In June 2013, Facebook users spent 20 billion minutes per day on the social networking site, which breaks down to 17.39 minutes per day or 8.3 hours per month per user1—and that's just 1 social media platform. It is possible (and probable) that these users spent more time each day visiting other social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. A recent survey conducted by Experian Marketing Services reported that, in the United States, 16 minutes of every hour spent online is devoted to social networking sites and forums.2

As evidenced by social media trends, a growing number of individuals dedicate an increasing amount of time to maintaining personal accounts on a variety of sites. Advertising aside, from an employer and business perspective, minutes spent on an array of social media networks could seem like time wasted, or at least time better spent elsewhere. However, many companies are getting onboard and creating professional social media accounts.

In an effort to understand why businesses in the ophthalmic community specifically are allocating resources toward social media use, Retina Today spoke with personnel at a large eye clinic and hospital and a private practice to discover the motivations behind these efforts and what, if any, return on investment (ROI) they are seeing.

WILLS EYE HOSPITAL

In June 2009, the media relations team at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, PA, launched its social media campaign. Since then, the facility has built accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest (for descriptions of common social media platforms, see Social Media Explained), and has plans to implement Instagram and Vine in the near future, Susan Umfer, of Wills Eye Hospital's media department, told Retina Today.

For Wills Eye Hospital, a major allure of joining social media was the plethora of people who could be reached via this mode of communication. “From a media relations perspective, 1 of the biggest advantages of its use is that it provides the opportunity for conversation and discussion that simply cannot be found in traditional media,” Ms. Umfer said.

The individuals reached by Wills Eye Hospital's social media efforts include patients, patients' friends and family members, industry members, ophthalmologists, optometrists, allied health personnel, news organizations, donors, and the community at large. “Wills Eye has a great mix of audience for our social media efforts,” Ms. Umfer said.

The Wills Eye team aims to update its social media accounts several times per week. In an effort to attract friends and followers, the facility currently uses word of mouth and its website to promote its social media efforts and provides links to the networking sites in e-newsletters and press releases.

With more than 3500 Twitter followers and 1100 Facebook “likes,” clearly both time and resources are dedicated to growing Wills Eye's presence on social media. When asked about monetizing these efforts, Ms. Umfer said, “The ability to engage with a loyal group of friends and followers on a relatively consistent basis is priceless.”

Social networking sites are interactive media that allow patients to share their experiences with others and to provide comments about Wills Eye Hospital, Ms. Umfer explained. For example, one user commented on the Wills Eye Hospital Facebook page that, “No hospital or doctor knew what to do with such a rare diagnosis. We were sent to Wills because no one had an answer or knew how to help my baby…. Wills Eye saved my baby's life.”

“While we obviously hope in the near future to monetize our social media efforts, there will always be significant value in the forum for dialogue that sites like Facebook and Twitter provide,” Ms. Umfer said.

MURRAY OCULAR ONCOLOGY & RETINA

Murray Ocular Oncology & Retina, founded in 2012, is a private practice in Miami, FL, that specializes in treating ocular oncology and diseases of the retina (while also providing a full range of ophthalmic and optometric services). The social media campaign for Murray Ocular Oncology & Retina was launched 1 year ago and is managed by Ernesto Bermudez, BBA, OD, the clinic's Marketing and International Director.

For a new private practice, the initial goal of the clinic's online presence was brand building, which was first achieved through the creation of murraymd.com, Dr. Bermudez told Retina Today. Once the practice website was established as a stable source of information, the clinic could focus on engaging with patients via social media.

“About a year ago, I took over the international division of the Murray Ocular Oncology & Retina clinic,” Dr. Bermudez explained. “In order to expand our reach to our international patients, it was clear that establishing our Internet presence combined with social media was a necessity.”

Dr. Bermudez dedicates about 6 to 7 hours per week to posting updates on Facebook and Twitter. Having found that Twitter is not the best platform for Murray Ocular Oncology & Retina, a majority of its efforts are focused on Facebook. “Facebook is where we publish updates, videos, and pictures,” Dr. Bermudez said. “Through this venue, we distribute information and educate our patients and the community through information lectures, news on the newest technologies and equipment, continuing medical education, etc. We provide useful, interesting information so our patients and their families and friends look forward to going to our page. Our patients also use this forum to communicate with us and ask questions, so I spend quite a bit of time interacting with them via Facebook and through our website, as that is where patients are referred to us from. These interactions are on top of the 6 to 7 hours devoted to weekly social media updates.”

MANAGING AN ONLINE PRESENCE

As those who utilize social media understand, a large part of the challenge lies not in building accounts but in maintaining them. Depending on size and manpower, how a practice runs its social media campaign can be tailored to its individual needs and capabilities; however, having an objective and a platform that aligns with it can help users maintain high-quality accounts.

