Transcription:
Humanizing Social Media for Meaningful Connections that Matter

Intro: The following SHSMD podcast is a production of DoctorPodcasting.com

Bill Klaproth (Host): On this edition of the SHSMD Podcast, we all do social media, right. Are we doing it the right way? You know, some brands excel and actually create worthwhile connections that add value and others don't. Let's dig into that. So, let's talk with Vanessa Ames and Suzanna Smentowski about their session, Humanizing Social Media for Meaningful Connections That Matter, at this year's SHSMD Connections in-person annual conference held in San Antonio, September 19th through the 21st. This is going to be a great session and make sure you listen to this whole podcast for great info. So, let's get human. I mean, let's get to it right now.

This is the SHSMD podcast, Rapid Insights for healthcare strategy professionals in planning, business development, marketing, communications, and public relations. I'm your host Bill Klaproth. And in this episode, we talk with Vanessa Ames, Chief Creative Officer and Strategy Officer at Decode Advertising. And Suzanna Smentowski, Marketing and Digital Content Writer at Henry Ford Health System. They are presenting a 50 minute concurrent session at this year's SHSMD Connections in person annual conference in San Antonio, September 19th through the 21st. The title of their session is Humanizing Social Media for Meaningful Connections That Matter. This is going to be a great session. And we're looking forward to talking with Vanessa and Suzanna about that. So, Vanessa and Suzanna, welcome to the SHSMD podcast. As you know, we start every episode of this SHSMD podcast with Rapid Insights. One quick tip someone can use to make their marketing communications better today. Vanessa, you're up first, give us your Rapid Insight.

Vanessa Ames (Guest): Super simple. Don't forget to be human, especially over the past year, our ability to create content that connects directly with our audience is crucial for making those long lasting connections.

Host: I love that. Don't forget to be human. Thank you so much, Vanessa. That was great. Suzanna, you're up next? Give us your Rapid Insight.

Suzanna Smentowski (Guest): My insight would be, don't be afraid to try something new, listen to your audience. What questions are they asking? What more can you do? Look at what other industries are doing as well outside of healthcare, what brands are doing, things that you like. And can you use that with your company, with your brand?

Host: So good. Listen to your audience and look outside of health care to see what other people are doing. Really great advice. Suzanna, thank you so much for that. And Vanessa and Suzanna, we are really looking forward to this session coming up at SHSMD Connection. So the title of your session is Humanizing Social Media For Meaningful Connections That Matter.

I love that title. So, let me ask you this first then Vanessa, how are we dehumanizing social media? What are we doing wrong?

Vanessa: Yeah, it's such a great question. I mean, what aren't we doing way wrong, but if we go into the depths of everything wrong with social media, we'll be here all day. But really when it comes to social media where the train goes off the tracks with brands is in really two areas. One is inconsistency and the other one is being unauthentic. Somewhere a few years ago, we took this unauthentic and just fake it path. We were using social media as walking promotional ads and really talking about ourselves and why we were special and not in a good way. It's like bragging. It's a one-way conversation. I'm sure everybody out there has on your social media feeds a person, who posts nothing about brag worthy photos.

There are those perfect selfie angles. Everything is perfectly planned and lighted and everything just seems right. And you know, you send out a response to that person and they never respond. The same goes for healthcare. Social media isn't a place for perfect picture ads, scripted fun, or fake sentiments with no follow-through. Especially now, people want you to be real. So, ditch the filters, ditch the professional photos and the silly stock photography and just get real. It's really what people want.

Suzanna: Yeah. And going off of that, being real with people, one example that I can think of just recently we had the Olympics And I think a lot of us can agree that watching those commercials, we've seen so many brands and so many companies capitalizing on that idea of highlighting that human aspect of athletes. We see these Olympic athletes, you know, as almost these gods that outperform everyone else. But these brands have been able to capitalize on that by sharing, you know, their humble beginnings, their family, their home life, their personal struggles. And that's what we're able to relate to. We see those things, us as the general public spectators, and we can relate to that. In healthcare, we want to be experts. We want to be seen as thought leaders in the field. But because of that, it's easy to become so cold and mechanical with how we do social media. When we're talking about the latest equipment or this surgery or new studies and research, sometimes that doesn't necessarily resonate.

