Insight

MAYO CLINIC SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK DIRECTOR LEE AASE IS ONE OF THE FOREMOST AUTHORITIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA FOR HEALTHCARE. DISCOVER THE SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS HE'S FOUND MOST SUCCESSFUL FOR HIS FACILITY — AND WHAT HE CONSIDERS THE MOTHER OF ALL METRICS. Insight: What social platforms have worked best for Mayo Clinic? Have you found certain channels to be more effective for brand vs. volume growth? Aase: Facebook has driven more appointment requests than any other social channel, but YouTube also has been important. Uploading videos that feature a Mayo Clinic subject expert discussing a disease or condition is a great way to have search-optimized content available for potential patients. Insight: What non-healthcare brands do you look to for inspiration? Aase: I wouldn't single out particular brands, but we have found our membership in socialmedia.org helpful because it gives us an opportunity to connect with leaders in other industries that may be somewhat less risk-averse and therefore have had more freedom to explore new strategies. Insight: How are your social media efforts integrated with other strategy/ marketing departments there at Mayo Clinic? Aase: The Social and Digital Innovation Team that I lead manages interaction and engagement on our social platforms, but we work closely with our Marketing division, which has funding for targeted demand- generation efforts. Members of my team regularly consult with Marketing colleagues to maximize impact. Insight: What key performance indicators do you use? Aase: We consider shares (or retweets) The Mother of All Metrics. Reactions, likes or comments are great, but when someone shares or retweets content, that's the ultimate validation: they're saying the content is important enough that they want their friends and followers to see it. So we've developed a combined shares metric for all social platforms. Another important metric is click-throughs to our website, as well as appointment requests. Insight: Do you use social media for all stages of the funnel, or only for brand awareness? Aase: Brand awareness is the most important social media application, but we collaborate with Marketing on other stages too. One important platform we have is Mayo Clinic Connect, which is our owned social platform. It's a patient-to-patient community that enables prospective patients to connect with others who have had an experience at Mayo Clinic. Insight: What do you consider a conversion on social media channels? Aase: An appointment request is the ultimate conversion, but we also place a high value on shares because of their amplification value. Insight: Anything else you'd like to share with the healthcare strategy and marketing community? Aase: We see great value in social beyond marketing conversions; social media should be integrated in any communications plan or change-management initiative. We created the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network to encourage productive applications of social media throughout the healthcare ecosystem, and we're glad to have colleagues joining us to explore applications in clinical practice, education, and research as well as for public relations and marketing purposes. Connecting Mayo Clinic to the World 10 INSIGHT V13N2 TRUENORTHCUSTOM.COM insight into DIGITAL MARKETING

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