CHAPTER 26
Consumer Engagement Using Social Media
Lisa Cintron
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Social media has profoundly altered the way medical institutions, health-care providers, and urgent care clinics communicate with their audiences. Millions have made online sharing part of their everyday lives, creating new communication channels and challenges for industries of all kinds. If a brand is not on the social media bandwagon, it is missing out on an essential and fundamental method of connecting and communicating with its market.
Brand communication has come full circle. Before the emergence of radio or television, print and word-of-mouth marketing were the only advertising vehicles available. With each technological advance, the gap between the brand and the end consumer was widening until eventually brands were doing all the talking and the consumer was doing all the listening. Currently, commercials on radio, television, and now Internet sites are increasingly bold and obnoxious and delivered at higher and higher decibels. Consumers are bombarded with everything from billboards on roadways to signage on buses, subways, and gas pumps and in checkout lines at the grocery store. Consumers simply cannot get away from the bombardment of messages selling them something hundreds of times a day.
Enter social media, an apparently quieter and gentler mode of communication, spawned by groups consisting of friends and acquaintances supporting each other’s mutual hobbies and interests. This was a way to keep in touch on a whole new level. Word-of-mouth marketing, which was in action primarily during social gatherings and around dinner tables, now had another venue and soon joined the online media blitz. Honest, uncensored online conversations were now possible, giving people the opportunity to review products, services, and medical providers and discuss everything from the best diaper to the presidential election.
Such conversations have quickly become the mainstay of the 21st century. By 2013, activities related to social media had made it into the everyday lives of millions and millions of people. These activities are changing the way marketing messages are crafted, shared, and delivered.
Social media has become a significant aspect of business development. It has altered the way individuals and businesses communicate about brands and how they conduct business. Social media is responsible for condensing corporate hierarchies and compressing the theory of “6 degrees of separation” down to about 4.74 degrees.1