It may be very impressive to us, but to our audience, is that really what they want to know? So, what we want to do is we want to really bring in real people's lives, real patient's lives, their experiences into those online connections. We want to make people really feel something, you know, feel pride for an organization, feel empathy towards strangers and their stories and what they're going through. Feel nostalgia and joy. I mean, it's really about connecting to those real emotions.

Host: Hmm, that is so good. So, Vanessa, as you were saying, we're unauthentic and we need to ditch the filter and ditch the iStock photos and Suzanna, you were saying it's too much cold and mechanical. We're not making people feel things. And that's when it sounds like social media really works when we get them to feel something.

So, you say that meaningful strategies means weaving together the brand experience with human needs, Vanessa. So, I guess the goal is to create relationships with your audience, what you two were just talking about. Why is that the key this brand building or this forming of relationships? Why is that what we're going for?

Vanessa: I love a good quote and Mark Cuban, has this awesome quote it's, "business happens over years and years, value is measured in the total upside of a relationship, not by how much you squeeze out of one deal." I really do think the same in social media. Many people forget that social media is an organic method of building a relationship. If you're just going to post once in a blue moon or letting your comments go unchecked or even worse, sound like a robot on social media, it doesn't create that path for potential patients to create those solid relationships. So, the magic really is weaving together your brand experience and trying to be authentic with your patients with their ongoing needs, because that's what creates those powerful, long lasting relationships.

And the ultimate carrot is that loyalty, that ongoing loyalty. But if you're not consistent and you don't have that human touch, that is weaved ub with your brand experience, like we were talking about before, it just comes across cold. So, it can't be a one-off oh, today I'm going to post something and maybe a week later I'll post something else and I'm not going to respond to people. It comes across as cold and it comes across as it was a last minute ditched effort and not part of a larger strategy.

Suzanna: Yeah, Vanessa actually, going off of that, I think one of the worst things you can see from a reputable brand is when you go to their feed or you're trying to find more information. And the last time they posted is months ago, or it was just kind of this one-off thing and it kind of creates an unreliable voice when there's not this consistency.

Vanessa: Everybody is talking about, you know, what's happened over the past year and people need reliable sources to go to. And especially in the healthcare space, people are going online. We were in quarantined for a long time. So, people now rely on social media to get important information. It's really important that healthcare systems are not just taking advantage of that, but, but also utilizing it to connect with their communities.

And when somebody goes to your social media pages and you know, you posted a month ago, they're not going to come back.

Host: Yeah, that makes sense. So you're talking about consistency. You can't just post once or once a week or once every three weeks, you have to be consistent. Let me ask you this. What do you think is good? Should we be posting every day, multiple times a day? Three times a week, what do you think on that?

Suzanna: So I don't want to get into too much because some of this is actually some things that I think we'll discuss in our session, but I, from my own personal experience, working with Henry Ford, we found kind of that breach of posting too much and actually were flagged as spam on Pinterest and I think one of the biggest things is I don't think there's a set model for everyone.

I don't think you can say, you have to post every single day. You need to have the posts going out on this channel at these times. I think you really have to pay attention to what is appropriate for your audience and when your audience is online and where they hang out, because it might be different from someone else.

It might be different from a different health system the next town over or in a different state. And so to say, this is the way to do it, this is what's going to work, it's not one size fits all for everyone.

Host: Right. That totally makes sense. Thank you for that Suzanna and Vanessa, you said the magic is when you're weaving in that brand experience, and we need more of that human touch to build these relationships. So, I know you're going to be discussing this in your session. So, how are these relationships built? Can you give us a brief overview of what you'll be discussing in your session on how we create this magic if you will, to create these meaningful relationships?

Vanessa: Absolutely. I don't want to give too much away about our session because we want everybody to join us. The one tease I'll say is relationships who talked about it earlier, are not built on one way conversations. You can not continue to talk out your audience. They're built on strong value exchanges and during our session, from a strategic perspective, we're going to talk about the best practices when it comes to value exchanges, what are those meaningful connections and how do you make them?

And the goal is to be a relationship builder and you're leveraging value exchange and the opportunities to drive support and create connections through those value opportunities. And that's a lot of what we're going to talk about from a strategic perspective. As we talked about before, a lot of people are like, well, can you give me the five things I need to do?

