As Florence explains, “Social is a non-negotiable part of driving brand awareness and building connections with patients, physicians and community members. But it can be a challenge for the marketing teams on the digital front lines to overcome the concerns of security and privacy teams—especially at the intersection of HIPAA and social media.”

Many organizations report HIPAA compliance measures inhibit their strategy, as some of the most engaging healthcare content they create features innovative studies, patient testimonials and medical breakthroughs, which require lengthy approval processes and careful execution. In this guide, we’re breaking down what you need to know to remain HIPAA compliant on social media, and sharing examples of healthcare brands who shine on social—despite regulatory limitations.

Please note: The information provided in this article does not, and is not intended to, constitute formal legal advice. Please review our full disclaimer before reading any further.

HIPAA’s impact on your social media content

HIPAA privacy laws protect sensitive patient information from being disclosed publicly, including on social media. The HIPAA Privacy Rule expressly protects patient health information as it relates to how the data is shared, including in marketing and advertising efforts.

Sensitive protected health information (PHI) includes data about a patient’s past, present or future medical conditions, provision of healthcare to the individual and past, present or future healthcare payments. Given social media platforms gather user information, track behavior and have license to use your visual assets, it’s easy to see why these regulations exist.

In the age of sharing patient before and after photos, testimonials and other sensitive information, healthcare providers should exercise extreme caution when crafting social media content. HIPAA regulations also mandate healthcare companies carefully manage customer interactions on social media—which includes preventing patients from sharing PHI, and deleting it if they do. Failing to comply with HIPAA regulations is costly—both financially and to your brand’s reputation.

However, as Katherine Van Allen, Senior Solutions Engineer at Sprout, points out, the benefits of social outweigh the risks. “Social media should be part of healthcare organizations’ strategy. The people you need to reach are on social—whether it’s prospective patients or employees. Without a social presence, you aren’t a part of vital conversations happening about your system. From discourse about a team member or location, clerical mistakes and legal actions, or rapidly spreading misinformation about a disease or treatment plan. Tuning into social media listening will help you pinpoint key areas of opportunity.”

How to create brand guidelines to support HIPAA and social media

Though you should always consult your legal counsel and compliance team regarding HIPAA compliance on social media, here are general best practices to follow as you create your brand guidelines.

Craft policies and train your team

Start by consulting with your legal and compliance teams, and make them a key partner in validating the legality of your strategy, campaigns and content. Work with them to develop a social media compliance protocol, which should include instructions for corresponding with people via social media.

Familiarize your team with this protocol by co-creating HIPAA compliance training programs that feature social media education. In your training, highlight proper usage of customer data on social media and common HIPAA violations.

Follow de-identification best practices

When crafting new social media content, remove all PHI from your posts. PHI includes health information used alongside the following identifiers:

• Names (first, middle and last)
• Geographical indicators smaller than a state
• All elements of a date (except year)
• Phone and fax numbers
• Email addresses
• Social security numbers
• Medical record, health plan beneficiary and account numbers
• Certificate or license numbers
• Vehicle identifiers
• Device attributes
• URLs and IP addresses associated with patients
• Biometric identifiers
• Photographs of full faces and other unique physical identifiers
• Any other numbers or codes that could identify an individual

For more context, while a patient’s name paired with their vital signs is considered PHI, their vital signs alone are not.

Monitor for HIPAA violations

Even if you take every precaution to limit the use of PHI in your content, patients can still put your compliance at risk by sharing personal information themselves. Prevent this by adding disclaimers to your direct message interactions and brand profiles. Ask patients to refrain from sharing any PHI and inform them where they should route inquiries.

If a patient should mention or DM you and compromise PHI, delete the message immediately, and route them to a more appropriate channel. Florence advises, “Even if you add a disclaimer to your profile or DMs, some patients will still seek out medical advice. To combat this, some organizations use chatbots and triaging tools to automatically alert them of potential PHI, and respond to or delete sensitive content.”

By using a tool like Sprout Social’s Saved Replies, you can use pre-written replies to quickly respond to customers and redirect the conversation to a secure channel. You can also use Sprout’s chatbot builder to automatically reroute social users to an email address or other secure channel for healthcare-related conversations.

With Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can use tagging and filtering to flag messages that contain PHI, and build workflows that delete those messages.

Build a process for patient approvals

There might be some cases where patients (or their families) are interested in sharing their stories with your audience, like this adorable Halloween TikTok from Cleveland Clinic’s NICU.

Have a streamlined and clearly documented process in place for gaining written consent and HIPAA authorization to disclose PHI from a patient before sharing those stories, photographs and/or videos.

Stay up to date on legislative changes

Make it a regular practice to stay up to date on legislative changes at the federal and state levels. Regularly review resources like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website. You can also follow the HHS and National Law Review on social for real-time updates, including case rulings regarding HIPAA data breaches.

Looking for more resources? We put together a HIPAA compliance on social cheat sheet that can help you remain compliant, while executing an effective and creative social strategy.

Common HIPAA violations and social media’s role

While HIPAA compliance on social is complex, the monetary, reputational and, most importantly, patient well-being risks are too steep to get it wrong. Here are the most common HIPAA violations you should avoid.

