Greg Masters Interview with Dr. Vartabedian

by Ed Bennett on December 9, 2009

in Uncategorized

Two of my favorite Twitter folks chatted yesterday on Blog Talk Radio.  Dr. Bryan Vartabedian was interviewed by Greg Masters and discussed physician involvement with Social Media. It was an informative conversation and worth an hour of your time.

Towards the end of the interview Bryan talked about hospital use of social media and referenced this chart:

hospital_twitter_youtube_2009_11_27

Commenting on the leveling trend line, he suggested that “irrational exuberance” was a reason for the rapid growth this Spring.

I’m sure that’s part of the reason, but another factor is the conservative nature of most hospital management, especially in marketing and communications departments. The early adopters were different. They moved quickly, set up social media accounts and experimented without the usual resistance to new ideas.

The second wave of  growth will be slower, but I think it will continue for many years. After all, some hospitals didn’t get a web site until 2005 or later, five years after most organizations were on-board. Let’s hope that social media adoption goes a bit faster.

  • http://33Charts.com DrV

    I think that second wave of adoption by hospitals will involve more sensible, applied uses of SM. Thanks for listening, Ed.

  • http://www.meredithgould.com Meredith Gould

    My hope is that social media adopt goes faster but not without anchoring it in some kind of smart strategy that answers the questions: 1) Why are we here? 2) What can we contribute? 3) What can we learn?

    • http://ebennett.org Ed Bennett

      Good strategic questions for anything we do.

  • http://www.dlcecc.com @CoachKiki

    Great conversation! Great questions, great answers. Any physician who wants to begin Media “Socializing” should definitely listen – and learn – from this. Thanks guys! :-)
    RKW

  • http://normanregional.com Brenda Finkle

    As usual Doctor_V and Ed are right on target. We were, I believe, a fairly early adopter of SM. We jumped in with both feet. Our plan? Reach those members of our community that didn’t read a newspaper, listen to the radio or read other print pubs. I knew we were missing wholesale groups of people with our message. Another factor in our decision making was our shrinking media budget due to continuing financial pressures all hospitals and medical staff offices are facing. Not to mention that the world is shifting to a digital platform – we didn’t want to be the last hospital to wake up and realize that conversations were occurring “real time” on the web. We’ve adopted a more conversational tone vs a pure marketing message. The results? Slow – but promising.

    My take-away from the Dr. V interview was to take a step back, listen to the conversation, contribute when you feel you have information that will add value to your followers. He cautioned to “be careful not to contribute to the noise.” Good point.

    Appreciate both Ed and Dr. V for their “no nonsense” approach to this evolving conversation.

  • http://engagementstrategy.tv Daniel Ghinn

    Of course within hospitals there are some early adopters of new ideas like social media, and this is reflected in the curve. Amongst those early adopters, only some have established how to make social media really useful for patient engagement. It is those who do this, and demonstrate the results, that will drive the (slower, but in the end successful) adoption social media amongst more conservative hospitals.