Social Media in Healthcare Organizations Social Media Essay

Social Media in Healthcare Organizations

Social Media Social media increasingly integral part healthcare organization's website online strategy. Write a -- page (excluding title reference pages)

Using social media in healthcare organizations

Social media are a new way of co-creating and collaboration on content with others. It provides practical resources for healthcare organizations, in raising awareness of health related issues to the public, and facilitating change in behavior which will help people to live safer and healthier lives Sae Won & Choi, 2007.

With social media, they can disseminate information in real-time and link groups of people around common issues. Any website or platform that allows users to publish and share information with each other is referred to as social media. The information shared can be videos, photos, or messages. Technologies for social media are in different forms namely wikis, internet forums, social blogs, podcasts, magazines, weblogs, social bookmarking, videos, and photographs. The different types of social media are content communities, blogs, virtual social worlds, social networking sites, collaborative projects, and virtual game worlds. The functional building blocks of social media, which help in understanding the engagement needs, are conversations, identity, presence, reputation, groups, relationships and sharing.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allow users to initiate conversations with others and share their opinions with people within their circles. Sharing information with the people within their circles allows for easy and faster dissemination of information, people can also use social media platforms to access news articles from all around the world Hassid, 2008.

Facebook and YouTube permit for uploading of videos which is more informative and thought provoking than just having text based information.Wikis allow for collaboration between persons, who are working on a project enabling them to share information with each other.

The pros and cons of using social media in healthcare marketing

The pros for using social media in healthcare are, with the one-to-one conversations that people have in social media a healthcare organization can build stronger relationships with its patients. Patients are on social media, if any healthcare organization wants to reach its patients then it cannot ignore social media as majority of adults are on there. Customer service, People are nowadays posting messages on social media healthcare organization need to be on social media so they can access and respond to these messages thus promoting their organization Choi, Eldomiaty, & Sae Won, 2007.

Healthcare organizations, can also use social media to manage any crisis that might occur in the organization and the quickest way of reassuring the patients and customers is by using social media. Social media are also used to get feedback from patients and their relatives regarding the services they received when they visited your organization. This feedback would be beneficial in improving services and care provided.

The cons of using social media are, due to the dynamic nature of social media the organization will be required to be on social media a lot….....