Hospitals must embrace social media and let ROI take care of itself

Worry not about the cost of engagement, but about the cost of non-engagement

• Share of voice: No hospital can allow a competitor to be the only health-care voice in the market. Why should you allow your competitor to dominate a market—even if it’s a virtual one? An important rule of thumb: If your competitors are using social media, you need to be there, too. About 60 percent of adults and 75 percent of youth (ages 15 to 24) go to the Internet to find health information, so it’s important for hospitals to be able to reach people wherever they are on the Internet—whether it’s on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook or the Web.

Not only does this enable your hospital to find new ways to connect to the community, it also helps position your clinicians and administrators as community leaders and health experts.