Importance of Social Media Training in Healthcare Industry

Social Media today has an undeniable power of spreading information, growing the business and developing community. It is also a vital communication tool in various industries including healthcare. Both individuals and businesses in healthcare industry use social media to stay connected, communicate and sometimes market their products and services. The general public uses social media to research symptoms, local doctors, treatment, and compare options. In fact, social media today is a necessity for the healthcare industry. Even though it’s not an entire answer to improving patient engagement, it plays a huge proponent in connecting with target audiences.

Interesting Facts on the Impact of Social Media on Healthcare

• In a survey, 41% of general consumer said social media would affect their choice of doctor, hospital or medical facility.
• Only 31% of healthcare providers use social media to networks.
• 26% of hospitals currently use social media.
• Group of 18 to 24 year old are 2 xs more likely to use social media for health-related discussions than the group of 45 to 54 years. 
• 54% of patients don’t mind with their providers asking advice from online communities for treating their condition better. 
• 31% of healthcare institutions have their social media guidelines in writing. 
• 30% adults are ok sharing information about their health on social media sites with other patients, 47% with doctors, 47% with hospitals, 38% with a health insurance company and 32% with a drug company. 
• 22% of parents look for medically related answers using Facebook and 20% use YouTube. 
• 60% of doctors say social media improves the quality of care delivered to patients. 
• There has been a 119% increase in YouTube traffic year-after-year

Although the impact is greater the healthcare industry has somehow still been slower in adapting the world of social media than other industry. On the other hand, healthcare industry also requires some key considerations and etiquette to perform, unlike other industry. Still, there has been a major disconnection in the anticipation and actions of consumers and responses from the healthcare industry. So to meet consumer’s demand and prevalently reaching out to customers, healthcare professionals should constantly learn how to effectively use social media technologies. The best way to learn social media marketing in the healthcare industry is by attending social media training by experts. 

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5 Reasons Why Social Media Training in Healthcare Industry is Important: 

Meet Experts – Social media training is probably the best way to meet social media marketing celebrities you ever wanted to communicate with. These experts understand healthcare industry can play an important role on social media by educating people about various diseases and treatment. Social media training usually has 3 to 4 experts addressing the audience. Meeting face-to-face enables a better understanding of how your online presence can benefit your business. Apart from the live sessions you also get to talk to them in person during breaks. Connecting with these professionals can be a fun string apart from getting valid and useful solutions for your queries. 

Connect and communicate with Peers – Training in social media marketing in healthcare industry opens up many opportunities for the healthcare system. It allows professionals to build connections, share their discoveries, and extend credibility as thought leaders. You can learn what motivates them and what’s important and noteworthy. Such training is an opportunities to create valuable in-person relationships and understandings each other’s strengths and weakness. Healthcare industry is very different from other industries, while others focus on likes and followers; healthcare is more about creating impact. For health professionals, social media marketing training is not about sharing the promotional message, but the real value comes from engagement.

Enhance Social Media Skills – Social media is changing constantly with new updates coming up all the times. And healthcare by nature is a busy industry that finds it difficult to keep on top with the latest news and skills about these networks. Chances are an expert trainer will be able to advise plus train you on the most updated changes on each platform. By enhancing social media skills, health care provider can understand patients’ concern by monitoring and tracking, social media forums, blogs and other digital sources. Collecting such insights will further help them create useful and relevant content for the targeted patient segment. 

Hands-on Training – One of the major reasons why healthcare professionals are even interested learning social media is to educate patients. It includes sharing innovative medial cases and responds instantly to patients’ problems. Sharing information regarding outbreaks or health hazards on social media has become an effective way to provide accurate information to patients. By attending social media in healthcare training, professionals get hands-on training on how to live tweet, do Facebook posts or share on LinkedIn forums. In fact, hands-on training includes extremely basic things such using #hashtag, creating Facebook Page, creating a Facebook ad, using LinkedIn profile, social media analyzing, tracking and monitoring etc. Also, you will get an idea on how to maintain professionalism as a health care professional on social media. 

Ongoing Support – Most good social media marketing trainers will not disappear after delivering the session. They will offer you ongoing support and mentoring relationship to ensure you maximize your chances of success. Some of the celebrity trainers also share video lessons, give lifetime access to digital marketing forums to interact and discuss ideas with like-minded people and send weekly e-mail tips as goodies. So, you can be sure of spending the time at the event by listening and engaging with people and not anxiously taking notes.  

It is no secret that people still prefer face-to-face interaction when it comes to consulting healthcare professionals. Yet patients these days are actively participating over social networks for resources to gain guidance on their health decisions. And innovative health care providers are smart at adapting to the dramatic shifts in patient expectations. For any healthcare organization that wants to remain competitive and embraces this digital era of patient interaction should take social media training for healthcare industry very seriously. As such training will teach you to connect to the audience and amplify your messages on social networks in an effective way. The opportunities are endless!

Author Bio

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Sorav Jain has been recognized as one of the 'Top 25 Social Media Professionals of India'. He is an avid blogger and has written several social media blogs not just on his own blog site but has guest blogged as well. He has delivered numerous informative lectures at the Confederation of Indian Industry, NASSCOM. He has hosted over 300+ social media workshops across India, Sri Lanka, and Dubai. His numerous writings, on the social media subject, range from the latest social media marketing strategies to be implemented on Facebook advertisements to Instagram marketing and a lot of other related topics. He also spearheads EchoVME, that was recognized as 'The Best Social Media Agency of 2013' by CMO Asia.