Marie Ennis-O’Connor is a social media consultant for healthcare and pharma. She visited the Get Social Health podcast to talk about her upcoming presentation for the Annual Meeting of the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network. Marie visited the Get Social Health podcast 3 years about as a “must follow” social media expert and that is still very true. Listen to the podcast here or drop in at the time stamps below.

Janet:                                00:00                   One of my go-to healthcare social media consultants is Marie Ennis O’Connor. She’s a wonderful person who’s been on the podcast before and is very savvy about how to craft, must-read headlines and compelling content for social media and you know that’s a challenge we face every day. Find out how she does it on Get Social Health,

Announcer:                      00:22                   welcome to Get Social Health, a conversation about social media and how it’s being used to help hospitals, social practices, healthcare practitioners and patients connect and engage via social media. Get Social Health, brings you conversations with professionals, actively working in the field and provides real life examples of healthcare, social media in action. Here is your host, Janet Kennedy. Welcome to the Get Social Health podcast.

Janet:                                00:50                   Yay. I’m excited to have a friend of mine back on the podcast, Marie Ennis-O’Connor was with me a couple of years ago and a lot has happened in social media marketing and the online healthcare world since then, so it’s going to be exciting to catch up with her, but even more exciting is that I’m finally going to get to meet her in person because we are both going to be at the annual meeting of the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network. It’s going to be taking place at the Jacksonville campus of Mayo Clinic in Florida on the 14th and 15th, and if you are relatively new to healthcare social media, you may want to think about joining the residency that takes place on the 13th the day before, so it’s a great three day conference. You’re going to meet some amazing people, not the least of whom is Marie O’Connor. Welcome to the podcast, Marie.

Marie:                               01:41                   Thank you, Janet. I think I’ll get you to do that introduction for me when I’m in Jacksonville, so that was very nice. Thank you.

Janet:                                01:47                   I might get to because I was asked to be a moderator in one of the rooms, so if I’m near you, I might get to do your interview. However, to folks who may not be familiar with you or haven’t had a chance to listen to your previous episode, let’s catch up and let me tell a little bit about. Marie is a digital communications strategist and she is an internationally recognized keynote speaker. She’s in Ireland, so it’s not as far a jaunt from here, but she’s going on her fall conference circuit, so by the time you get to the Mayo Clinic event in November, you’re going to be well-packed and well traveled.

Marie:                               02:27                   I imagine. You know, I have a suitcase that I keep packed all the time. When you travel like that, you do have to start getting very strategic about what you bring and yeah, so I’ve got it down to a fine art now. I did have a consultant that used to work with me when I was in the shopping center industry and she always packed 100 percent black everything, so she never had to worry about anything matching. It was just all black, I think a little depressing, but that certainly does simplify your travel. Yeah, no, that’s good. And I will let’s not get too much into, into fashion, but I just wear dresses because I just find they roll up nicely and they just always look fine. So that’s just my advice.

Janet:                                03:17                   Marie, what have you been up to since we last spoke?

Marie:                               03:21                   I am more than enough with social media than I ever been even the last time we spoke and I love to be able to say that. It’s just, we’re learning all the time where we’re doing new things, we’re trying new things, working with new clients. So I’m just more in love with social media than ever. I’m doing a lot of travel, which is wonderful. I get to meet some new people and I’m still loving this. Introducing people to the real power of social media. What’s interesting, Janet, I think even. I’m trying to remember back to what we talked about before. I’m still quite amazed that even these several years later we’re still having to almost go back to basic principles and explain what is social media, what is digital marketing and there’s still a lot of misconceptions around that. So I like to put people straight and I like to.

Marie:                               04:10                   I guess my background is in public relations, so I always go back to a real grounding in real communications and you introduced me as a digital marketing communications. I can’t even remember what I said I was and it’s because I still think sometimes social media has got this reputation of well we just put up a few tweets or we’ll just put up a Facebook page and they’re so, so much more to us. So I guess probably one of the challenges that I still face is really getting that across to people is that there is so much more about doing social media or using social media, it’s about how to do it strategically. So that’s been my life’s work and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years or however long it is since I spoke to you and I’m still finding it fascinating.