Hiding patient details in plain sight

Even if you don’t explicitly include faces, names, dates or other obvious identifiers, some situational details can reveal a patient’s personal information. Both Florence and Van Allen advise close review of photography and videos before posting. Ensure there is no protected information in the background of your media.

Van Allen warns, “Something that seems as innocuous as a photo of a staff room can be a violation. Someone could zoom in on a patient’s chart sitting on the table, and be able to identify their name or other PHI.”

Validating health information

“A lot of patients message healthcare brands thinking their message will reach their doctors—which means they include sensitive PHI in their outreach,” Florence says. As we mentioned in the previous section, it’s critical to delete any PHI, even when the patient provides it unprompted.

But one critical nuance many organizations miss is that you should also refrain from validating PHI. For example, if a patient comments on your post and reveals they have an illness, you should not acknowledge that illness in your response. It could be a HIPAA violation. Here are a few example scenarios:

Example patient message: @Hospital, I have recently been diagnosed with diabetes, and I was wondering which of your doctors specializes in diabetes care?

Not HIPAA compliant: @Patient, we know navigating a new diabetes diagnosis can be challenging, and we’re here to help. Call Dr. Smith’s office directly to schedule a consultation.

HIPAA compliant: @Patient, we have deleted your comment to protect your privacy. Please call or reach out to our team via email for help.

Limiting training to corporate channels and paid personnel

By limiting training to corporate channels and paid personnel, healthcare organizations create knowledge gaps that can cause major fall-out. For example, an excited intern could post a selfie with a patient. Or a residency student could accidentally reveal PHI in a funny TikTok.

Healthcare organizations should remember that HIPAA applies to everyone under the control of a covered entity—including volunteers, students and unpaid personnel. It also encapsulates social profiles beyond the corporate account, including the personal accounts of staff members.

What HIPAA means for your social media vendors

HIPAA compliance and security should be top of mind when selecting software vendors and tools. During your platform evaluations, expect your security and privacy teams to be vigilant about the ways data is used when it’s integrated into larger tech stacks.

Find a management solution with permission levels and message approval functionality to ensure only responsible parties can post. Ensure that cybersecurity measures are in place to protect PHI on electronic devices such as encryption or firewalls.

Take it a step further and find a social media management solution that is willing to sign a business associate agreement (BAA)—a legally binding contract that specifies each party’s responsibilities when it comes to PHI and HIPAA compliance. As Florence details, “You should work with a partner like Sprout Social that can sign a BAA, and take on the risks and responsibilities with you.”

Healthcare brands to learn from

These four healthcare organizations demonstrate that having an active social media presence is still possible and important, even in regulated industries.

Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic, the top-ranked hospital in the nation, uses social media to build their employer brand. Like when they reshared a post from a Transplant Chair who celebrated a successful month. Notice how the post doesn’t reveal any sensitive patient information, but instead focuses on the accomplishments and high caliber of the transplant team.

Mayo Clinic also shares profiles of their volunteers, physicians and other personnel to further humanize their company, like this heartwarming video about a Holocaust survivor-turned-volunteer.

The hospital system supplements these posts with general health and lifestyle tips to inspire their followers, and promote well-being, like in this carousel about the benefits of daily movement.

Cleveland Clinic

Cleveland Clinic, a leading academic medical center, stays on the pulse of trending healthcare conversations and uses their expertise to keep their community informed of new public health reports.

Like in this Reel where they investigate the benefits of the latest social media health craze, cold plunging or cold showering. The post breaks down how to reap the rewards of the trend, while staying safe and healthy.

The medical center also shares top-of-mind public health reports produced by their organization. They typically briefly summarize the key findings of the report, while including the link so people can read more, like they did in this post.

Boston Children’s Hospital

Boston Children’s Hospital is home to the largest hospital-based pediatric research program in the world. The organization uses their social channels to highlight groundbreaking research (and the researchers behind it) like they did in this post about a top clinical geneticist advancing children’s health outcomes.

They also feature the patients who benefit from their state-of-the-art treatments by interviewing their families, like in this feature on Facebook about the power of genetic testing for children with epilepsy.

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield is a trusted health insurance plan provider. On social, they share meaningful statistics about the value they offer their members, including this post about the return on investment employers gain from investing in workplace addiction recovery and support.

They also share awards and accreditations that demonstrate their commitment to member care and excellence, like this post about their recognition by NCQA.

As a popular insurance plan provider, they receive a lot of inquiries about member policy details on social. Their care team illustrates how to route conversations from public forums to more appropriate, secure private channels, like in this reply where they ask a member to email their help center.

Navigate HIPAA and social media with confidence

HIPAA compliance on social media is a multi-step, ongoing process that involves closely aligning with your legal and security teams, and developing interdepartmental education. By following key best practices that protect patient data and your organization’s brand health, you will be equipped to navigate complex HIPAA protocols and develop your social presence with confidence.

Next steps: Now that you’ve read this article, put a meeting with your legal and security teams on the calendar to start planning your org-wide education efforts, and brush up on healthcare social media benchmarks to better understand social’s role in your community engagement toolkit.

