Health Care

Facebook by the Numbers

We’ve seen Facebook’s ability to help spark revolutions in distant lands, but how can Facebook help to revolutionize the health care, senior living, home care, and long-term care industries? Let’s do some math. About 50% of Facebook’s 650 million active users sign on to the site in any given day and they rack up about 700 billion minutes a month of posting, poking, liking, sharing, clicking, researching, learning, purchasing, and interacting with friends, family, companies, and organizations.  The average Facebooker is connected to 130 people and 80 community pages, groups and events – and shares about 90 pieces of content (links, videos, photos, etc.) each month. Booomers and seniors are the fastest growing demographic on Facebook and they spend about 60 hours per month online. More than half of adult women routinely participate on social networks at least weekly and healthcare-related activity is something 90-100% of people across every generation engage in on a regular basis.

Now, if you want a great example of how these numbers play out in the real world, Children’s Hospital Boston (a health care social media powerhouse) has over 510,000 fans on their main Facebook page, giving them a potential reach of at least 66.3 million people (510K fans x 130 friends per fan) every day.

Facebook Is No Print Ad

Facebook is a place where people go to hangout, browse around, connect, and communicate. But, unlike old-style websites, radio ads, print ads, and mailers, Facebook is loaded with “hot triggers” or calls-to-action – items visitors can click on and do something with immediately (view a video, check out a photo gallery, play a game, accept a new friend into their network, or “like” a company Page). How many times have you opened up your personal Facebook page to read a message from a friend, and you end up spending the next 20 minutes looking at stuff you never intended on? This happens tens of millions of times each day to hundreds of millions of people. And, it’s almost all trackable. Pretty powerful stuff.

Facebook Empowers Healthcare Companies

So, what can health care, senior living, home care and LTC companies do with a Facebook Page? First, and foremost, they can cultivate community around their brand. Check out how Emeritus Senior Living nurtures a community of over 2,700 Facebook fans on their Page. Emeritus allows and encourages peer-to-peer interactions, one of the eight success criteria for Facebook Page marketing. The result is a flurry of word-of-mouth marketing for Emeritus from customers, prospects, and employees. Marketing that costs the company nothing – except the time to monitor and manage the Page.

Next, companies can provide unlimited support and resources to customers and prospects. Children’s Hospital Boston (CHB) has 16 Facebook Pages in addition to their main page. Each Page is another customer touch point and gives CHB an opportunity to provide targeted support to different groups with unique challenges or similar interests. Their Generation Cures Page empowers children around the world to help cure sick kids through online and community fund raising, digital media, music, and more. Their Celiac Support Group Page helps kids and families learn how to live healthy and happy gluten-free lives through engaging educational content. While not Facebook, websites like PatientsLikeMe, which offers people with specific diseases a place to connect with others like them, or Lotsa Helping Hands, which provides free online communities for caregivers to coordinate the care of a loved one, show that empowering social networks through social technology can have a significant impact on patient/caregiver experience as well as healthcare delivery.

Finally, companies can enhance their recruiting efforts by offering Facebook Pages dedicated to employment, like Catholic Healthcare West does, or a Career Center right on their main Page, like St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center does. Catholic healthcare West has over 5,700 fans on their Careers Page alone.

So, can Facebook, and other social networks and social media sites revolutionize healthcare? I would argue that the revolution has already begun. From the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media to the Assisted Living Federation of America’s online community, to Twitter’s #HCSM, #RNChat, and #MDChat, there are countless examples of how social technology is slowing changing the healthcare landscape.

How about you? Tell us what you think?

Like This Post? Here Are More Like It…

• How Emeritus Senior Living Tames the Social Media Beast [INTERVIEW]
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• How Senior Living, LTC, and Home Care Companies Can Avoid the Online Community Ghost Town

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