Marie:                               04:53                   Well I think what’s interesting about your perspective as well is that you’re in Ireland, so you’re kind of halfway between the US and Europe and you have clients across all those continents, correct?

Speaker 3:                        05:06                   That’s correct. And the wonderful thing is people don’t actually know I’m in Ireland. I always have to start off when people invite me or asked me to go on a call, I always have to start off with, well, you know, I am in Ireland. They go, no, I didn’t know that. I thought you were in the US or I thought you were in Australia or I thought you were wherever. But I think that’s the amazing thing is that you can be anywhere in the world and you can give that one world-class service.

Janet:                                05:27                   Oh absolutely. And it also means that you have to really learn how social media is being used in a lot of different cultural and more importantly governmental situation. So where in the US, you know, we’re just starting to feel the GDPR type of situation. You were deep in it this year over in Europe.

Janet:                                05:49                   Yeah. It almost became a Y2K thing. People got very worried about it. But it’s basic good governance. If you sign up to a newsletter, if you take somebody email, you follow these steps that people can opt out very easy. I mean it’s good practice. So I’m delighted to see GDPR come in, but you know, yeah, I think probably there’s a little bit more email spamming coming from the US, but we’re all going to start leveling off with that. I think that GDPR is something that’s incredibly important and I think we are going to see that as well coming through across the world. Continental.

Janet:                                06:27                   Absolutely. It’s just the best practice to follow it regardless of whether you’re legally obligated to.

Marie:                               06:35                   Absolutely, absolutely. I would have always practiced it anyway, even before GDPR came in. So it was great to see GDPR coming in. I’m still amazed at the amount of people who didn’t comply with this, even though there’s a lot of fines and very high. Fine. So we’ll see. We’ll have to see what’s going to happen with that.

Janet:                                06:51                   Now, what type of clients are you working with? Are they healthcare systems? Are they pharma companies? Are they health tech companies, health tech companies, and pharmaceutical industry?

Marie:                               07:01                   So a lot of healthcare startups, and the pharmaceutical industry, the pharmaceutical industry. I’m working more or less in social media marketing and more in terms of patient engagement. So I wear two hats, which I really, really enjoy as well. Well, you know, you’re on the board of the patient empowerment foundation and I’m not sure what that is. So tell me a little bit about that. So the patient empowerment foundation is really about empowering patients. It’s about giving patients a voice. Let’s say there’s a conference, we have sessions at the conference where patients can network niche but can really get access to the information that they need, so it’s about showing patients that they have this role to play and helping them to get the most out of a conference or get the most out of them out of the healthcare system. So it depends. It depends on what patients need. If it’s an individual patients or patient groups and that’s the kind of work that we’re doing.

Janet:                                07:59                   Are you finding that conferences are more aware of the need to say underwrite scholarships for patients to be able to attend their conferences?

Marie:                               08:08                   You know, yes, but I find it very interesting that there’s still so many conferences that aren’t, but what I find fascinating is that they’re almost being shamed into providing those scholarships. There’s the patients included accreditation which conferences can get if they provide that scholarship if they make it easy for patients to attend on. We’re, we’re definitely moving towards that. So it’s quite interesting sometimes to see, and this is, this is the part of social media that I don’t think conferences often get. The organizers now put a Hashtag up there, they’ll say come to our conference and if they haven’t made it easy for patients to come and it’s a natural place for patients to come, they will quickly be called out on social media, particularly on Twitter about it. So it’s quite interesting. And they are in, they are shocked to be called out on this.

Janet:                                08:57                   Well a little public shaming. Not that I’m a fan of it, I clearly don’t like shaming by parents of their children. That’s just so wrong. And that’s, that brings up the ugly side of social media, but definitely a respective call out to say, wouldn’t it be great if patients could be included in this conference and then see what kind of response you get.

