Healthy Conversations
Imagining & Creating New Value For Health Brands & Consumers

As part of our “Insider Insights” series, I feature the personal perspective of a health brand marketing, digital, social or innovation leader. I’m pleased to have John Marzano, Vice President, External Affairs at Orlando Health, as this month’s participant.

Here’s what John has to say about the future of health brands and social media:

1. The organizations and brands that will thrive in the future are those that…
…. engage with their customers.  This means listening, responding and tailoring products, services or processes to align with consumer wants, needs and desires – how does your brand integrate with your customers experiences?  In addition, brands that can develop genuine relationships with their customers and consistently deliver on their brand promise will be able to attain long-term loyalty.

We’ve started listening and developing relationships with our customers through our Facebook page and have had a great experience. Our customers have insight into our organization and listening to them through social media is already changing the way we do business.

2. Specific to social media, how has it impacted the way your organization conducts business?
Social media has made us rethink the way we communicate with our customers. Traditional marketing practices were about sending messages, controlling messages. The new thought is more about engaging people in messaging and participating in ongoing conversation. That new mentality involves being willing to lose some control, being open to criticism, and doing a lot of internal education to get the right stakeholders at the table. Participating in social media means it’s not business as usual, yet it’s important to remember it is still only one tactic/tool in the overall marketing mix.

3. What are the key challenges your organization is grappling with as it considers participation?
In the healthcare industry we have both a commitment and a legal obligation (in HIPPA) to patient privacy. We’ve been very intentional about the policies and procedures we use to protect our patients personal information in every piece of our business – including social media. We took the time to conduct research, evaluate risk with our legal team and develop a strategy before launching into a social environment. That was the key to a successful launch and working within patient privacy challenges.

4. What are your top lessons learned for implementing a social media strategy?
That taking the time to develop a strategy was worth every minute. That strategy has given our team focus and purpose to the work of implementing social media, as well as the ability to set and achieve goals. A key piece of the strategy development was getting Human Resources and Information Services at the table with the Marketing Team. We each have a vested interest in social media tools and because we came together early we were able to launch into a social media environment in a thoroughly measured manner that had vast support from leadership in all areas of the organization.

Additionally we’ve learned that we have to stay the course. There are so many things that can happen in social media – some not so positive – that can easily become distracting and destructive to our efforts. It’s critical that we accept the things that come our way and respond appropriately – but it’s equally critical that we stay true to the strategy and direction of the effort.