Social Media In Healthcare: 5 Best Practices

Social media has become mainstream in healthcare. The most successful healthcare institutions use social media as a means to an end for existing goals -- not as a collection of tools. Here are 5 best practices:
 
1. Humanize the Institution

The Mayo Clinic offers Expert Blogs across a variety of frequently-searched topics such as "Living with cancer", "Depression", and "Nutrition-wise". Each blog is managed by one or more Mayo Clinic expert. The Nutrition-wise blog is written by Mayo Clinic nutritionists, Jennifer Nelson and Katherine Zeratsky. A recent post offering advice to parents on using the Halloween candy "landslide" as a teaching opportunity prompted more than a dozen readers to chime in with tips of their own. While Mayo Clinic's health library is arguably the best on the web, these blogs are an effective way of putting a human face on the institution...