Marie:                               09:21                   Yes, absolutely. And, and you’ve touched on that there. There is an ugly side to social media and I think that’s something that we do need to address and talk about and how do we deal with that? And it’s something that’s quite interesting and it’s very off-putting for a lot of organizations. So I agree with you. There’s a way to do that. There’s a way to open that dialogue rather than jumping in there and saying, I don’t see any patients. Where are the patients? And it becomes this, this confrontation.

Janet:                                09:46                   Absolutely. Well, the interesting thing is here we are busily talking all about social media, but it’s your writing side that you’re going to be featured as a speaker at the Mayo Clinic annual meeting of the social media network. So let’s talk about that a little bit.

Marie:                               10:01                   I was going to say that, you know, it’s one of the most exciting things for me. When I was a little girl, I always wanted to grow up to be a writer and it didn’t happen for me. And yet through this social media, through communicating, I’ve rediscovered this love of writing again. And that has been really, really personally fulfilling part of the work that I do. So I’m excited to be sharing with people what I’ve learned about writing, about how you communicate about how you get more people to read what you’ve written because it’s very disheartening when you’ve poured your heart and soul into something and you realize that, well, nobody’s read it apart from your mom or your best friend. So, you know, there’s a little techniques which I’m looking forward to sharing the annual conference. Well, excellent.

Janet:                                10:45                   Well, I’m going to tell you right now that you’re going to have to write the title for this podcast. So let’s talk about that because your topic is actually crafting must-read headlines and compelling content for social media. So I’m assuming blogs, but also, uh, we’re talking about other content as well?

Marie:                               11:02                   You know, blocks primarily. I am such a huge fan of getting quality content out there. So be that blogs, be that, even doing that Facebook live, it’s even how you title that. It’s the content that you want to share. And really at the bottom of all of this is what do your audience want to hear? And that’s the content you should be creating. Open out here, I don’t know what to say, and I say, well, what do your audience need to hear from you? What piece of expertise do you have that will be so valuable to share with your audience? So whichever, whether it’s a podcast, whether it’s a video, whether it’s a blog, whether it’s part of the Twitter chat, what is that content? So all of that great content begins with discovering what your audience wants to hear.

Marie:                               11:47                   All right, we’re going to break this down a little bit. So let’s use this specific podcast as an example. I have a Marie Ennis O’Connor, who has a known online social presence. We’re talking about the Mayo Clinic’s annual meeting of their Social Media Network, and we’re talking about a great presentation about crafting must-read headlines. Well, gee whiz, which is the most important part? How do I figure out how I should lead with this podcast title?

Speaker 3:                        12:17                   I would do? I love Gdpr. Janet, I’m not sure how much of a Twitter person that you are, but I will often do some preliminary research on Twitter. I will ask people, in fact, the very title when I was debating the title with Dan, him and we were going back and forth and some titles and I said, you know what, why don’t I just put the question out there, why don’t I ask my followers on Twitter, my Linkedin group, my Facebook group, why don’t you just ask them which of these titles would you be most interested in coming to a talk? And they voted and they gave me the title. So I always say ask your audience. And so that’s, that’s how I will always start with something. I always crowdsource ideas. I’m going to rise pretty in-depth article. I’ll ask my community what are their best tips and I’ll always share them as well. so I’m almost doing the. I’m almost amplifying a know how I’m going to promote what I’ve written if I start with asking the audience because they will also want to promote that and amplify what I’ve read.

Janet:                                13:16                   Oh, fascinating. Now, how much does a keyword research play into your decisions on titles?

Marie:                               13:23                   It should play more. It should play more of a role than it is because I teach how important it is and it absolutely is important, but sometimes people get too hung up on that and it can almost stymie them, so there’ll be obsessed with putting the right keywords in there, so I always say do that keyword research, but don’t get too hung up on this and I find that with the keyword research, I think one of the really interesting things that I’ve discovered in the last year or so is if you do a google search, it’s what people also searched for appears at the end in sentence form in the more natural way. So instead of you would ask maybe how do I write such and such a title? How do I write awesome titles, or how do I write titles that will attract more readers and so I will build around those rather than just a specific keyword.

