Social media health sites: Who will win out?
I started a page within this site to list some social media health sites. It's a slow start but a start none the less for consumers and patients to interact over healthcare choices including prescription medications. I believe that in the coming months we'll see a lot more social media health sites come online leading to the question ; Which ones will thrive and survive?
I am going to be taking an in depth look at all these social media health sites but if you're a consumers or patient you don't want to have to search and go to a LOT of social sites to get information. If you're a social media health site you had better focus on building your audience rather quickly and ensure that the user experience is a good one or else you'll find that your site is just another good idea with poor execution.
Here is a list of what has to be done to ensure that these sites succeed;
1. It's about users-Keep it about users not about what you feel users want. The best way to do this is to integrate users in the design elements of your site for everything from layout to navigation.
2. Be ready to fail-Keep trying new things but understand that 70% of them will probably fail and be ready to pull content and features that draw little consumer interest and use.
3. Be transparent- If you take money from ANYONE in healthcare let your visitors know upfront.
4. Continually evaluate your site- Use qualitative measurements and have visitors grade your site content, navigation and ease of use.
5. Continually Optimize- This means a thorough analysis of Web analytics to ensure that people are getting to the most important areas of the site.
6. Search Engine Marketing Strategy- How are you going to let people know you exist and what are your benefits compared to other social media sites? heavy up spend to raise awareness across key words than switch to pay for targeted action models.
7. Online ad strategy- Take your message to your audience where they are online and look at the bounce rate for your site.
8. CRM- Once you get people in and they get the information you need how are you going to keep them coming back?
These are just some basic things that all these social media sites are going to need to do. Those that allocate budgets to execute are going to survive, those that believe all the dollars go into launching the site are going to fade away.