“It is absolutely advisable for physicians and practices to get involved with social media, but you have to put a little investment into it,” Georgette Pascale, Founder and CEO of Pascale Communications and consulting group PCc, which handles public relations efforts for many ophthalmic entities, told Retina Today. “This is something that is going to live and breathe and people are going to react to; you need to have someone monitor it all the time.”

The Pascale Communications digital team, which is responsible for maintaining the firm's social media accounts, works off of a yearly editorial calendar and actively peppers its material with any newsworthy stories that break. This approach ensures consistent updates but allows flexibility in the content delivered.

“There is the proactive and the reactive—we have the proactive of the editorial calendar, and then we have the reactive; say 1 of our clients gets a hit in The New York Times, which we would want to put up right away,” Ms. Pascale explained. “That is something I love about social media—the fact you can plan content, but when something really exciting happens or there is a tragedy we are reacting to, we can decide to post about that on a whim.”

TRACKING METRICS

Regardless of the method of updating employed, there are ways users can monitor their activities to learn more about their followers, gauge what type of content is popular and what is not, and measure the results, or ROI, of their social media efforts. To discover this information, both Wills Eye Hospital and Murray Ocular Oncology & Retina track their sites' metrics.

“We use a variety of metrics to help us better understand our audience and evaluate our effectiveness, not only how many new followers but also where they come from, what content most captures their attention, what tweets were favorite, how many mentions Wills Eye receives, number of likes, etc.,” Ms. Umfer told Retina Today.

Facebook provides a number of ways in which users can track the metrics of a page via Facebook Insights. Page account managers can access 4 data points: (1) “total likes,” which shows many people have “liked” your page; (2) “friends of fans,” which indicates how large a network you could reach if everyone of your page's fans shared your page with their friends; (3) “people talking about this,” which reveals how many times someone interacted with your page by sharing or commenting on a post or mentioning your page; and (4) “weekly total reach,” which indicates how many people have seen something associated with your page in the past 7 days.

“We know that most of the individuals that visit our Facebook page are patients and their families based on the likes on the page and based on the comments they make,” Dr. Bermudez told Retina Today. “The metrics we track are those provided by Facebook regarding the reach of our posts and the number of likes. In a typical week, we receive 9 new patients through our social media and Internet presence. We know this because they must fill out and submit their information online. So the original goal of brand building has been met, and it has also become a source of patients. Based on these metrics, we consider our social media investment a success.”

On Twitter, users can search for a keyword, such as a practice name, to track mentions of that term, and they are notified when a new follower is gained or when another user mentions their username.

In addition, social media dashboards such as HootSuite, Tweet Deck, and Sprout Social can also be used to track metrics. These dashboards enable users to manage several social profiles, to link accounts to enable simultaneous posting, to schedule status updates and tweets, and to obtain analytics data on brand mentions and social media traffic, putting all relevant data in 1 place.

“How often a page is updated is very iterative,” Ms. Pascale said. “You don't want to inundate your followers, but you don't want to post too little either. It is important to get feedback and to utilize it. That is what is great about social media—you can tweak your efforts based on the response of your audience.”

SUMMARY

To those unfamiliar with social media or to small practices without a media relations or digital team, creating and maintaining these sites may seem overwhelming. However, social media efforts can be tailored to a practice's available resources, interests, and goals. Tracking metrics is an effective way of measuring results and discovering what works best. Aside from monetizing social media efforts, a major ROI from maintaining an online presence is undoubtedly the ability to build brand recognition and become a more active member of the ophthalmic community.

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SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLAINED

Facebook: The world's largest online social network, which is used to connect people with friends and others who work, study, and live around them.

Twitter: An online social networking service that enables users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as tweets.

Instagram: An online photo and video sharing application that allows users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters, and share them with followers.

YouTube: A video sharing website on which users can upload, view, and share videos.

LinkedIn: A professional networking site that allows individuals and companies to create profiles that can be viewed by others in their network and to view the profiles of their own contacts.

Pinterest: A social bookmarking site where users can collect (or “pin”) and share photos of their favorite events, hobbies, and interests.

Foursquare: A location-based social networking site for mobile devices that allows users to “check in” at venues.

Vine: A mobile service that enables users to capture and post short looping videos of 6 seconds or less.

Flickr: An online photo- and videosharing network.

Vimeo: A video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos.

  1. Constine J. Zuckerberg says teens still steadily engaged with Facebook. Tech Crunch. July 24, 2013. Available at http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/teens-on-facebook/. Accessed August 29, 2013.
  2. Experian Marketing Services reveals 27 percent of time spent online is on social networking [news release]. Experian Marketing Services. April 16, 2013. Available at http://press.experian.com/United-States/Press-Release/ experian-marketing-services-reveals-27-percent-of-time-spent-online-is-on-social-networking.aspx. Accessed September 1, 2013.