8 Essential Steps Before You Launch Your Hospital’s Social Media Strategy

flickr: Stewart

Getting Things Done guru David Allen is a big fan of breaking tasks down into manageable bites.

If you’re thinking seriously about incorporating social media into your hospital’s overall marketing strategy, this advice definitely applies to you. When I first began learning about social media, I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose. So much information was coming at me that I had a tough time knowing what and when to swallow.

Social media is a totally different beast from traditional marketing. It requires a paradigm shift and a whole new arsenal. The good news? I can promise you that it gets easier. And after it gets easier, it gets downright fun! Think of spending part of every day having conversations with patients and your community.

So before you take the leap into the unknown, take a step back. Divide the elephant into a bunch of bite-sized pieces, and tackle one simple step at a time. Create a timeline by setting a launch date six months, a year or two years out and developing a due-date for each of these eight steps. That way, when you’re ready to launch you’ll have a well-thought-out, sound strategy.

Here are the eight steps to take as you prepare to implement your social media strategy. We’ll cover each of them in blog posts over the next few weeks. As a foundation, we’ll assume that administration has given you the thumbs up to pursue a social media strategy. If not, you can read here and here some ideas of how to get to that first step.

• Set an internal social media policy.
• Listen to the chatter.
• Bring your hospital leadership and evangelists to the table.
• Understand the steps to a HIPAA-compliant social media strategy.
• Assess your resources.
• Establish your goals.
• Select your social media channels.
• Define success.

Stay tuned.

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We’ve completed this series and compiled it in an e-book. Visit our What We Think page to download “8 Steps to Launch a Successful Social Media Strategy” and other informative e-books.