Twisdom: Medical Marketing Nuggets from the Twitter Stream

You’re familiar with the social media marvel Twitter. With about 250 million active users (and another 250 registered users), Twitter is a well-known cultural phenomenon. Just about everyone has seen it. Tons of people are using it. And as a medical marketing tool, Twitter is second only to Facebook among the most popular social networking sites.

What you may not know—and what is a bit mind-boggling—is that there are about 400 million Tweets gushing down the Twitter steam every day. On average, that would be about 4,500 Tweets per second, and close to 3 billion Tweets each week. Not bad for a six-year-old.

So…how does anyone pull value from that torrent of 140-character messages? The answer depends entirely on what you want. As an educational experiment, we went looking for healthcare marketing words of wisdom recently, and we plucked out a handful of nuggets.

If you’re selective in who you follow, and surgical in your selection, it is possible to find some useful reminders about marketing, advertising and sales. It’s not the most sensible path to learning or to improving your skills, but since we’ve already done the work for you, the following is a handful of brief, but useful, ideas via Twitter.

Label it “Twisdom,” –in somewhat random order, some brief medical marketing nuggets worth contemplating, according to Twitterites.

On Social Media:

• Our head of social media is the customer. (McDonald’s)
• #Socialmedia is about the relationships, not the medium.
• Word-of-mouth marketing has always been important. Today, it’s more important than ever because of the power of the Internet.

On Sales (Case Acceptance/Compliance):

• You can’t *make* a sale. You can only provide the context 4 your prospect to decide you have the answer to their need.
• Clients do not buy words or pictures, they buy hope.
• At the end of the day, people don't buy what products are, they buy what that product will do.

On Success:

• You might fail if you try, you do fail if you don't try.
• You have to have a mindset that says yes to possibility, (Harvard Biz Review)

On Patient Satisfaction/Patient Experience:

• People are more impressed by the height of your enthusiasm, then by the depth of your knowledge.
• A point of purchase is not the end of a line.

On Branding:

• Branding helps separate you from the competition. It represents who you are and what your practice is about.

On Planning and Implementation:

• Don’t think of people in the mass. That gives you a blurred view. Think of a typical individual.
•  Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution. (Stephen Sondheim)

And finally,

• Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. (William Shakespeare)

That last one isn’t so much about marketing, but it sounds like a slice from the Hippocratic Oath. And who knew Shakespeare could also Tweet?

More to the point, there’s a related article in our free reference library titled, Twitter Tips: Social Media & Healthcare Marketing. And feel free to add any brief but thoughtful medical marketing tips in the comments section below.

Lonnie Hirsch