Today we conclude with our final article of the “Best Hospital Facebook Pages” series with the health system category. This 4 part series has been categorized in the following manner:
Health systems are different from the other pages we have reviewed, because they each include a group of hospitals rather than a single one. Due to their extended reach, one might expect the number of fans to be larger than normal. However, you will see below exactly what we discovered based on the fan pages we determined to be the strongest.
Alegent Health
Location: 9 hospitals in Nebraska and Iowa
Featured Information:
- 500+ fans
- 13 photo albums
- 56 videos
- 64 notes
- Twitter integration
- Newsletter sign-up tab
- Social RSS feed
Screenshot of the Alegent Health "Newsletter" tab
The Alegent Health page provides many useful resources to their fans including the option to sign up for their newsletter, links to each of their facility pages, RSS feeds, informative videos and more. We also liked their “tweets” tab which uses the Social Tweet application which provides a peek at their latest Twitter posts.
Wellmont Health System
Location: 8 hospitals in Tennessee and Virginia
Featured Information:
- 1,800+ fans
- 6 photo albums
- 9 fan photos
- 191 videos
- 142 links
- 72 notes
- YouTube integration
Wellmont features employee interviews in many of their videos
Wellmont Health System has embraced the idea of using video to showcase their employees – not just physicians. It’s a nice touch that provides fans with look behind-the-scenes of Wellmont. In addition, the page wall is regularly updated with relevant content and the “notes” section provides some very useful information.
Mayo Clinic
Location: 3 campuses in Minnesota, Florida and Arizona
Featured Information:
- Nearly 13,000 fans
- 2 photo albums
- 31 fan photos
- 105 videos
- 15 discussion topics
- 159 notes
- 3 RSS feeds
A timely post (Olympics) regarding a new hockey training device
As you might expect, the Mayo Clinic page is full of wonderful wisdom and resources for their fans. They have over 100 videos addressing a variety of medical topics and a very large quantity of “notes”. Fans are also provided with RSS feeds for Mayo Clinic Health Information, Mayo Clinic News and Sharing Mayo Clinc.
St. Vincent’s Health System
Location: 5 hospitals in Alabama
Featured Information:
- 1,300+ fans
- 4 photo albums
- 23 links
- Excellent fan dialogue
St. Vincent's adds images to make Facebook notes more appealing
St. Vincent’s does a particularly good job of responding to fan posts on the page wall. In fact, nearly every wall post from a fan gets a response from the administrator. Regularly acknowledging their fans clearly encourages other fans to participate. It should also be noted St. Vincent’s has done a great job of demonstrating how to make the “notes” look more attractive by adding engaging images.
Memorial Health System
Location: 3 hospitals in Colorado
Featured Information:
- Nearly 1,900 fans
- 4 photo albums
- 9 pages of notes
- 4 videos
A good example of how Memorial uses the notes section like a blog
The Memorial Health System page is another good example of utilizing the “notes” section. Page administrators should keep in mind that search engines do index Facebook notes which creates an opportunity to generate traffic to the page. You will also notice that fan posts on the page wall almost always inspire a response from Memorial.
Honorable Mentions:
Congratulations to the winners of the AP Best Hospital Facebook Pages in the Health System category. Thanks to everyone who participated in the nomination process. This is a topic we will certainly re-visit and we expect the competition to be even better the next time around.
As always, feel free to send your comments and suggestions regarding this topic. If you are aware of other hospitals with an exceptional Facebook presence, please let us know.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Brett, this is great stuff.
How often will you be updating these “best of” lists?
Thanks, Aaron. I’m glad you found it useful. There will be other lists related to hospitals and social media networks sometime in the near future, but we won’t do another Facebook review until next fall. If you’re aware of any other great examples of hospitals using social media, please let us know.
Hi Brett, thanks for the kind and favorable review. We posted our award to our FB wall …
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Colorado-Springs-CO/Memorial-Health-System/52697743299
- swanie
Memorial Health System