Extraordinary Online Brands Start with Great Offline Stories

The Secret to Standing out in Social Media is a blog entry that raises an interesting point about success in the social media channel. Specifically, the article states that a successful blog presence is not about what you do on-line, but what you do off-line. For your health system or service line to have an extraordinary presence in the social media realm, you need to have one in the real world!

It is an obvious, but often overlooked truism that health care marketers would do well to heed. Bad or bland programs that simply mimic the market will do no better in a social media forum than they will in traditional marketing channels. With that in mind, we suggest that health care marketers respond to internal pressure to create blogs, Twitter identities, Facebook pages, and Youtube channels as follows:

1. Have a great story;
2. Have an interesting point of view from which to tell the story;
3. Learn to tell it in the audience's language to demonstrate that you are listening.

In essence, the focus of social media is your audience's needs - not your strengths. This is how you build credibility in a social media channel.

For example, if you want to offer a blog about a cardiac program, the focus should not be on how great your doctors and facilities are (save that for traditional media) but about how much better people's health can be if they manage their heart health and conditions. The goal is to create online mechanisms to get the audience to make the "ask" about your offline capabilities.

It is a subtle change in point of view, but a vital one to building a strong health care brand on the internet. Just as in real life people are drawn to people who listen to them; so, too, your blog should emphasize that you are paying attention, not simply talking at the digital crowd.