Written on December 13th, 2011 by tasha
I’m guest blogging this week on the Stanford Journal of Palliative Medicine. Today’s post is about Social Media and Family Caregivers. Given Pew Internet data on demographics of social media, I wonder whether Facebook is a mature enough medium for reaching family caregivers. Not many seem to use it to get health information. But there are other realistic goals for a Facebook presence.
According to Idealware, software reviewers for non-profits, Facebook is a great way to:
- get people to subscribe to your e-newsletter
- drive traffic to your company site
- promote events
What’s your experience been?
Posted in Facebook, Family Caregivers, Research Results, Social Networking
Written on November 2nd, 2011 by tasha
In honor of National Family Caregivers Month, we’re completing our series on search engine optimization by reporting on the topics family caregivers seem to be searching for on Google, Bing, etc.
To begin with, according to Pew Internet and American Life, health information seeking is the third most popular Internet activity, preceded only by email and using a search engine generally. Eight out of every 10 Internet users seeks health information online. Family caregivers are more active in their searching than any other group (including patients), often by a double-digit margin.
An analysis of health information searches relating to elder care revealed that: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: search engine optimization
Posted in Family Caregivers, GCM Marketing, Home Health Marketing, Hospice Marketing, Internet Marketing, Private Duty Marketing, Research Results
Written on May 10th, 2011 by tasha
Those of you who know me know I’m a bit of a data wonk. I like data. I don’t think that our reality can be completely represented by numbers. But just as we prefer to make evidence-based health decisions, I think it is wise to make evidence-based marketing decisions.
So what should you keep track of in terms of measuring the “success” of a social media endeavor? I can share what the standard marketing approach is, but I also think that we have a slightly different critter in the context of our older audience and elder care/health care focus.
This will be a two-part blog, with the first talking about realistic goals or outcomes of a social media campaign and then next covering ways to measure those outcomes.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Social Media and Hospice
Posted in E-newsletters, Facebook, GCM Marketing, Home Health Marketing, Hospice Marketing, Internet Marketing, Private Duty Marketing, Research Results, Social Networking
Written on April 6th, 2011 by tasha
I was recently doing some research on adherence and ran across this “old friend,” a favorite study (Bogardus and colleagues, 2004) that demonstrated the value of getting the family caregiver on board.
We all know that non-adherence is a big issue in elder care. This was formerly referred to as “non-compliance,” but the term smacked of paternalism and has since been replaced with “non-adherence,” recognizing that the patient’s role is much more active than that of a compliant servant to the whims of medicine.
This Yale University study was conducted with 176 patient/family caregiver dyads at a geriatric assessment center. The focus was to specifically understand the family caregiver’s impact on adherence and presumably outcomes over the course of a year. Patient/family dyads went through the clinic’s standard assessment procedure, after which the family caregiver was asked to participate in a phone interview a week later and then a year later.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Collaboration, Family Caregivers, Research Results
Written on March 10th, 2011 by tasha
A recent review of 120 hospital Facebook pages reveals that they are not using Facebook to its full potential. (The range of hospitals sampled was quite diverse, including large and small, rural and urban, different regions of the country, etc. The methodology was well thought out.)
The purpose of Facebook is to create relationships and community, to inspire conversation. Admittedly, it’s difficult to get people to break their silence and publicly post. Still, useful content that educates or inspires is more likely to prompt conversation than self-promoting announcements. That interchange and discussion—community-building if you will—is the spirit of social networking.
With community-building in mind, here is a summary of the hospital Facebook study: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Social Media and Hospice
Posted in Facebook, GCM Marketing, Home Health Marketing, Hospice Marketing, Internet Marketing, Private Duty Marketing, Research Results, Social Networking