Disclaimer

The information provided in this article does not, and is not intended to, constitute formal legal advice; all information, content, points and materials are for general informational purposes. Information on this website may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. Incorporation of any guidelines provided in this article does not guarantee that your legal risk is reduced. Readers of this article should contact their legal team or attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter and should refrain from acting on the basis of information on this article without first seeking independent legal advice. Use of, and access to, this article or any of the links or resources contained within the site do not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader, user or browser and any contributors or contributing law firms. The views expressed by any contributors to this article are their own and do not reflect the views of Sprout Social. All liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this article are hereby expressly disclaimed.

The post A healthcare team’s guide to HIPAA compliance on social media appeared first on Sprout Social.

Social media has democratized access to medical information and empowered patients to take charge of their health. But it also has negative consequences. Like increasing the spread of misinformation and excluding healthcare workers from vital conversations with their patients. It has pushed some hospital systems, professional societies and pharmaceutical companies into an unflattering limelight, as patient and provider criticisms go viral. Risks like this have caused healthcare organizations to recoil, and grow cautious of being present on social channels.

The reality is that the future of the healthcare industry will be a hybrid of online and offline experiences. People will use social media networks to look up health information, find care providers, search for employment and receive updates from their healthcare team and hospital systems. They expect you to show up on social—and social data can provide value for your company, too.

By using social listening tools, you can keep an eye on trending conversations in your community, stay ahead of crises and receive real-time patient feedback that helps you improve your care. Keep reading for examples of social listening for healthcare in action.

The benefits of social listening in healthcare

The sheer volume of social content published hourly makes it tough for healthcare companies to find their patients, providers and community members. Social listening enables you to cut through the noise, hone in on relevant conversations and share valuable timely insights with your leadership team.

Here are specific ways teams can use listening to monitor and analyze audience conversations in an efficient, centralized manner, featuring advice from Sprout Social experts.

Proactive crisis management

The best things a social team can do when it comes to responding to an impending crisis are: already have a crisis plan in place and catch minor crises before they spiral out of control. According to Jill Florence, Director of Enterprise Sales at Sprout Social, “Unfortunately, PR crises are common for healthcare systems and other healthcare organizations. Many have gone through a challenging event themselves, or have seen it happen to other companies and they’re afraid of it happening to them. Whether it’s a patient who had a negative experience, a violent threat or mishandling patient data, leaders want to know about it in real-time.”

Of course, crises can be external, too. Katherine Van Allen, a Senior Solutions Engineer at Sprout, adds, “Healthcare organizations can also use listening to pay attention to government decisions, relevant current events and specific bills and or lobbying conversations that will impact care units beyond the marketing team.”

By including Sprout Social tools like Listening Spike Alerts in your crisis plan, you will be alerted to shifts in conversations around topics like your hospitals, facilities or supply chain, plus trending news. These alerts will help your team stay on top of current events, and be the first to know if a crisis is about to unfold. As Florence explains, “You don’t want to be in a situation where the CEO is the one informing you about a situation, and you’re just reacting. Getting listening alerts right away is critical to proactively managing crises, and leading the charge at your organization.”

Real-time patient and clinician feedback

While receiving feedback from patients and clinicians on social might seem daunting, it’s the best way to source unfiltered intel. By intercepting this feedback, the social team accesses voice of customer knowledge that can help improve multiple aspects of your organization.

With social listening insights on hand, it’s possible to understand the needs, opinions and feelings of patients, physicians and community members. And understanding them translates to better content, care, and recruitment and retention strategies. As Van Allen puts it, “The [healthcare organizations] who use social listening make more informed decisions about their content strategy.”

By making brand health a part of your listening strategy, you can consistently monitor audience sentiment on social. A platform like Sprout enables you to visualize overall sentiment trends and zero-in on key audience pain points. With this presentation-ready business intelligence, you’re empowered to share audience feedback—like how patients feel about your current wait times and the care they receive, to how physicians would describe your culture—with the rest of your organization.

“Comparative” intelligence

In the healthcare industry, it’s common to consider other healthcare systems and companies “comparators” rather than competitors. While you might not consider other organizations your direct competition, you can still use them as a barometer to measure your performance—from patient care and satisfaction to talent recruitment and culture.

Van Allen describes, “Use listening to understand your share of voice and how people are talking about comparators. Ask yourself: What kinds of specialties, hiring conversations and patient feedback are they getting? How does that compare to us?”

This is especially helpful amid an industry-wide staffing shortage and quickly evolving patient expectations. “The hiring landscape is so competitive that customers need to understand why other companies are being chosen over them,” says Florence. Social listening delivers key learnings that can help you reach (and exceed) care benchmarks on social and beyond, and rethink how your company approaches hiring and workplace culture overall.

Sprout’s Competitive Analysis report aggregates social data from your comparators, including impressions, engagements, sentiment and overall share of voice. You can dig deeper into specific audience feedback in the Conversation and Messages tabs.

