Social Media for Healthcare: What We Learned from 3 Major Clients

Healthcare social media works — but only if you treat compliance as a foundation, not a roadblock. The agencies and teams that thrive in this space build systems that are both fast and airtight, and they know that patient acquisition and recruiting require two completely separate playbooks.

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We’ve been doing health care for social media for quite a while now and it’s
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definitely tough. It’s much harder than most other verticals. One of the reasons
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for that is the HIPAA compliance. One bad post and you’re violating federal law so
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that can get intense heavy and be cumbersome. So today we’re going to talk
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about what makes a good social media agency and what makes a good
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social media agency a fit for health care. We’ve had three different clients that
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we’re going to talk about today which is go health, urgent care, Baptist health and
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5410. We have seen what basically blows up those HIPAA landmines that nobody’s
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going to warn you about. There’s a difference between marketing for patient
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acquisition or there’s a difference between marketing for patient
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acquisition. There’s a difference for marketing between patient acquisition
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and then recruiting for these companies and then some of the other things that
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we’ve just learned in and around this space and some of the best practices
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we’ve seen that have actually translated into great results for these companies.

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So the big problem here is that health care is social media on hard mode. So
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what are some of the things that make this hard Joanna, Jason? Yeah I think
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what makes it difficult is like you mentioned HIPAA compliance it can kind
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of sneak up on you and social media is such a casual place. It’s a place of
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community and speaking to those who interact with your business and when
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the people who are interacting with your business are protected by HIPAA laws
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you have to be very careful how you interact with them. If you interact with
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them publicly, right? So health care is one of the most challenging verticals to
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navigate social media wise. Yeah 100%. The other thing too is a lot of these big
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health care companies you know you’re not working you’re working with the
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department. You’re not necessarily working one-to-one with like just the
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marketing person. So there’s usually you’re working with certain roles inside
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a bigger marketing department. So making sure that communication is seamless that
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you are picking up all the conversations that are happening. Being a part of some
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big team meetings like we’ve been a part of I think for what it was a go
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health. We were in monthly calls and how many other people are in that meeting
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with us? We had an in-person meeting with about 20 people. Yeah exactly. So I mean
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those it’s not yeah there’s a lot going on and making sure that that line of
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communication is managed correctly is also a big gap here that a lot of
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companies do miss and can be actually burdensome down the line. So let’s talk
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about the HIPAA compliance stuff. Obviously can’t share data that type of
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stuff but there’s there’s little ways that this actually creeps up on you, right?