Janet:                                14:12                   Oh, okay. That’s a great tip. Well, when we talk about what you’re going to be talking about at the annual meeting, what kinds of things are you going to be focusing on?

Marie:                               14:23                   I’m very much going to take it back to that basics, what I was saying, which is what are you going to write about? How are you going to find out what your audience wants to read about? So you go and ask your audience and then you do a lot of listening. Maybe you go into Twitter chats and you see what are the topics, what are the questions people are asking in those Twitter chats? If you go into them, what are they asking in Facebook groups? What kind of questions are they asking on blogs? So you can read your favorite industry blogs, shoot down to the questions and see what have they not answered in that? What other questions are people asking? And then you go and create that content? So I’m very much a fan of that, about not just writing something without going and doing your research first, and I always start with that.

Janet:                                15:07                   Well, you know, I’m going to take the devil’s advocate viewpoint here as I envision busy hospital because the majority of the folks who are going to be at this program are members of a hospital marketing or communications team. When I envisioned this sometimes very thin team they’re, I dunno, what I’m sensing is they are more focused on here are the messages I need to push out as opposed to what do people want to read. So they’re coming down with, you know, the people above them saying, we need to talk about this new doctor. We need to talk about this cardiology procedure. We need to talk about our brand new nursing wing, blah blah blah blah, blah. Do you really feel that hospitals are actually taking the time to do this kind of research and to ask their audience what they want to read or are they just trying to take their agenda and make it as friendly as possible?

Marie:                               16:01                   You know, I think it’s even more important that they do take the time to do that research. And where I’m going to come back to what I say, time and time and time again when I work with clients, if you’re going to do it, then you need to do it well and you need to do it strategically. So why should somebody care about your new hospital wing? If I. I’ll go back and play devil’s advocate back to you. You need to say why should they care about it? Just because you have news doesn’t necessarily mean that the world wants to hear that news or is interested and how much use do we hear how many hospitals are telling us about their new research or their new hospital wing or their new staff member. We’re bombarded with that information so we need to take deeper or that information is only going to interest a very select few. And I guess as well, that’s also the dilemma that I find when I’m trying to explain to people what social media is about.

Marie:                               16:55                   It’s not about that newsletter that you used to send that with, here is our latest news. It has to go deeper than that. It has to go wider than that. So I’m going to be quite strong about that when I speak about us.

Janet:                                17:08                   Now, how about from the standpoint of developing content calendars? Are you going to walk through some of the basics of a of a content calendar?

Marie:                               17:16                   Yeah, sure I am. I would do that a lot with clients as well. We need to map out in advance because we can start off with social media and everybody’s very enthusiastic and then I’m sure as you know Jonathan start petering out and petering out, but if we have that content calendar and I like to go depends on the client, but monthly or quarterly and we’ve mapped it out, then we know there’s always something there that we can draw on. I’m also a big fan of having, when it comes to Twitter, having a tweet bank, having boilerplate tweets that you can draw on. Having it all there documented is hugely powerful and it really focuses you as well. So if you’re looking what’s coming up in the next month or the next quarter, what are the disease awareness days? Maybe Is it National Doctor Day, is it International Nursing Week and what can we do around that so that that’s essential. It’s absolutely essential to have that mapped out in advance and have that calendar sewn up.

Janet:                                18:14                   Well, now he’s just going to ask you that about, is this heart healthy month? Is that lame? Is that something that, well, everybody’s doing it. That doesn’t make my content unique or original. How do you work with clients to take it to that next level or to look at the same old same old topics and given new spin to it.