5 examples of social listening for healthcare in action

We researched examples of ways real healthcare companies use social listening to increase patient satisfaction and engagement, while balancing growing needs around hiring and patient care standards. Here’s what we found:

1. Guide expansion

As hospital systems and other healthcare organizations expand, real-time audience feedback gleaned from social listening empowers marketing teams to provide a strategic vision.

Florence cites a specific example of a hospital system she worked with that used customer feedback from social listening to guide expansion. “They were completely maxed out. They didn’t have large enough facilities or enough clinicians to accommodate their community, and they felt the backlash on social. Customers complained about long wait times, poor physician care and overall bad experiences. As their company increased capacity, the social team was on the front lines. They managed customer pain points and kept decision makers abreast, while using that feedback to influence expansion in a way that maintained positive brand reputation long-term.”

2. Provide audiences with relevant content

Social listening insights give you a window into issues that matter to your patients, community members and physicians, and enable you to craft an audience-centric content strategy.

Van Allen describes how organizations can use listening to adapt their messaging to meet the needs of their audience. “We see healthcare organizations use social listening to research trending conversations and industry topics, and use that intel to inform their content strategy. For example, a hospital system could create a Listening topic about going “back to school” and surface that parents within their community want more tips to prepare for cold, flu and RSV season.”

3. Route audience intel to the right department

At some healthcare organizations, multiple social marketing teams work together—each representing a different department (e.g., cardiology, dermatology, oncology, etc.). Using a robust and intuitive platform like Sprout makes it possible for these teams to share social listening insights with one another, and facilitate stronger communication and cross-team collaboration.

Florence adds, “Using Sprout’s custom Listening reports lets healthcare marketers generate and share insights with other functions.” By creating department-specific Listening topics, social marketers at healthcare organizations—like hospital systems—can find the specific insights they need to reach their unique goals, like increasing cardiology patient satisfaction. Sprout’s centralized platform houses all of this data in one place, making it possible for marketing teams to work in harmony.

4. Track awareness campaigns

Healthcare organizations can use social listening to gauge how effective promotional campaigns for emerging research and timely initiatives are.

For example, a medical society specializing in cardiology ran a major awareness campaign centered around American Heart Month. To measure the performance and impact of their work, they created a listening query around their organization name and the branded campaign hashtag. By analyzing this Listening data, they were able to identify key strengths and weaknesses of the campaign, resulting in valuable strategy refinements for upcoming initiatives.

You can also use listening data to find advocates who were vocal during a past campaign, and tap them for future partnerships.

5. Increase share of voice

Listening is a valuable tool for healthcare organizations who want to improve their credibility and rise up to the level of other comparators.

In one instance, a children’s hospital looking to raise its national ranking through strategic media opportunities created a competitive listening topic to track its share of voice against higher-ranking hospitals. While analyzing the Listening data, they identified opportunities for submission-based awards and event sponsorships that might help bolster their reputation. They also established new competitive benchmarks for engagements and impressions.

In healthcare, you hope that people never need certain services (especially emergency/urgent care). But you do want to be top of mind, in the moment, when they do.

Social listening shows your audience you care

Your audience expects healthcare brands like yours to be present on social media. Despite its reputational and compliance risks, social offers a wide variety of insights that enable you to manage crises effectively, gather real-time patient and provider feedback, and stay on par with your comparators.

Finding value in social as a healthcare organization requires tools that capture actionable insights and mine value from social to drive exceptional patient and provider experiences.

Want to start turning social data into elevated patient care? Request a demo of Sprout Social’s Listening solution today.

The post The power of social listening for healthcare organizations appeared first on Sprout Social.

Now, attentive care can start well before a patient—whether that be former, current or prospective—enters your facility. Use this benchmark report to better understand social media’s role in your community engagement toolkit. 

In this report, you’ll find: 

• Need-to-know benchmarks to inform your social media strategy
• Key insights on care expectations specific to social 
• Tips on navigating the most common social media challenges faced by hospitals and healthcare brands 

People turn to social media to find care providers that meet their unique needs. Use this social media benchmark report to get into the conversation. 

The post Hospital and Healthcare Social Media Benchmarks for 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Healthcare companies have to educate, understand and regularly communicate with their communities to make an impact. Unlike other industries, those communities span generations, each with specific platform and message preferences.

Thoughtful use of social media in healthcare can tackle some of the industry’s biggest challenges. Employer branding efforts can help ease staff attrition pains providers are feeling. When new threats emerge, healthcare organizations can take to social media to educate the public on how to protect themselves. When medical misinformation starts brewing, social media is a direct line to setting the record straight with patients.

Social media can impact every arm of your business. But an effective social strategy isn’t possible without strategic investments. Attempting to integrate social media without investing in the proper tools and infrastructure is setting yourself up for failure. When healthcare organizations choose the right partner, they get back precious time and resources to focus on the most important objective: connecting communities with quality care.

3 ways to maximize the ROI and impact of social media on healthcare

Healthcare companies that intentionally embed social media throughout their operations will reap the ROI—but not without the right infrastructure.

Managing multiple priorities requires consistent strategy and execution, understanding of and communication with your audience and frequent reporting on your progress. None of that is possible with legacy social media management solutions. Companies have to invest in advanced social media management resources to minimize the chaos.

