The last thing you want is your social media looking like a ghost town. Keep the content fresh and be as responsive as possible.
In the world of Social Media Marketing, you need fresh content to be relevant and capture attention. How often you post will depend on your goals, but a social media page that hasn’t had a post in weeks is worse than not having one at all. The message it sends is, “we are too lazy to care.” Clearly that is not a message you want connected to your hospital.
What does freshness look like?
In the world of social media, freshness looks like new posts at least every few days. People don’t expect rural hospitals to be a fountain of entertainment, but if they come by, there should be something recent and relevant to read. They should also see a pattern of consistent attention and activity.
Freshness also looks like quick responses to comments and questions. This is where you want to be lightning fast. Anything longer than a 24 hour turn around is going to seem like you don’t care. Social media is meant to be interactive and social. A request or complaint that goes by unacknowledged is like not picking up the phone at your hospital.
Finally, freshness looks like you are paying attention to what is happening. Right now (August 2020) that means keeping people up to date on Covid-19 in your area and providing solid public health advice. It also means acknowledging local health concerns. These are things you talk about every day at your hospital, so it makes sense to have them appear in your social media too.
How is freshness achieved?
Step one is to make someone responsible for it. However, you divvy up responsibilities for social media posting and response, you need someone who’s mission is to watch over it and ensure it stays fresh.
You might imagine freshness means brand new content every few days and that this means lots of work. Fortunately, that’s not necessarily the case. The nature of social media is sharing and linking. It’s perfectly reasonable to post a link along with a few words about how it connects to your hospitals mission.
People tend to remember images more than words. Having a good selection of relevant images to go with your posts is important to keeping a fresh image. You can certainly re-use images from time to time, but you don’t want to see the same picture in the span of 20 or so posts.
Finally, put together a schedule to ensure freshness. Make a target date for regular posts. You can leave room between them for inspiration or the needs of the moment but ensure that you have a minimum frequency on your schedule.
You can always get help
SRJ Marketing Communications is an early pioneer in creating social media content for rural hospitals and clinics like yours. We can help you manage and optimize your social media presence. To find out what we can do for you, just call 214-528-7557.