Marie:                               18:34                   You know, I agree and I’m going to go back and say it again. I go back and I will look and see what’s everybody doing and what’s missing from that. What if people knock covered? What kind of questions are on Reddit or Quora or on Twitter chats? What are patients asking, what are they not already hearing, and that’s the content we need to be creating. And then I’m also a big fan. People still love graphics and infographics are still hugely popular. They’ve got a high high sharing race, so I will do a lot of work around visual content when it comes to that and creating those graphics and those infographics about telling the stories about bringing what’s happening within a hospital or within a healthcare facility. Really bringing that out into the public so that people can really see who are the people that are working in this area. I agree with you that we’re almost over-saturated with these awareness days, but we also have to get in there and show that we’re part of that as well.

Janet:                                19:34                   One of the things I’m really interested in is this concept of storytelling, and again, I go back to that very stretched thin, lightly staffed content department to tell a story is a lot harder than one would think both from the skills that are necessary to be able to effectively tell a story, but also to find a story in a busy, busy hospital where it’s probably hard to get a hold of people. So how do you go about coaching? Finding those good stories and what to do with them.

Marie:                               20:08                   I think if you go out and looking for the stories, that is quite difficult, but if you start early enough, if you start gathering those stories, if you start embedding that idea that we are a storytelling organization and those stories start, you start looking for the stories then in a more natural way and then you collect those stories and an, a story doesn’t have to be an interview, it doesn’t have to be written piece. I mean really a picture does tell a story. So there are incredible moments where you might be able to take a picture. Obviously, we will also need to talk about the ethics of that and, and having permission to use pictures. But sometimes that photograph, sometimes, that moment is there. So it’s about getting into that mindset of finding those moments, those storytelling moments. but it’s almost a cultural change as well.

Marie:                               20:58                   So it’s, it’s very much about getting people thinking like that, looking for those stories, sharing those stories among themselves and thinking in terms of story. But every day is a story. My Gosh, I think when we’re working in a healthcare organization, I’ve also worked for some B, two b companies and that’s a lot harder, but when you work in healthcare, we are surrounded by stories 24 hours a day.

Janet:                                21:23                   How often do you encourage healthcare systems to look outside their own walls for stories?

Marie:                               21:30                   That’s a great question. And you know, item of tour that I ever have, so if you stumped me with that one, that is such a great question. Yeah, I haven’t got an answer to that one. I haven’t done it yet. So get ready. I’m going to ask it when you’re at the annual conference in November, so I’ll be ready for it then.

Speaker 3:                        21:52                   Well, tell me a little bit about, uh, the kind of work you do with clients. Is, uh, is it predominantly strategic? Are you actually doing execution?

Marie:                               22:00                   I am doing execution as well, but I, I love the strategic part and I tend to do the execution part to get people started on, on a good footing, but then I will pull away. I will train somebody up in the organization or I will recommend that they employ somebody who will be the digital marketer, the social media person, and I will interview that person because I’ll have a good idea of the company culture as well at that stage and who will fit back company culture. So yeah, I’m much, much prefer that strategic side of it, but I’m also really, really happy to get in there and just do a little bit of execution as well. It’s easy for me because I love social media.

Marie:                               22:37                   It’s never a chore. But yeah, it’s, it’s very much about getting that culture of social media started within an organization.

Janet:                                22:45                   I always wonder about the social media strategist who’s “do as I say, but not as I do,” who doesn’t have expertise. Actually posting things, scheduling things and looking at. I’d posted this. It didn’t do well. I wonder why,as opposed to being a little bit on the 10,000 foot level. It’s easy to preach and it’s easy to point fingers, but if you’re not in the trenches going, oh my God, I posted something. It’s gone now. I have to do it again and again and again and again. You don’t really understand how stressful it can be as a social media person to be constantly coming up with new content.