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So any any ones that you’ve seen in particular that stood out for you? Yeah I
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think what I alluded to before was is probably the most common HIPAA
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compliance issue that social media managers for healthcare clients would
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run into and that’s a community management moderation. So you let’s say
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you do social media management for a dentist’s office or doctor’s office and
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someone comments and says oh these guys are so great they’ve been you know
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looking after my daughter since she was born commenting back and saying you
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know we’re so happy you’ve had a good experience you’ve just confirmed that
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they’re a patient at the practice which is non-compliance. So something as
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innocuous as a quick interaction in the comments can get you into real
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trouble. So that’s probably the most common or most accessible mistake you
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can make. I’ve seen some crazy things that are a lot more obviously wrong like
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nurses filming TikToks in hospitals that are recognizable. Maybe keeping the
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name anonymous of a patient but describing them in such a way that makes
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them recognizable to their followers or to the viewers. Yeah things like that
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there’s there was a case where some surgeons took a photo of body parts
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that were removed during surgery and the patient was in the background. I mean
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there’s some it goes all the way from innocuous to pretty obvious but yeah
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pretty crazy. Yeah you want to make sure that you’re working with an agency that
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has your back. I mean I think part of the reason that we kept a lot of our
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health clients as long as we did is just because we made the commitment to
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making sure that we got acclimated quickly but then also acted as a safety
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net for them so that nothing they they knew that they were protected and that
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you know we weren’t going to do anything that was questionable or at the very
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least ensure that they have first tried to refusal on anything ever being
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published. So it’s important to have an outfit that that thinks that way from
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the beginning of the relationship throughout. Yeah 100% I mean we built
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out a compliance playbook for this so we were able to keep workflows at a speedy
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process because when you’re trying to get confirmation and you’re not sure
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maybe who to get that from being not sure what’s correct. Those things can
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lead to big bottlenecks sometimes taking approval processes weeks as opposed to
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days. So HIPAA compliance doesn’t mean social you know you can’t do social
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media it just means you have to be smarter than everyone else when you’re
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doing it. So compliance is a frustration but let’s talk about two
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completely different games here in the healthcare space which we’ve seen a few
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times. One is patient acquisition versus employee acquisition. Yep. Yeah so we’ve
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worked with both we’ve had experience with both and they are completely
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different strategies. So healthcare is unique in that you know a lot of other
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businesses you are not just trying to reach people where they’re at you’re
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trying to convince them that they need your product or service whereas healthcare
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is a little bit different you don’t necessarily want people to need your
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service. What you want is for them to reach out to you when they do need that
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service. So it’s more just an awareness play we’re not we’re not targeting
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users based on how sick they feel. Rather we’re targeting users based on
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their location and making sure that they know that you know their neighborhood
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urgent care is located in this shopping mall or the shopping center and just
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using awareness as opposed to reaching people and trying to get them at the
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point of action. Whereas recruiting is a different story. We’re talking more
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about the culture of the business culture of the hospital or culture of the
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healthcare in whatever space it’s in. We’re talking about the the life of the
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employees the current employees and we’re trying to entice new users and that’s a
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lot more action oriented. So we’re reaching people where they’re at. So if
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you know you have a job titled nurse and you’re in the market for a new job
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that’s when we’re delivering ads or content to you. Yeah yeah and again
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they’re they’re two completely different strategies and depending on you know
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we’ve seen well especially with that recruiting piece of it we’ve actually
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seen the where doing this on social almost results in better
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recruits actually applying for the jobs or as opposed to some of those job
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boards right like Glassdoor indeed etc. Like they like we because you’re able to
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kind of target them with culture and messaging and warm them up and then
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basically with our process being able to give give a couple let filter layers
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to vet people. So when people are showing up to these things and film it
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filling out these applications it’s just a higher quality recruit. So what
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actually makes health care social work so we’re gonna you know we’ve I guess
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there’s a few content pillars that we try to base things off of story
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architecture matters a lot you know what you can and can’t say but ultimately it
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is still social so we do want to tell stories here just figuring out content
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pillars working on the the AI versus the human play and then speed to publish
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making sure that you’re still having consistent great content that’s flowing
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out of the organization is incredibly important but take a minute and talk
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about the story architectures. It’s important I mean I think it’s not any
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different than practically any other industry I think the if you’re looking
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for an agency to best support you not only the compliance things that we’ve
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been talking about but you have to be an active participant like if your goal
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is to not look at it or touch it or not participate in any capacity you’re
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making it very difficult for an agency to represent you and to be authentic so
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I think you have to go into a relationship expecting to provide some raw
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material or direction I think the clients that have worked best with us
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have been active participants because they’ve got an interesting story to tell
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and that makes an agency’s job easier if you don’t if you’re not doing something
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interesting or different or unique it’s very hard to keep people’s attention
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span so no matter what I think it’s important that you know the ones that
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have worked best for us are the ones that have given us something to work
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with. Yeah yeah a hundred percent and that translates to the content pillars
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right directly you know for patient acquisition you know health and
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education one of the biggest content pillars and just because it’s because
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it’s health care doesn’t necessarily mean that there can’t be some sense of
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fun to it it doesn’t have to be very very gray you know it can be you know
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black or I should say very black and white like it’s you know it’s it’s still
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storytelling people still want to still want to get engaged so there still has
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to be some fun element to the to that content coming out the other things big
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is provider credibility talking about patient experience in an innocuous way
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being able to tell patient stories in anonymously. Yeah and I think they can
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be formulated from a mixture of stories right so you can talk to the Urgent Care
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Center and whatever their patient group they’re they’re looking to raise more
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awareness and you can kind of formulate a story we used to do this we would take
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multiple patient stories multiple patient reviews and kind of blend them
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into one so it wasn’t recognizable and then you kind of produce it out so it’s
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still it’s true it’s just not it’s just HIPAA compliant. When you’re talking
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about recruitment and you know you would be touched on this before and why we were
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able to deliver better results than platforms like Indeed was because
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actually you can take that content and actually mold it around the culture mold
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it around the job instead of on patient testimonials you know anonymous patient
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testimonials you can have other nurse testimonials other doctor testimonials
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kind of talking about how great it is to work there a day in the life in health
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care social media trust is the product every post either builds off of it or it
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destroys it in the health care industry if you’re thinking about bringing an
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agency on board or building this in house these are the types of things you
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actually want to look for. The pitfalls are large but the upside is great as
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well. Joanna jump in tell me what does this mean when people are making it
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when people are making a decision. Yeah when you’re looking to make a
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decision and you’re questioning you know you have questions for the agency or
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whoever to see you’re working with I think it’s important to start by asking
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about the compliance workflows so not just asking them if they have
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experience with with HIPAA but what does their content approval process look
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like what safety barriers do they have in place and what examples can they give
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you of of some things that they’ve run into and that they’ve you know maybe
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protected a previous client from before. 100% ask for health care specific
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results I think we’ve summarized this well but throughout this whole podcast
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we’re talking about how health care is probably one of the more difficult
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verticals to work in so you want someone who has experience in that space.

