Hospital social media marketing is similar to fashion. One day you’re wearing skinny jeans, and the next, you’re only interested in baggy pants. The same goes for using social media to promote your hospital.

You know you need to use social media to connect with and engage your audience. But do you know your approach should be updated as trends and the interests of your prospective patients change? Social media platforms, the healthcare industry, and even laws dictating how hospitals can use social media are constantly in flux. Your job is to create an agile social media strategy to respond quickly to these nuances.

And if you aren’t convinced hospital social media marketing makes a difference, consider this. Fifty-seven percent of patients evaluate a hospital’s social media presence when searching for a healthcare provider.¹ Patients expect hospitals to use social media, but what they want to hear from you changes frequently.

Hospital Social Media Marketing Trends for 2024

Understanding changes in user preferences is important, but responding to those fluctuations is even more pressing. Today we’re taking a look at three ways to build your social media strategy—and team!—to stay on top of trends and improve social campaign ROI in 2024.

1. Hire More Managers

Most hospitals have a social media manager on their marketing team. They oversee all your social channels, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And your social media manager works hard to post content, respond to followers, and curate an excellent visitor experience.

But many social media managers find themselves spread too thin when asked to oversee so many marketing channels by themselves. So this year, more and more healthcare organizations will assign individual managers to handle a single social media platform.

So, if your hospital has a Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you should ideally have four social media managers—one for each platform.

There are advantages to structuring your hospital social media marketing team this way. Obviously, single-account managers have more time to devote to their campaigns. There’s quite a bit more that goes into a successful healthcare social media campaign than appears on the surface. Successful social strategists spend as much time as possible engaged in “social listening.” This is a marketing tactic involving researching everything from trending topics and hashtags relevant to your hospital to understanding the behaviors of your followers and target audience.

Single-account managers have more time to become experts on their preferred social media platform, as well as conduct more in-depth social listening and research. In the end, you benefit from an even better experience for your patients.

2. Emphasis On Influencers

Influencer marketing is nothing new. But this strategy will become more prevalent in hospital social media marketing in 2024.

There is already a sizable pool of influencers in the healthcare industry who are physicians or medical experts. An endorsement from them on a public platform like Facebook or Instagram is a massive boost for your hospital’s publicity. But medical influencers aren’t the only way to grow your reputation among the social media savvy

Consider Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. They’re the official healthcare partner for the city’s professional women’s soccer team, Angel City Football Club. And their relationship has created valuable influencer marketing opportunities. In one of the team’s Instagram posts, player Christen Press talked about the importance of mental health and tagged Cedars-Sinai.² 

In this case, the player and team are both influencers connecting their brands to Cedars-Sinai. As fans of the club see their connection, the hospital reaches a whole new audience without any extra effort. 

Though you might not be partnering with professional sports teams right away, you can still concentrate on influencer marketing to improve your reach to prospective patients. 

3. Create Quality Hospital Social Media Marketing Content 

As with influencer marketing, excellent content has always been part of a successful social media strategy. But with Google’s algorithm changes and more competition for clicks, quality has never been more pivotal.

Today, prospective patients looking for health care have more control over what they do and don’t see online. In fact, experts believe web users are more likely to start following groups over individual influencers. When you produce helpful content to answer the questions your patients are asking, they naturally want to follow you for more information.

But even with a highly engaged audience, you need to keep creating impactful, quality content so they stick around. Focus your posts on relevant healthcare topics and tailor the message to the audience you want to attract.

Dreamscape Marketing can help with your hospital social media marketing campaigns. Schedule a strategy session with us by calling 888.307.7304.

 

 

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