Social Media and Healthcare – Interesting Video

My friends at Awareness Networks posted a video a while back that will be of interest to the healthcare industry in Australia

What’s interesting to note is that we’re seeing increasing instances where healthcare institutions are employing social media managers so as to manage community engagement via social channels. Here in Australia this will be seen as a massive leap forward, in fact I’m yet to see any local hospital or health care group start to engage via social media. What they should be taking from this video is evidence that a safe, personal, and sustainable approach to engagement via social media is possible.

Actually getting started in using social channels doesn’t need to be complex for a hospital. It could be a simple 3-step plan like this:

1. Establish your presence in 2-3 channels (based on the demographics of your community)
2. Have a look at what others are doing and learn from them
3. Start by communicating simple information about your hospital – humanise things

I hope in 2011 we’ll start to see evidence of this market starting to experiment with social media.