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Clarify your goals as well because that’ll kind of dictate your strategy as a
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whole right are you trying to get more patients are you trying to get more
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patients in a certain for a certain service that you offer or are you trying
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to recruit more health care workers they’re just completely different
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strategies and approaches and safety precautions and then don’t just settle
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for an agency who says we’ve done health care before really ask these questions
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dig in gets to know how experienced they are with HIPAA compliance and
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community management and strategy as it relates to different objectives.

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Wrapping this up health care and social media is absolutely doable I mean you
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know we’re very proud we’ve done it pretty well in the past we’re not the
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only company that’s done this well out there there are a couple of others but
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I’d say you know it’s it’s not the norm that’s for sure and making sure that you
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find somebody that has a track record in this area that can answer some of
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those questions and talk on some of those topics that we brought up today I
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think we’ll go very far for making sure that you find somebody that’s a great
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fit so that’s about it that’s gonna be a wrap for us today I hope that was
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helpful and let’s do some social media

Key Takeaways

• Healthcare social media is absolutely doable — but it requires a fundamentally different approach than any other vertical. One wrong comment reply can constitute a HIPAA violation, even if you’re just saying “thanks for the kind words.”
• The most common HIPAA trap isn’t a bad post — it’s community management. Confirming someone is a patient in a public comment, even innocuously, is non-compliant. Every healthcare social team needs a moderation protocol before they publish a single post.
• Patient acquisition and healthcare recruiting are two completely different social strategies — different platforms, different content, different success metrics. Trying to serve both goals with one strategy means being mediocre at both.
• For patient acquisition, social media is a hyper-local awareness play — you’re not going viral, you’re making sure your neighborhood knows you exist before they need you. GoHealth saw 13M+ in reach and 589K+ clicks using this approach.
• For recruiting, social becomes your culture window. Nurse and doctor testimonials, day-in-the-life content, and values-driven storytelling outperform job board listings because you’re warming up candidates before they ever apply.
• The agencies that succeed in healthcare build compliance workflows that don’t kill speed — content approval processes measured in days, not weeks, with clear guardrails so the team isn’t second-guessing every post.
• In healthcare social media, trust is the product. Every post either builds it or erodes it — there is no neutral content.