Sprout Social commissioned a Total Economic Impact™ study conducted by Forrester Consulting to quantify the potential impact of investing in Sprout for social media management. Here are findings from the Forrester study, along with three ways an intuitive platform like Sprout helps generate concrete business results.

1. Customize your content strategy

Audience segmentation can get complicated quickly. Every demographic needs healthcare and every demographic uses social media. Multi-generational synchronicity across your content strategy is key. The family matriarch who primarily uses Facebook requires a different touch than the cousin who spends his time on Twitter or the daughter who is only scrolling on TikTok. Tailoring the message to both the audience and the platform becomes overwhelming without the right tools. For organizations that manage multiple profiles, it gets exponentially harder.

Sprout Social gives organizations the flexibility to tailor their content for each account—plus the peace of mind that all teams are adhering to a cohesive strategy and tone.

According to the Forrester study, over three years, Sprout’s centralized platform enhanced social media teams’ productivity by 55% in year 3, driving a total of $973,000 in savings for a composite organization representative of interviewed customers.

Large health systems with profiles for different locations and divisions can ensure their team is rowing in the same direction. For example, our publishing suite and Asset Library make it easy to duplicate posts and quickly tweak the message based on platform and audience. Since your entire social team is in the same tool, everyone has visibility into your overarching messaging and can align their tasks accordingly.

Sprout’s campaign management features simplify the burden of planning, monitoring and optimizing social content initiatives across your team. Campaigns allow you to group posts into categories, whether you’re tracking by audience, subject, event or something unique to your organization. Campaign reporting gives quick visibility into performance in real time or retroactively.

2. Retain patients with efficient, effective service

Healthcare moves fast and companies don’t have the luxury of being uninformed. When every second counts, your team needs swift access to what matters.

One dissatisfied patient airing their grievances on social media can quickly turn into thousands. If the story strikes a chord, your inbox can become flooded with inquiries and complaints from people throughout your community. According to our 2023 Content Benchmarks Report, health, wellness and fitness brands receive an average of 120 inbound engagements per day—and those messages only increase on a news-heavy day. When something goes wrong, customer service teams can become overwhelmed and run the risk of sending out inconsistent replies or not responding at all.

Sprout’s Smart Inbox is prepared for these situations, with customizable controls to let you know when an issue or crisis is unfolding. Spike Alerts can give you time to catch your breath and come up with a response plan while Automated Rules can help you manage the load. If there’s a touchy subject that comes up frequently, you can use saved replies to make sure you hit the right notes every time. Our integration with Salesforce Service Cloud gives customer service teams relevant patient context to guide their interactions, without having to leave the platform.

The piece of mind Sprout Social provides for customer service teams is immeasurable. The cost and time savings are not.

According to the Forrester study, customer service representatives saved over two hours a week with Smart Inbox, a $142,000 cost savings over three years for the composite organization.

3. Unite internal teams with a centralized tool

With a breadth of audiences to engage and campaigns to manage, healthcare social teams don’t have the time to spend maintaining disparate tools and manual processes.

Whether planning posts for a major initiative or a crisis response, you need a streamlined content approval workflow that doesn’t involve emailing documents or multiple Slack messages. Organizations also need accessible data to understand and continuously optimize the impact of their social strategy. Identifying what’s working, what to tweak and what to eliminate is vital—but it shouldn’t take hours poring over spreadsheets to find out.

Partnering with Sprout has helped us to keep pace with the pulse of our audience. Our strategy is most effective when we can clearly see what’s working or not working, where our audience is growing and how we stack up with our competitors. All this data is at our fingertips in Sprout—from the 30,000 ft. big picture view to the granular performance of a single post.

Rosanna Jensen
Marketing Content Manager, MultiCare Health System

By uniting your social operations into the same platform, Sprout Social shows you the whole picture, whether you’re publishing, messaging, auditing or analyzing. Avoiding Excel band-aids frees your team up to be creative and reduces the risk of burnout.

According to the Forrester study, moving away from disjointed legacy solutions and centralizing social media needs in Sprout Social drove $473,000 in savings over three years for the composite organization.

Realize the ROI of social media for healthcare

Organizations responsible for delivering always-on care need technology that can keep up. Healthcare teams have to invest in resources that unlock the full power of social across their organizations, be it to engage communities, retain patients or recruit future talent.

Learn more about how Sprout generates significant social media ROI by downloading The Total Economic Impact™ of Sprout Social study.

The post How to realize the ROI of social media in healthcare appeared first on Sprout Social.

Nutrisense uses multiple social media channels—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram—to deliver content designed to educate audiences.

“We use our social media platforms primarily to amplify our mission and educate audiences to improve their metabolic health, and impact our marketing funnel” said Luz Cortázar, Marketing Manager at Nutrisense. “We want to empower people with knowledge and show them how Nutrisense can help them make lifestyle changes to achieve better health.”

