Social Media Strategy – Should You Develop One?

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

I’ve heard from several people as I prepare for this week’s Webinar “Building Real Relationships: Creating a Strategy for Your Social Media Efforts”, that I’m on the wrong path.  “You shouldn’t create strategies for a particular social network site,” intoned one co-worker, “strategies are for audiences.”

Of course, I understand this is the case, but I’m always fearful that once something is relegated to being “tactical” with little or no out-of-pocket cost to get started, it leads organizations to dive in without any plan whatsoever. 

When You Need More Than Grilled Cheese

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

I’ve spent a lot of time recently looking at how hospitals typically evaluate online solutions partners when I bumped into a blog post from Brett Trout, a lawyer pal of mine who is pondering the same question for his industry.

The question addresses the different types of business relationships we might have when purchasing products or services.  For some purchases, the seller is a peddler — it’s a feature purchase and is driven by convenience elements like location of the vendor or basic features.  The street-cart lunch vendor downtown falls in this bucket.  I may seek him out because he makes a mean grilled cheese, but I don’t value him as an expert in nutrition or any sort of incredible service offering.  We don’t have a relationship and he doesn’t need to know my name for me to get full value from him.

Proving the Value

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

As hospitals are cutting costs, online programs are faring well in some organizations and quickly find themselves on the chopping block in others.  While the financial situation at each individual institution is clearly a factor, we often see – through the magic of hindsight – which online service groups laid the groundwork to secure their position in the long-term.

To proactively secure the position of your Web resources, it’s important to first understand why Web departments get cut:

• Your executives never really saw (or believed) the value you delivered
• Your online efforts were not connected to the organization’s key strategic initiatives
• Compared to a clinical service, anything marketing related feels optional

Although in many organizations, cuts are presented as “across the board,” this is often not truly the case and key functions and initiatives are, in actuality, not feeling the pain in the same way.  Don’t let that be your cop-out answer!

To learn how to address these challenges and how to adapt if cuts do hit your Web operations, make sure to attend our Webinar Thursday: Prove Your Web site’s Value in a Tight Economy.

What To Do about Swine Flu

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

I presented a webinar yesterday on crisis communications as they relate to financial crises – layoffs, construction stoppages and the like.  While the webinar was well attended and received, one question was asked again and again:

“Yes, we’re dealing with financial crises, but at the moment, I really need your thoughts
on what we should be doing to communicate about swine flu”.

Challenging times

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

While many healthcare organizations have regular opportunities to exercise their crisis communication plans, few of us have had a need to focus those plans on financial challenges, until recently.  As organization after organization announces hiring freezes, layoffs, construction suspensions and related economic woes, it’s time to look at how well we’re addressing these challenges from a communications perspective and examine how the Internet in all its many forms creates new opportunities and challenges for embattled Marcom departments.

Join us on Thursday, April 30 at 2:00 CST for a free educational Webinar event: Use the Web to Communicate During Times of Change and Challenge.  We’ll explore the unique communications challenges faced during economic events and evaluate how new tools can be used to make you more effective and efficient in getting your message heard.

Geonetric’s Second Quarter Webinar Series: The guidance you need right now.

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

Layoffs. Hiring freezes. Budget cuts.

You can’t turn on the nightly news without being inundated with the latest economic woes. And there’s no question, it’s bad out there. We talk to healthcare marketers every day that have to do more with fewer resources. 

And do you know what we tell them? You can.

Tools to Help You Improve SEO

By Angie Toomsen, Content Strategist

In one of our recent Webinars, we highlighted methods to improve organic search engine placement. At the end of the Webinar, we provided a list of tools to help attendees with their search engine optimization efforts. We thought you might find these tools helpful as well. 

SEM vs. SEO – Two Views on the World of Search

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

The Geonetric educational Webinars are in the middle of a three month series on search.  This month, we’re focusing on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Pay Per Click (PPC) tactics for growing targeted site traffic.  I’ve been taking some ribbing from a few coworkers as we prepare to present on SEM.

During our Webinar on organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in January, I presented some statistics from various surveys on the perception of paid search results compared to organic results.  Those statistics indicated that, on the whole, consumers find organic results more relevant and credible than paid results, were often annoyed by paid results and, for the most part, never click on paid search items.

Ouch!  Ok, I was a little harsh, but this is certainly the SEO view of the world.

SEO Webinar Followup Discussion

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

We had a great Webinar presentation yesterday on organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization), but we ran a little long and didn’t have time to answer several questions that were submitted.  We’re following up with the people who submitted them, but if one person asks a question, odds are good that several others would like to know the answer.

Q: What is considered a good bounce rate perspective and at what point should a bounce rate be a cause for concern?
A good rule of thumb:

• A bounce rate below 20% is considered excellent
• 20-30% is pretty typical
• >30% is cause for greater investigation

Searching for a little more depth

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

One of the biggest challenges in our webinars is how to draw the box around what to talk about.  Few topics that are worth doing can get comprehensive coverage in a one-hour session.  The decision comes down to presenting the breadth of a topic without going too deeply into any one aspect or taking a much narrower slice of a topic and getting more detailed.

Never satisfied, we’re trying to get the best of both worlds with a series of related webinars on search.  January will cover SEO – organic search engine optimization, February will extend that discussion into Search Engine Marketing – paid online marketing opportunities to drive site traffic.

Our final installation of the series will cover findability – search in all of its forms within your site to get site visitors connected to relevant content as quickly and efficiently as possible to drive visitors to action.

It’s going to be a great series full of immediately useful tools and techniques for increasing the value of your online investments.  I hope you’ll join us.

If you can’t make this Webinar – don’t worry! We record all of our live broadcasts so that you can replay them at your own convenience. All recordings are available on our Web site 48 hours after the original event. You can access any recorded webinars using your Geonetric.com account.