On the contrary, just being aware of social media means you are in the leading edge of healthcare marketers. Good luck with your C-team and email me if you have any questions.

But those sites are the minority. Most of us want to encourage comments and participation in our sites – but in way that can be managed. There are many options. For example, anyone can comment, but it can be deleted by the Admin. Or it has to be approved before it goes up. Or the community can flag it as inappropriate. Or you can set a whitelist or blacklist. The solution will different for each site owner.

Albert – Gee, I have a fan! I’ll need to get a agent now…You make a good point about the tool argument, but fortunately it hasn’t been raised with me. Maybe because our SoMe efforts have been done without asking for additional resources. Which is one answer to the ROI question – the investment is minimal, but the commitment must be long-term. This not something that brings new patients overnight – it is way to maintain / enhance our reputation, and should be seen as one part of that effort.

And Ed your comment about tools is so true. Which is why the “Tool Time” discussion is a way those opposed to social media delay its implementation. It goes something like this, “Well which tool is good for this or that, and what will be our ROI, and then there is legal…”

Yes, yes, I’ve heard that circular argument before, pass the Excedrin please. It is a discussion of a symptom and not the underlying issue – which is – improvement. For the full participation of social media to reach maximum benefit, there must be an acceptance to listen to what the social part of social media is saying. It may not even be a critical thing, just a different way to do things.

All the best.

And the living room rule makes sense, too.

I’m pretty far removed from any health facility. That’s by design (fear of being told I’m not as healthy as my faded college-years photo lets me believe I am). So, for example, if I read an article online at HuffingtonPost (on the political left) and want to comment, it’s encouraged…as long as I register. Likewise, if I happen to want to comment on something at Townhall.com (on the right), I’m more than welcome to…as long as I register. Newsweek.com? Same thing.

To me, thinking as a website-owner, the benefits of requiring registration (gaining email addresses and maybe other demographic information) do not outweigh the benefit of engaging as many people as easily as possible.

From my indirect experience, having a policy of allowing anonymous comments but requiring moderation before anonymous comments are posted is a best practice in a typical healthcare environment (like a hospital) where there are going to be reasonable concerns about intentional (the lawyers might say “willful”) patient privacy violations or uninformed, irrational or hateful comments/posts. At the same time, sharing identity (registration in your terms) establishes a basic trust level that in turn tends to drive more attention to the message of the party making the comment or post. How many times have you seen tweeters say “please show your real face as your avatar” to other tweeters instead of an abstract avatar.

Outside the healthcare environment and for personal weblogs, I like the “living room” policy a colleague developed for comments. Un-moderated, anonymous comments are fine as long as the comment is something I would consider appropriate at a social gathering in my living room. Break the living room rule and the comment gets deleted with a polite request not to break the rule. Break the rule again and the IP address of the anonymous poster gets blocked. I’m sure you’ve seen private weblog authors turn off comments from time to time when the living room policy violation level costs too much in time and effort to police individually.

One other point I’d like your opinion about, related in some way to anonymous posting. Why do so many sites require Registration before I can leave a comment? I find that absurd. To me, that discourages conversation. I’m not about to register for every site I come across, though I would like to contribute to the conversation. Ask me to register just to get my opinion and you’ve probably lost me. Your thoughts?

Arik – My 30-second elevator pitch is what I use with executives – it gets to the heart of social media. Yes, physicians and IT have different concerns. What would you say to them?

Drew – I completely agree with your comments. Social media will not have the immediate ROI of traditional media exposure. It’s also not as straightforward as pay-per-click SEM or traditional SEO. This is old-school relationship building, one person-to-person contact at a time. But it has a twist – each positive connection we make is visible to everyone, building good will and brand equity one interaction at a time. It ties in to what I call circles of trust. In the long run, I believe this will have much bigger impact than a page one Google ranking, and the hospitals than invest early will have an advantage.

Tom – Thank you for the excellent McKinsey report. It’s the perfect handout for C-level executives. Also agree about on anonymous posters. They can be an honest voice in our conversations, and troublemakers can be managed with basic admin rules.

Jim – good to see you here. I like what you are doing with medXcentral. I don’t consider what I do to be sales, just a technique that I’ve always used. See the situation from the other person’s perspective – everyone wins when that happens.