Marie:                               23:25                   Oh my gosh, I agree with you so much and I would never ever recommend a strategy or a platform or anything without having tried it myself and then knowing the organization and often. You know, sometimes Janet often I will work with an organization and at the end I’ll say, I don’t think that you’re ready for social media because I’m aware that you just don’t have the time to do this. Even though I’ve showed you all these time-saving tricks. The willingness isn’t there or just the passion isn’t there and that comes through in what they’re doing and it can be quite alarming for them to hear. I don’t think you should be doing social media or I think you should just do this one little bit, but it’s more important to me that they do it well. Then they just do it half-heartedly or that it runs out of steam after two or three months.

Janet:                                24:12                   How about from an advocate standpoint, do you find that you really do need the C-suite or some higher levels on board with the idea of social to make it really fly or if there’s a really passionate marketing group, they can overcome the naysayers internally.

Speaker 3:                        24:29                   You do need that c suite buy-in. I really feel that you do, but now that you mentioned a passionate marketing group, they’re more powerful than the seat suite, so it really doesn’t matter whether it’s one or the other, but the main thing is that they. They’re willing to do it and that they’re committed to it and they can bring others along with them within the organization. So once you have or even just one person that has that little bit of leverage, that little bit of power, then we can get good traction.

Janet:                                24:56                   Now, the last year, really the last two years in the United States, social media has become a very uncomfortable place to be for a lot of folks and we’ve obviously seen a lot of divisions happen because the old adage of never discuss religion or politics has gone through the window and all we seem to be discussing is religion and politics. From a corporate standpoint, are you getting pushback with people saying, well, I was thinking about social, but now that I see all this happening, I think we’ll just pass?

Marie:                               25:30                   Oh my goodness. Yes, absolutely. More so than ever for sure, and I wonder sometimes I like them to go back to social media content marketing rather than the social media. Going back to the writing, going back to communicating and what is the message that you want to communicate and maybe pulling back a little bit from the social media side, which can be perhaps promoting the content, doing a little less of that, but more about just driving people to your website because remember you have control over your website in the same way that you wouldn’t have control if you’re on Facebook or in Twitter, you’re opening yourself up to a lot, so I would actually take it back to the website into creating great content when it comes to that rather than just abandoning any kind of digital communication.

Janet:                                26:19                   Well, I couldn’t agree more, but we’re. We’re both singing from the same song page because we are both members of the external advisory board for the Mayo Clinic, Social Media Network and are big believers in social and also in the community that social can develop.

Marie:                               26:36                   Absolutely, and it’s a wonderful network, Janet. It’s a wonderful place. I’ve been doing this for almost 10 years now and I’m still learning. I still have questions and it’s wonderful to know that you have a place of likeminded people, people who are in the trenches with you, who you can just run things past and you can just say, you know, should I, should I go that angle? What should I do? Should I tell my clients maybe not to be on social media without naming names obviously, but just that general, being able to speak to someone else who really gets it is incredible and it’s a very friendly group. It’s such a helpful group. It’s been incredible to me to be able to turn to that group over the last two years.

Janet:                                27:14                   I couldn’t agree more. So here’s a little sales pitch for the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network. You can find them at socialmedia.MayoClinic.Org, and please visit. You can learn a lot of things there. There’s ongoing education, there’s opportunities to connect with your peers. There appears of all levels and there’s always somebody willing to both answer questions and answer questions with experience in your specific area, in the healthcare vertical. And now it isn’t just hospitals. There are definitely people that are like myself, I guess I qualify as a vendor now, but there are other experts that are in the group as well as physician practices and other related healthcare industries, so don’t think it is just about hospitals. It’s a much broader than that.

Marie:                               28:05                   Because I’m not in it. I would not work with the hospitals that much, but I work with work with startups. I would work with the pharmaceutical industry so we all bring some new expertise to it. And the other thing about the network, Janet is our member joining and thinking, Oh, if I ever have a very simple question, I’d be almost afraid to ask it, but that’s just so not true. People are so willing to share their expertise and to share what’s worked for them. And that’s incredible. We can read industry reports, we can read the Social Media Examiner is of this world and I do, but there’s nothing that beats been able to say, does this actually work? Did it work for you? It doesn’t seem to be working for me. What am I doing wrong? So that’s incredible to be able to do that.