And as Suzanna talked about, every brand is different. And it's important that everybody knows when they come to our session, there is no magic 1, 2, 3. Every brand is different. And if we gave you the 1, 2, 3, we would be going against our best practice and basically giving you an Instagram filter and then it becomes fake like we just talked about. However, what we are going to give you is the insights, not just the strategy, but insights and tactics that can help you make an immediate impact and difference today on your social media platforms.

Host: I love that. And I love that phrase value exchanges. And then you said, be a relationship builder. So that, really helps. And then speaking of helping, we always try on the SHSMD podcast to give real-world examples. So, Suzanna, can you give us some examples of social media posts or campaigns that have created these meaningful relationships that you've talked about?

Suzanna: Sure thing. Yeah. I already mentioned the Olympics, but I think one of everyone's favorite examples is specifically in kind of the social media marketing online engagement world. I think one of the best examples is the fast food franchise Wendy's and how they engage with people on Twitter.

And if you are not familiar, I definitely suggest you check it out. It's definitely worth it. But what happens is their audience will reach out or people will reach out. It may not even be, they may not even be trying to reach out to Wendy's directly, but they'll put something out there into the Twitter verse.

And almost immediately they're met with a response from Wendy's that is very quick witted, maybe a little snarky. But the biggest thing is that it ilicits response from other, responses from those other users, it gets people engaged. It starts a conversation. It gets people talking. And even if it's, they're roasting someone online or something like that, it, it creates humor. It creates conversation. And because of that, it's built a reputation for them by making this constant effort to continue those conversations. And now, obviously in healthcare, we can't be firing back at people online in that same way at all, but there are strategies that we can use. And as I mentioned before, that's one of the things we'll be highlighting in our session is looking at Pinterest as a tool that you maybe didn't think of to use at all for this sort of thing. And we have found though that Pinterest is very similar to more of like a Google or other search engines than Twitter, or other traditional social media channels that you might think of. And the reason is, is because that content has a longer lifespan.

And so you're able to take advantage of that and get information out there and you'll likely see more engagement over a longer period of time. From that, we've really found new ways and strategies to really reach out to those household healthcare decision-makers, people at home that are looking for answers about common health questions, and we've provided for them in a place where they hang out online and it works. And it's something that we're really excited to share about in the session.

Host: So, let me see here, punch this in. Okay. Wendy's on Twitter. Make sure I follow. Okay. Got it. Thank you for that. I think we forget about Pinterest sometimes too, but that's a great point that you just made about that. And you both have mentioned responding to posts and you just talked about Wendy's how they will respond when you were talking about that Suzanna. It sounds like you can't just post and walk away. You've got to monitor and then respond. That sounds like one of the things that maybe we're doing wrong, we've got to be there and respond because then you are actually having a conversation with somebody. Is that right?

Vanessa: Absolutely. I think from a strategic perspective, one of the biggest things that people leave off the table is relationship management. You can't just post something and forget about it. People are going to post and you need to not be robotic about your responses. They need to be human. And we talked a lot about that in the beginning.

And it's extremely important to have a strategy going into every post on how you're going to respond. It is low hanging fruit that never gets addressed and is one of the probably the easiest ways to engage an audience. If you have the ability to grab their attention and they say, wow, I responded to that and they responded back to me. They're really listening to me. They're much more likely to come back to your website, or your social media platforms and engage with you in the future. And that is the spark of that first relationship moment.

Host: So, relationship management, and then you said when you are responding, somebody might feel, they're feeling something again. That's what you are telling us. You're trying to get somebody to feel something, hey, they're listening to me. And that's where that value exchange comes in. Right? That's a valuable exchange then. That's how you start to build these relationships. I think I'm starting to put it together. Am I on the right track?

Suzanna: Yeah. That's spot on and when you do have those meaningful interactions, when people do feel like they're being heard, what you'll start to see is the change of it turns things around for people. It changes their perspective when they do feel heard, when they feel like their needs are met, like Vanessa was saying, they'll keep coming back.

If they're coming back for care, if they're coming back, trying to look for answers for other health questions that they have. They'll keep coming back, knowing that you're a reliable source.

Host: So, Vanessa and Suzanna, let me ask you both this same question. This is going to be a dynamite session. Vanessa, what are you hoping session goers walk away with after your session?

