Food Porn and Heat Maps: Exciting Social Marketing Ideas for Hospitals and Insurers
You’re tweeting, pinning and blogging. Your social content strategy is aligned with your marketing goals, and you’re a publishing machine. You’re engaging with potential and existing customers, and you’re feeling confident that your social streams reflect your brand personality. You’re even managing to include messaging about products/services and community involvement into the mix. In other words: you got this.
Or… maybe your healthcare company is still dabbling in social media. Maybe you’re slowly getting those ducks in order in anticipation of finally “being” social.
Either way, it’s probably also true that a really big, really fun social initiative could light a fire under your efforts. Well, you’re in luck! We’ve gathered some inspiration for you from outside the healthcare industry to help your ideas start to flow:
Food Porn Index from Bolthouse Farms promotes health
As featured in the New York Times, the Bolthouse Farms “Food Porn Index” promotes health with enticing photos of fruits and vegetables. The photos in a grid on the screen pulse and slide – and update (in real time) the number of Twitter mentions associated with the image. While writing this #kale was rolling toward 4.2 million mentions, trying hard to catch #bacon, which had over 6.4 million mentions. Will kale ever beat bacon in social media conversations? Well, according to the index, it has a better shot than #brusselsprout, with just over 300k mentions, and it’s killing #fried food, which has just over 350k mentions.
What does this have to do with you? Imagine what you could do with industry- or health- related keywords as they’re mentioned in social. What kind of index would be interesting? Which city in your region is “coughing” most? Who’s “running” more in your community: men or women? Keywords like “crutches” or “casts,” for example, could let you know how many people in your area are on the mend after an injury.
Instagram heat maps shows breaking news
A new tool called HereFeed groups Instagram photos (with location tags) into bubbles to show where news is breaking… right now. What can you learn from photos posted in social media based on their hashtags or locations? Is there an Instagram baby boom in part of your service area? Which area’s most dependent on its caffeine fixes? Just as with the “Food Porn Index,” think of what people post on social media, how it may relate to health (and maybe even your area of particular expertise) and imagine your own tool that might pull it together into something interesting/useful or just plain entertaining.
Larger-than-life Pinterest board celebrates product launch
Retail Customer Experience reported that Caribou Coffee installed a larger-than-life Pinterest board at Mall of America in February. In addition to launching a new product, the coffee maker wanted to pitch itself as a lifestyle brand. Its 64-foot Pinterest board – and on-site Caribou photo booth – helped align the brand with customer inspiration, inviting visitors to “get creative and share what inspires them most” (via Pinterest, of course). While you’re unlikely to construct a 5-story object, consider how you can bring your social streams to life and put them in front of people in a physical, off-screen way. You could showcase everything from heartwarming testimonials to community sponsorships, from highly refined skills within your specializations to renovations of your facilities.
Hashtag campaign highlights event sponsorship
Got event sponsorships you’re really proud of? Heineken found a way to engage in a very meaningful way with its sponsorship of the Tribeca Film Festival: it’s underwriting a “short” it will select from among the best movie pitches submitted via the #15secondpremiere hashtag. Take a look at your sponsorships and consider how to participate beyond financial support.
Need some help brainstorming around these or other idea starters? We’re happy to help! Drop us a line (or a tweet: we’re @MediaLogic on Twitter!).
Related Media Logic posts:
