Blogs Check Into The Hospital

Talk about an ironic turn of events – blogging is turning out to be such a healthy marketing tool that hospitals are inviting blogs to check themselves in!

Community Health Network’s new SharingSites (www.ecommunity.com/sharing site) allows patients to create their own blogs to tell family and friends about a newborn or keep them up to date on treatments. St Francis and Clarian North offer blogging, too, through a Chicago company called CarePages.   Meanwhile, links to the hospitals’ main websites allow patients and families to find information about different medical conditions and treatments, and even participate in online discussions with other patients and their families.

Dan Rench, vice president of e-business at Community Health Network, was quoted in a recent Indianapolis Business Journal issue as follows: “There’s definitely a lot of power in social networking from a health care perspective.”

Businessowners aimed at robust growth should pay heed to this trend.  Many businesses think they have an Internet “presence” because they’ve had a website created for their company.  Often, there’s little updating going on, and even less attention paid to how to help potential buyers find their way to that website.  Advertising, including online advertising, is certainly one avenue in marketing a business.  Very interesting and important, though, is a statistic I learned in a Compendium Blogware webinar from CEO and co-founder Chris Baggott:  80-95% of business conducted online comes about as the result of organic search, not pay-per-click advertising or sponsorships. What this means in plain terms is that people searched online for information about products or services.  Those businesses that were providing up-to-date, easy-to-understand, and relevant content through regularly posting blogs came out the winners – of new customers.

You know what they’re starting to say?  A blog a day keeps the doctor away!