The Ultimate Hospital Marketing Social Media List
If your hospital isn’t on this list, it should be.
At this writing, the HSNL accounts for well over 750 hospitals with YouTube Channels, Facebook pages, Twitter Accounts, and/or Blogs. Here are the top-line numbers:Anyone (meaning everyone) working in hospital marketing or hospital public relations should check out the Hospital Social Network List (HSNL). It’s a valuable insight to what other hospitals are doing...all linked through this cross-referenced index of social media in use by large and small facilities nationwide.
- 762 Hospitals total
- 348 YouTube Channels
- 551 Facebook pages
- 583 Twitter Accounts
- 99 Blogs
This still-growing database doesn’t account for all the hospitals in the US, but shows that about three out of four reporting hospitals are using Twitter and Facebook.
Slightly less than half of the included hospitals have a YouTube Channel. But a mere 13 percent have a hospital blog in play as part of their healthcare marketing, advertising, or public relations mix.
The HSNL includes links for anyone to see how various facilities are using their websites and social media for hospital community relations, physician relations, hospital branding, recruiting--and when needed--crisis communications.
Remarkably, the Hospital Social Network List is an after-hours labor of Ed Bennett whose day job is managing websites for a large academic medical center. Ed tells us that he began the list in late 2008.
Traditionally conservative hospitals have, in the past 12 to 18 months, rapidly embraced social media – with Twitter now out distancing YouTube.
Find the Hospital Social Network List here. More importantly, if your hospital is not yet included on the HSNL, individuals who manage hospital websites and hospital social networking sites should follow Ed’s update instructions here.
Kudos to Ed Bennett for creating this list, and for documenting how hospitals are increasingly using social media tools for more effective, efficient hospital marketing and communications.