Nutrisense had about 25,000 followers across its social media profiles in July 2021, when Cortázar took on the responsibility of creating and managing the company’s social media content. Fast-forward to the end of 2022: Nutrisense’s social media engagement grew by 45% and their community had expanded to more than 130,000—an increase of 469%. According to Cortázar, one of the vital factors in that growth has been maximizing user-generated content (UGC) with help from Sprout Social.

“Sprout helped me see that UGC—not just pictures, but also video—is the key to generating engagement with Nutrisense’s audiences,” Cortázar said. “People love seeing other people’s stories.”

Using insights from Sprout to amplify UGC that advances the customer journey

Cortázar said UGC is especially effective for entertaining Nutrisense’s target audiences. Although her team was aware of the power of UGC, using Sprout Social made it easier to collect UGC, amplify their potential subscribers and keep current members engaged.

With Sprout’s Reports, Cortázar can identify which content resonates best with Nutrisense’s audience so that they can replicate success on other channels. “I can see performance by profile, post and other metrics that help me understand how our content drives engagement and impressions,” she said.

That, in turn, allows them to collaborate more effectively with other departments, like paid media and partnerships. “Sprout helps us work together better to move people down the funnel,” Cortázar said.

“Being aware of what’s working in organic and what our members are sharing helps us provide insightful information with the Paid Media team.”

Cortázar offers this example to underscore how the strategic use of UGC impacts Nutrisense’s brand awareness efforts: “We started working with a partner who was using our program and gaining popularity on TikTok. He was sharing his food experiments on his profile, so we started creating ‘explainers.’ I would write a script, and one of our registered dietitians would explain his reaction to the experiment. The combination of those two formats, experiments and explainers—with the added push of our paid media team—helped us add almost 79,000 followers during the third quarter of 2022.”

The growth we’ve seen in our social media community reflects our team’s investments in content creation—and how the insights we’re getting from Sprout are paying off.

Luz Cortázar
Social Media Marketing Manager

Finding more time for content creation thanks to Sprout’s timesaving features

The exponential growth of Nutrisense’s social media community is an outcome that Cortázar didn’t necessarily plan on when she first started using Sprout. She also emphasized that for Nutrisense, having an engaged community is more important than fostering a massive following.

“As a content creator, it’s the engagement that matters,” she said. “If a person interacts with your content—liking it, commenting on it, saving it or sharing it—you’ve done something well.”

What Cortázar initially wanted from Sprout was a community management tool that would help save her time so she could focus more on what she loves to do most—creating content, especially video. But Cortázar said what really sealed the deal for her when selecting Sprout, was the Smart Inbox.

“We can monitor everything in one place—Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, comments from organic. It’s a game-changer,” she said. And because Sprout has made community management so much easier, Cortázar has delegated that responsibility to Nutrisense’s customer success team, so she can now devote about 70% of her average workday to content creation and the rest to strategizing.

A sustainable social strategy starts with smart insights

With Sprout, the Nutrisense team can prioritize the work that matters most to their business and members.

Learn how Sprout Social can help you better serve your target audiences by elevating your community management and increasing collaboration across your teams. Request your free demo today.

We are a data-driven team, so the reports I can pull from Sprout help me understand which content performs better. This helps me plan, strategize and see what things move the needle across the funnel—which is important on platforms that continuously change their behavior. Sprout’s Reports are my best ally. It’s the tool I value the most.

Luz Cortázar
Social Media Marketing Manager

The post How Nutrisense grew its social media community by over 400% with help from Sprout Social appeared first on Sprout Social.

“Ivanti manages and secures the ‘Everywhere Workplace,’” said Sal Viveros, the company’s Head of Global Corporate Communications. “Businesses depend on our technology to automatically manage, secure and service all of the on-premises and edge devices in their IT environment—from laptops to phones to virtual reality headsets.”

Part of Viveros’ role at Ivanti is to help increase brand awareness for the company and promote senior leadership’s expertise in how businesses can use technology and services to make the “Everywhere Workplace” possible. One of Viveros’ frequent collaborators at Ivanti is the Director of Social Strategy, Jamie Laliberte Whalen, whose responsibilities include shaping influencer marketing strategy and leading Ivanti’s newly reimagined brand ambassador and incentive program.

“The brand ambassador program is near and dear to my heart,” said Whalen, who joined the company in November 2021. “I wanted the program to be really successful. That’s why I reached out to our customer success team at Sprout Social to help us identify what we needed to do to improve it.”

Benchmarking brand ambassador program performance—with insight from Sprout

Whalen leads a social media team who deliver on Ivanti’s global social strategy with support from a system of internal stakeholders, like Viveros, and additional resources and tools, including Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social.

The assistance Whalen specifically sought from the Sprout Social team was twofold: First, she wanted to know what a best-in-class brand ambassador program looked like, especially for Ivanti’s industry. Second, she wanted insight into how Ivanti’s current efforts were stacking up against those top-tier metrics.

“In short, I wanted Sprout to tell us where we are and where we need to be so we could set reachable goals to move us toward becoming best-in-class,” Whalen explained. “I told the customer success team at Sprout, ‘Give me the key performance indicators and other metrics that we can hold ourselves accountable to, so I can bake that into our social strategy for the year.’”

