If you haven’t seen the beautiful photography and heart-wrenching stories from Memorial Sloan-Kettering on Humans of New York’s Facebook page, do yourself a favor and go check them out now. I’ll wait.

Now that you’ve cleared the tears from your eyes, it’s time to take a look at how your hospital can learn from the success of these posts and find new ways to connect with your patients and community online.

Besides benefiting from HONY’s massive following, these posts succeed because of:

1. Gorgeous photography. It can’t be said enough. Beautiful, original photography does extremely well online, receiving more likes, views and shares than any other type of post. If you don’t have a lot of photography of your hospital, it’s time to bring a professional in.
2. Truthful storytelling. Social media marketing is not so much about claims, but stories. The stories of doctors, nurses, administrators and families in HONY’s posts are honest and touching. They seem unedited by a marketing team. Consider letting your hospital show all aspects of care. Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes treatment is really hard. Don’t shy away from these truths.
3. Doctor involvement. Your doctors need to be engaged in your marketing, period. Show off their humanity. They aren’t just robots writing prescriptions and removing gallbladders. They got into medicine to help people; tap into this altruism and let it shine.
4. Short posts. Sure, you can write a 900 word patient story, but a great photograph and a quick paragraph or two can be read quickly and often jumps out at people from their newsfeed. Consider breaking up your patient stories (even those you already have) into easily-digestible posts to boost engagement and promote your services.

Need help writing a patient story or managing your social media? Contact me and let me see what I can do to help!