Many top hospitals across the country have generated tens of thousands of new followers in social media in the past year, but not, as you might expect, on Facebook and Twitter.
Instead, their popularity is skyrocketing on a powerful social media channel that is often overlooked—LinkedIn. That's right, LinkedIn. If you still think of LinkedIn only as a good site for job seekers, you're missing out. In the past year, the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, the MD Anderson Cancer Center and others have seen explosive growth in the number of people following them on LinkedIn. Mayo Clinic 's LinkedIn following, for example, has surged more than 70 percent – jumping from 28,400 followers last year to more than 48,600 today.
Brent Bultema, the Mayo Clinic's director of recruitment strategies, said they have tapped into LinkedIn to deepen their connections in the healthcare arena and showcase the hospital's great work. "It's not simply about broadcasting your jobs," he says.
Make no mistake, LinkedIn is still a valuable resource for hospitals looking to hire doctors and nurses, especially in the most competitive medical fields.
But hospital marketers say you shouldn't overlook LinkedIn's value as a social media site that attracts and engages patients, too.
At the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Laura Nathan-Garner calls LinkedIn a critical tool for promoting her hospital to patients around the country who are about to make critical healthcare decisions.
"We're pretty well known in Texas," said Ms. Nathan-Garner, MD Anderson's social media program manager. "We want to elevate our brand awareness beyond Texas to become more well known nationally."
When it comes to using social media to promote your hospital, Facebook and Twitter are usually the channels of choice. Facebook, after all, has more than 1 billion users and Twitter boasts 271 million monthly active users.But savvy hospital marketers have also added LinkedIn to the mix because they say it offers a more demographically defined group of people who might be receptive to healthcare messages. The average LinkedIn user, according to Pingdom and LinkedIn, is 44 years old and has an annual household income of $83,000. They also have twice the buying power of the average U.S. consumer. Those numbers are important to hospitals, especially those who want to attract patients willing to travel outside their own state for specialized care.
"For us, LinkedIn is almost the perfect audience," Ms. Nathan-Garner said.
To be sure, MD Anderson's LinkedIn audience is growing.
The Houston-based cancer treatment center was ranked among the top 50 Most Social Media Friendly Hospitals in 2013 in a survey conducted by MHA Degree.org. The survey measured each hospital's engagement across multiple social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus and LinkedIn. In the year since that survey was completed, MD Anderson dramatically increased the number of people following it on LinkedIn—from roughly 18,400 followers in 2013 to more than 29,300 in September.
And MD Anderson and the Mayo Clinic aren't the only hospitals to see such growth.
Overall, followers for these and six other "top-ranked" hospitals featured in last year's survey grew an average of 70 percent.
The number of followers a hospital has is one important indicator of reach and engagement. Plus, it is key for reasons directly related to the business of healthcare.
LinkedIn says its research has found that followers of company pages are twice as likely to buy that business' products or services. They are just as likely to recommend them to family and friends. This is one strong reason why Cleveland Clinic's main strategy for LinkedIn is tied closely to its business goals.
The goal is to help build "brand awareness and reputation," said Amanda Todorovich, Cleveland Clinic's marketing manager for digital engagement.
The Clinic's early attempts to engage LinkedIn members featured posts geared to executives. The reasoning was that LinkedIn's professional audience would want messages tailored just for them. They included such things as how to do yoga in your office or nutrition trips for business travelers. Online tracking of likes and impressions showed the business related posts fell flat with LinkedIn members.
"It just didn't work," she said.
Interest and engagement grew, she said, after the LinkedIn page started featuring the kind of consumer health tips that Cleveland Clinic also posts on its Facebook and Twitter feeds. These include recipes for healthy eating and health-related videos. They even posted an infographic that discussed what the color of your urine can tell you about your health.
"The stuff that does the best is typically what we share across all of the social media platforms," Ms. Todorovich said. "I think, regardless of what you do for a living, everyone still wants to take care of themselves."
The approach is definitely working. In the past year, Cleveland Clinic's following nearly doubled, going from 36,842 followers to 66,159. Cleveland Clinic's standing on LinkedIn is also enhanced by its CEO and President, Toby Cosgrove, a thought leader who posts blog items on healthcare issues and administration. Dr. Cosgrove is a LinkedIn "Influencer," one of a select group of entrepreneurs and industry leaders whom the platform invited in 2012 to share content directly with LinkedIn members. His most recent post, "How to Make Your Medical Center an Innovation Powerhouse," published September 30 had 213 "likes" within 10 days' time.
Unlike the Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic has opted to use LinkedIn primarily to communicate to those working in healthcare. This is definitely a big audience: More than two million North American doctors and nurses are using LinkedIn.Mr. Bultema, the Mayo Clinic recruitment director, says they write posts designed to attract top candidates for jobs and promote the hospital's culture and environment. For example, a recent post that targeted nurses, titled "What if your career could change your life?" featured a testimonial from staff nurse Melinda Pobanz, who described Mayo Clinic as a "truly magical place."
"It's not simply about broadcasting your jobs," Mr. Bultema said about writing posts that connect with potential recruits. "They want a deeper engagement than just job postings."
Mr. Bultema said his team has also spent time analyzing how different posts engage LinkedIn members—and are constantly revising their strategies. Today, he says, nearly half of the people who respond to LinkedIn posted job openings are qualified candidates.
"When we started back in 2011, the ratio of engagements that resulted in qualified job applicants was less than 30 percent," Mr. Bultema said. "This means we are engaging in the right way."
The Mayo Clinic also encourages its own doctors and researchers to join LinkedIn, said Lee Aase, director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media. The center even offers doctors content they can post on their social media feeds. Mr. Bultema said LinkedIn is a particularly strong channel for publicizing new Mayo Clinic supported discoveries and advancements in the field of medicine.
"People really do make the distinction about keeping it really professional," Mr. Aase said.
"On Facebook, it looks like bragging," he said. "On LinkedIn, it looks like networking."
MD Anderson's strategy relies on posts that share tips for cancer prevention and care and compelling stories of patients who battled cancer and came out on top.
"We share stories of hope," Ms. Nathan-Garner said.
One popular post featured cancer care tips from Beth Williams, a 76-year-old CEO of a Houston based language translation firm called TechTrans International. Williams had been successfully treated for four different types of cancer at MD Anderson over the past 20 years. The LinkedIn post linked to a blog, where Williams described the care she received at the hospital as "amazing."
"Everyone is so warm and nice," Ms. Williams continued. "It's like getting wrapped up in a big blanket."
The post garnered 30,000 impressions and 251 clicks, "which is really good for us," Ms. Nathan-Garner said. Because the story was about a CEO who battled cancer, she said, it really resonated with LinkedIn's professional membership.
"They are professionals, but they are people, too," she said.
To learn more about how doctors are using LinkedIn, you can find the authors’ new report, the Doctor is LinkedIn, at http://mindsetdigital.com/offers/the-doctor-is-linkedin-guide/ Debra Jasper, Ph.D., and Spencer Hunt, are leaders at Mindset Digital, LLC, which provides online training in LinkedIn and other social media channels that doctors and healthcare professionals can take in 10-15 minute sessions anytime from phones or tablets. For more information, contact Spencer Hunt at Hunt@MindsetDigital.com.
Follow Debra @DebraJasper and Spencer @spencerhuntmsd.
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