, new research, and medical news. 

For example, with the recent Crowdstrike outage, Luminis Health could use X to inform customers that their facilities remained open and fully operational. 

Source: X

It’s also one of the best healthcare social media channels for building a community. You can participate in trending healthcare hashtags or specific disease awareness hashtags or use it as a customer service tool. 

Types of Content for Social Media in Healthcare

The following are examples of types of content that work well in the healthcare sector:

Educational Posts 

Educational posts can be used to help potential patients identify issues that demand a visit to the doctor. You can, for example, provide key facts about a condition or symptom and include a section about when to seek help. 

Source: X

Another way that you can use educational posts is to focus on trending topics. 

Source: Facebook

Patient Testimonials

Patient testimonials are a bit trickier to share because of patient confidentiality. It’s best to work with your legal team to obtain permission to share their review or testimonial publicly on social media. 

You can also ask them if you may share their story, showing how you’ve been part of the journey. This way, your social media posts not only instill trust in your service but also create hope for other patients.

Source: Instagram  

Health Tips 

Sharing health tips is hugely popular. Just make sure when going this route that you share only correct health practices. 

Sharing incorrect info will hurt your credibility. Worse, it can hurt your followers, mentally and/or physically. 

It can also land you in trouble with health authorities.

Source: Instagram

Behind-the-Scenes Looks

Videos that give potential patients a glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes at your facility can help to ease their nerves. It can be especially helpful for healthcare professionals that work with pediatric patients. 

Source: TikTok

Not only are these types of videos useful for familiarizing your target audience with your facilities, but it can also be used to introduce them to your team. This not only helps to make them more relaxed (making your job easier), but it also makes it easier to build a relationship and strike an emotional connection with your patients. 

Social Media Marketing Best Practices for Healthcare Organizations

As mentioned earlier, social media in healthcare requires a different approach. Here’s how to use your healthcare social media accounts correctly:

Maintain Professionalism

Posting about healthcare topics leaves less room for creativity. It’s important that you come across as trustworthy. 

As for tone, let the age of your target audience and social media channel guide you. For example, if you’re mainly targeting younger patients, you can afford to take a more casual tone. 

Use Reviews 

Reviews can add that extra layer of credibility. It’s also key for building relationships. 

In fact, Sprout Social’s Social Media Benchmarks for Hospitals & Healthcare: The 2023 Playbook reveals:

72% of patients will only choose a doctor if they have 4-star reviews or higher.

Now is not the time to be modest about your service. When it comes to sharing reviews, just ensure that you have a patient’s consent. 

It doesn’t necessarily need to be limited to patient reviews. If there’s a public body that has recognized your work, repost it on social media.

Source: Instagram

Engage with the Audience 

One of the big benefits of using social media in healthcare marketing is that it opens up a two-way communication channel. Use that to build relationships. 

However, when engaging with your audience, remember that your comments will be visible for the world to see. Practice your bedside manner and maintain confidentiality. 

Also, respond speedily. The same Sprout Social benchmark report also found that the majority (79%) of consumers expect a response within a day. 

Post Consistently 

Regularly sharing content sets you up for long-term engagement. It’s best to use a schedule. Each week, post a set number of times. Even better yet if you can stick to the same days.  

That said, consistency shouldn’t be at the expense of quality. Only post when you can offer valuable advice. 

Monitor Analytics

Aside from giving you insight into your content’s own performance, monitoring social analytics will also allow you to get an idea about which topics your audience currently finds relevant. Are there any trends that you can identify?

Based on what this data uncovers, you can adjust your social media marketing strategy accordingly. 

Ensuring HIPAA Compliance on Social Media

Patient confidentiality remains crucial when using social media in healthcare marketing. You might be posting on social media platforms that are open to the public, but you still have responsibilities when it comes to protecting your patients’ details and data. 

Here are guidelines on how to ensure privacy and confidentiality on social media:

Understanding HIPAA

HIPAA is a federal law that sets out national standards for safeguarding sensitive patient health info from being shared without the knowledge or consent of the patient. 

This law has significant impacts on how you approach healthcare social media marketing. It can make it especially tricky to share content like patient testimonials, reviews and before-and-after photos.  

It can also make it difficult to share breakthroughs in the health sector or recent patient studies. 

Basically, it states that data about a patient’s current, past or future medical conditions and healthcare payments are sensitive protected health information (PHI). It’s also your responsibility to manage the data that gets shared via social media interactions. 

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

To help you navigate your way around HIPAA and avoid common mistakes, you can use the following checklist:

• Create a policy that explains how and which content may be shared on social media
• Craft instructions for how employees may communicate with users by means of social media
• Train your team about how to use social media (and ensure they’re familiar with your protocols)
• Add a disclaimer that patients may not share any protected health information
• Delete any content (including messages or comments) that reveal protected health information
• Appoint a legal team that will review your content before you post it on social media 

Examples of Successful Social Media Marketing in Healthcare

For more examples of how you can integrate social media successfully into your healthcare marketing, you have to look no further than the work we’ve completed. Rated as one of the best healthcare marketing agencies, we’ve helped healthcare clients like Stemwell, Tripment, and Yoga Club. 

Some of the challenges that we’ve helped them to overcome are:

• Increasing brand awareness and visibility
• Generating leads
• Communicating the benefits of their unique treatment
• Growing user engagement

The content that we created for these companies was a mixture of educational posts, patient stories, and interactive content that included Q&A and live sessions. This way, we could educate the audience, while at the same time build their trust which in return encouraged interaction. 

The work we completed for Stemwell and Yoga Club also included an element of social media advertising. For Yoga Club, we ran targeted ad campaigns on Instagram and Facebook, while X, LinkedIn, and YouTube were also thrown into the mix for Stemwell’s campaign. 

It didn’t take long before Yoga Club saw the impact of our social media marketing expertise. Within the first 25 days, we already generated 219 leads. 

We’ve replicated this success for Tripment and generated nearly triple the number of leads per month for Tripment. For more details about how we achieved that, be sure to read Tripment’s Journey to Social Media Mastery. 

For each of this client, analytics were foundational. Whether it was to analyze their target audience or to test the performance of the content, this emphasis on data ensured that our content spoke to their needs. Plus, if it wasn’t entirely on target, we had the social media insights to optimize the content continuously and refine our strategy.