Sprout’s team came back with a host of relevant data for Whalen to examine, including information on how similar programs by Ivanti’s competitors were performing and what tactics they were using. Whalen also received details on user adoption and engagement levels and signup rates for both best-in-class programs and Ivanti’s own program.

Whalen said, “We learned that our program had about a million in reach per month. Also, our adoption rate was just 17%. Some people would consider those numbers good, but in my view, they weren’t good enough. I also learned from Sprout that a best-in-class program has about a 30% adoption rate, and we obviously weren’t even close to that.”

After reviewing the data from Sprout, Melissa Puls, Ivanti’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, told Whalen she wanted to challenge everyone in the organization to utilize the program. “I told her I’d already included it in our social strategy,” Whalen said. “I knew it would be powerful if we had a program that allowed everybody to access and share content at the right time, wherever they are. The voices inside our company are the strongest voices. They are on the front lines, working hard every day in our ‘Everywhere Workplace’ to make sure Ivanti’s brand is standing up.”

Underscoring the value of employee advocacy—starting from day one

To increase utilization of Ivanti’s brand ambassador program and drive employee advocacy, Whalen and her team, with help from Sprout, examined how the current program was structured. “We looked at it holistically and examined its backend taxonomy,” she explained. “I wasn’t the first owner of the program, so I had to step back to understand how it was set up initially and determine how we needed to run and support it moving forward.”

One need Whalen identified was an internal communications plan that would “let everyone know how awesome the reshaped program was going to be.” She said, “It’s not my program, it’s everyone’s program. And I think a key reason we’ve had so much success in improving it is because we made the point to get people—including executive leadership—involved and excited about it early on.”

Whalen said her team prioritized creating content and posting it to an intranet site to help employees understand how to use Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social. “We developed new videos to explain what Sprout is, how to use it on a desktop, how to use the mobile app, and more,” she said. “We also created resources like blogs and how-tos.”

This information is now a part of Ivanti’s onboarding process for employees.

New hires are excited and want to be part of something big, and onboarding provides the perfect opportunity to get them on the Sprout platform and become a brand ambassador.

Jamie Whalen
Director of Social Strategy

The social media team at Ivanti also realized that many existing employees didn’t know about the program—or hadn’t been educated well about how to use the Sprout tool. “We had two different groups to educate, so we created a quarterly newsletter to help everyone know what content is available for them to use and offer tips to help them succeed,” said Whalen. “There’s been a lot of follow-up by email, too, to highlight wins and keep people engaged.”

Measuring results and telling the value story through Sprout’s analytics

Using contests like gift card giveaways and other special events as incentives have helped drive employee engagement in the brand ambassador program. That includes Invanti’s sales and BDR teams, who were among those unfamiliar with the program and initially uncertain about the value it could provide. “Let’s just say I had a ‘Jerry Maguire’ moment with them,” Whalen laughed. “I was like, this will help me help you. Let me show why this is beautiful, and why it’s worth your time to participate.”

The education and incentivizing Whalen and her team have provided has paid off—delivering a quick and impressive return on investment, in fact. “By the end of the first month of revitalizing the program, we had 17 million reach and an adoption rate of nearly 46%—which is well over the 30% benchmark for a best-in-class program,” said Whalen. “Also, after launching our incentive program, we went from 1,000 to 3,000 shares in the first month, and then up to 17,000 shares within the first quarter.”

The newly thriving brand ambassador program at Ivanti is also helping the company save about $500,000 in marketing costs this year through earned media. “That’s a lot of money that Ivanti doesn’t have to spend on marketing thanks to our brand ambassadors,” said Whalen.

Executive leadership at Ivanti is not only paying close attention to these results, but also is engaging with the brand ambassador program as well—including acknowledging employees’ efforts. Whalen shared this example: “After our first contest, our CEO reached out to the three winners to thank them personally for being brand ambassadors. He was so impressed by these individuals and what they were able to do for the company. I don’t think these folks had ever talked to our CEO before, but now they were all in a conversation because of something they’d done together.” 

“Social media is critical to building the Ivanti brand, and using our employees to help communicate with our customers is important because it’s more authentic and more credible,” said Viveros. “With help from Sprout, we can provide information to our employees to share easily with our customers through social media. It’s a way for our key messaging to touch our customers directly.”

Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social is also really easy to use. I’m posting two to three messages per day myself, and it takes me just seconds to do it.

Sal Viveros
Head of Global Corporate Communications

Whalen credits the wealth of data and insights and the partnership that Sprout Social has provided for helping Ivanti’s brand ambassador program quickly achieve best-in-class performance. “We’re up to 17,000 shares monthly with our brand ambassador program—which gives us a lot more reach and a lot more eyes,” said Whalen. “I think that through our partnership, we have created a beautiful effect.”

Analytics that help communicate the bottom-line value of social media efforts to stakeholders and the “business-to-human touch” the customer success team delivers are top reasons Whalen said she’d recommend Sprout Social to other marketers. “You’re not just working with a company—you’re working with people,” she said. “Sprout really wants the best for your company. They will create a plan for you to become a best-in-class program. That’s what they do. Many companies say they do that, but Sprout has actually helped us do it, and we have the results to show for it.”