Janet:                                28:43                   And of course it’s a network that is a log in network, so it’s a safe place. It’s a space where you can ask a question about, hey, is this a HIPPA violation or this patient said this, how should I respond? Uh, you gotta have a place where you can do that, that that’s private, insecure and the respect in the group is, is very, very high,

Marie:                               29:04                   Very high and incredibly friendly and welcoming and more so. Now we’ve done a wonderful sales pitch. No more not on commission. We genuinely mean this.

Janet:                                29:13                   Absolutely. Well, I can’t wait to meet you in person, Marie and again, we are both getting together at the annual meeting of the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network coming up November 14th and 15th and then their pre-event called the residency, which is really bringing you up to speed on how social media is being used in healthcare. If you are new to healthcare, say for instance a lot of folks come from the news side into healthcare or maybe you’ve come to marketing and you haven’t been exposed to that much social media, that one-day intensive is really, really helpful. So I recommend that you look at all of those pieces and we’ll have links in the show notes to both the Mayo Clinic event as well as how to find Marie but in the short term you. What’s your Twitter handle?

Marie:                               30:01                   @JBBC, what does that stand for? There’s a whole story behind that. I would never do it now, but I just. The whole story behind it is how I got started in social media. Well, 14 years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I started a blog and I got very involved with the whole patient advocacy side, but it broadened out, but the JBBC stood for my blog which was journeying beyond breast cancer, which got shortened to JBBC. I ended up creating a community around that. So I started with that and you know, a lot of people don’t even ask why are you JBBC anymore? So I’ve just decided to just leave it. I’m just JBBC, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything apart from the fact that it’s, it’s still very special and important to me that this journey started for me with wanting to communicate once you define the community. When I was extremely ill and I felt very isolated at the time. So my love for social media really goes back to those roots and that’s why I keep up, put her hand.

Janet:                                30:57                   Oh well awesome. I cannot wait to meet you and to make our friendship happen in real life as we say.

Marie:                               31:05                   I’m so excited about that. There’s nothing like a digital communication is wonderful. Meeting people online is wonderful, but you know what, there’s nothing like meeting people face to face.

Janet:                                31:14                   Absolutely. Well, we’ll see you there. Maria and I hope other people who are listening will join us and it is an annual event that moves around the country between the Rochester, Minnesota campus, the Jacksonville and the Arizona campus. So jump on board and come meet your fellow colleagues in healthcare, social media. This has been the Get Social Health podcast and I thank you all for listening today

Announcer:                      31:39                   And now. Here’s our social media success tip.

Dan:                                   31:43                   Hi, I’m Dan Hinmon, President of Hive Strategies. More and more hospitals and clinics are considering starting a Facebook support group, and if you are, I have two important tips for you. A successful Facebook support group solves a problem both for the hospital or clinic and for the patient, so start by aligning your group with a key hospital marketing or business objective that will make sure you have the internal support that you need. And secondly, find out if your patients are even interested by interviewing five or 10 potential members of the group. If you find interest and you’ve aligned the community to your business strategies, then you’re on the right foot to start a successful four Facebook support group

Announcer:                      32:31                   You’ve been listening to. They Get Social Health podcast. The show notes are [email protected] to join healthcare, social media journey. Follow at, Get Social Health on Twitter and start a conversation. Thanks for listening to the Get Social Health podcast, a production of the healthcare marketing network, and a proud member of the healthcare podcasters community.

Janet:                                32:54                  I’d like to take a moment to tell you a bit about the healthcare marketing network. We’re a community of freelance healthcare writers. Our Organization can match your company or healthcare practice with clinically accurate, specialized or general healthcare and medical content from blogs to white papers to CME. The healthcare marketing network has the writers you need to reach your business audience or patients to find out more, visit healthcaremarketingnetwork.com, or contact me via social media or email at [email protected]. Thanks for listening to the Get Social Health.

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