Vanessa: I've got one word. It's all about action. We want our audience to walk away with actionable insights, that they can go and begin to create those solid strategies for their brands on social media, and Suzanna and I also, we, we want to have a bit of fun too. Social media is known as that, more of a place where you can show that human side and your personality, and we want that to come through in the session as well.

Suzanna: Absolutely. And I think that a lot of people, when they leave conferences, they walk away with this big list of ideas and takeaways, and you're excited to get home, but the hardest part is figuring out, okay, what do I do now? Like what can my team do first? Where do we start? And we want to give you that action so that, you know what you can do to get started and how you get started.

So, we'll be sharing all of that and you know how to stretch your content and looking for new and different opportunities to share that blog post, to share news, to share that research and that new equipment, but to do it in a way, utilizing different platforms and creating deliverables that will really resonate with your audience better.

And maybe that's through video or infographics or interactive posts, but we just want you to be able to go back home and jump right into things and not have to sit on an idea and then it just kind of gets brushed away. You know, we want you to be able to jump right in and move ahead with this. Cause it's really exciting stuff.

Host: So, anything else you each would like to add on your session or about how we can humanize social media more? Suzanna let's start with you.

Suzanna: One of the most important things that we found, even just kind of talking about our session together, Vanessa and I, the most important thing with creating your messaging is sharing the right message at the right time. And the only way to do that is honestly with a lot of trial and error.

And fortunately social media allows for that. Posts only live for so long, kind of in the constant stream, in people's news feeds. And so for the chance, the moment they're going to see a post, you have to be there at the right time, but it's okay to post something that's more candid and more transparent, if you aren't already. But one of the most important things is, staying true to your brand experience, still don't deviate from who you are by trying to create this messaging, that's you're trying to be cool or you're trying to go viral or something like that, because you're going to lose that authenticity.

It's okay to be transparent. It's okay to try new things, but it's okay to be candid and real with people. But it's also about continuing that customer engagement. If we do everything right and create content that connects with your audience, with local communities, by answering their questions, sharing stories that will really resonate them, meeting their needs, that's what's going to get people coming back. I know that we've mentioned this before, but that's really, what's going to get people coming back time and time again. Whether they're looking for a source of truth with all chaos going on in the world. It's those genuine interactions and continuing that customer engagement on social media.

Vanessa: Yeah, just to build off of that, I think that we've talked a lot about humanizing the platform, making sure that you're weaving in your brand experience. And the question I get most from all the healthcare systems that we work with are like, well, how is social media going to help me drive traffic to my hospital? My emergency room? You name it. And to that, I say social media is one of the most important modern day tools that you can use at the beginning of a relationship that helps not only drive traffic today, but will drive traffic on the longterm. If you treat people like humans, they will then treat you in return like you are a part of their family. When people decide that they're going to be loyal to whatever brands they are. It is a hard way to break that bond. So, the more that you're becoming that trusted source, that Suzanna was talking about, the more you're solidifying that bond and ultimately producing long lasting results for your health care system. It's not just a nice to have anymore. It's a must need to make sure that you're getting the best out of your social media platforms both today, so, you can be prepared for what's coming down the pike tomorrow.

Host: Treat people like humans. What a concept.

Vanessa: I know.

Host: You have each talked about the brand experience. So, it sounds like we really need to understand what our brand experience is right. So then we can try to weave that into the messaging. Is that correct?

Vanessa: Absolutely.

Host: Yeah. Understanding what your brand experience is. You can weave that into the messaging is really important. Well, Vanessa and Suzanna, thank you so much for your time. This is going to be a great session. Humanizing Social Media for Meaningful Connections That Matter. It's going to be a session at this year's SHSMD Connections in person conference in San Antonio September 19th through the 21st. Vanessa and Suzanna, thank you once again.

Vanessa: Thank you. Can't wait to see everybody there.

Suzanna: Yes, we're very excited.

Host: And that's Vanessa Ames and Suzanna Smentowski and registration for the SHSMD 2021 annual conference is open. You can learn more and register at shsmd.org/education/annualconference. Hope to see you there. And if you found this podcast helpful and of course, how can you not please? Come on now. Please shout. How could you not. Please shout, please share it on all of your social chat. I don't even know where that's from. Do you know where that's from? It seems like it's an Eddie Murphy thing and please hit the subscribe or follow button to get every episode or a Saturday night live thing. I'm not sure. This has been a production of Dr. Podcasting. I'm Bill Klaproth. See ya.