We couldn’t have succeeded without the data, insight and partnership we got from Sprout. We’re up to 17,000 shares monthly with our brand ambassador program—which gives us a lot more reach and a lot more eyes. I think that through our partnership, we have created a beautiful effect.

Jamie Whalen
Director of Social Strategy

Learn how Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social can help extend your social reach. Request your free demo today.

The post How Sprout Social helped Ivanti quickly create a best-in-class brand ambassador program appeared first on Sprout Social.

“The content we produce has tangible impacts on the healthcare industry. We provide educational resources to healthcare professionals that help them stay informed,” says Elida Solis, Social Media Director at Vizient.

When the COVID pandemic began, Elida and her team jumped into action. They refocused their content on the emerging needs of the healthcare community. To amplify their message, they tapped into the power of employee advocacy and tripled their impressions in the first six months.

Their strategy proved so effective they were awarded “Best Use of LinkedIn” by PR News.

In two years, Vizient turned their employees into brand advocates, gained thousands of new followers and increased their awareness and engagement with the help of Employee Advocacy Software by Sprout Social.

Tapping employee networks to make thought leadership accessible

Before the pandemic started, Vizient was in the early stages of developing their employee advocacy program. After lockdown measures were put in place and their work went virtual, they accelerated their advocacy project plans and launched with a small pilot group.

Employee advocacy is a new initiative for us. During the pandemic, our Member Performance team—like everyone else in the country—couldn’t travel to meet their clients. It was a critical time. They had our COVID resources, but they struggled with how to share them. They didn’t know what to say or how to share the messages broadly.

Elida Solis
Social Media Director, Vizient

Sprout’s Employee Advocacy solution provided Vizient team members with streamlined access to company content and pre-approved social messaging, which made them feel more confident sharing posts with their network.

By posting prepackaged content on LinkedIn, I have been able to reconnect with former colleagues, expand my network and engage in interesting conversations with my community. If you’re looking for an easy way to help your team stay current on relevant information and expand your brand’s influence in the market today, I would recommend Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social.

Richard Ponder
Assistant Vice President Pharmacy & Care Delivery Product Strategy, Vizient

Soon, the initial results were in and the pilot far exceeded Elida’s expectations. Within three months, Vizient saw double the engagement compared to their traditional organic social channels and gained thousands of new followers.

Vizient leadership decided it was essential to expand the program to other teams. One-by-one other departments were onboarded, and Vizient continued to see record-setting impressions.

Elida and her team were determined to make Employee Advocacy implementation as user-friendly as possible.

She says, “It was a commitment to our employees. We are giving them a tool that’s easy to use. It’s a straightforward, time-efficient way to reach their networks.”

Elida and her team provided support, including an internal advocacy resource hub that houses a product demo, instructional guides and on-demand webinars. The resources equip Vizient employees with personal branding tips to elevate their social presence and maximize the advocacy program.

Providing value to customers and team members alike

Vizient’s employee advocacy success is rooted in their commitment to providing value to their audience and team members.

For example, at the onset of the pandemic, Vizient immediately halted all ongoing content development efforts to refocus their entire strategy on COVID-related educational resources.

As Elida says, “We, as a company, made the decision to make a lot of our content available to healthcare professionals outside of our membership program. We knew it was a critical time to share timely updates in an efficient, accessible way. Social media played a key role in helping us do that.”

By putting the needs of their audience at the forefront of their strategy, Vizient saw significant performance improvement—from their engagement rate to follower count.

To maximize the effectiveness of employee advocacy, Elida knows their content must resonate with Vizient team members as well. She makes it a top priority to provide them with 10 to 15 insightful content stories they actually want to share.

She advises team members to, “Share what’s most relevant. Don’t think of it as ‘promoting content.’ Consider what your network wants to learn more about. When you share a post, customize the copy to infuse your experience and make it relevant for your audience.”

Above all, Elida and her team want the content to make a positive impact on healthcare and the lives of professionals in Vizient’s community and beyond.

Elevating the value of social and advocacy

When Vizient first started using Sprout’s platform of social management tools, they made it clear they needed to communicate social performance results with executives and other departments on a regular basis. Their most important key performance indicator (KPI) was engagement.

Using customized versions of Sprout’s performance reports, Elida and her team create monthly and quarterly reports that elevate the value of social across their company.

At Vizient, we’re really fortunate because our senior leaders get it. They really understand the importance of social. They see the results in our performance reports and they’re actively engaged and participating in our social initiatives.

Elida Solis
Social Media Director, Vizient

As Elida says, “We’re able to view the metrics and the results from the number of active employees—the amount of shares, the resulting impressions and engagements. About 85% of our employees in the system are active, and that’s a big win for us.”

But equally important is their employee satisfaction, which is the ultimate value of the program. In every internal survey they’ve conducted, their Employee Advocacy satisfaction score was 98% or above. On average, 67% of employees reported receiving greater network engagement because of the program.

Since we started using Sprout’s Employee Advocacy solution, my network has become more engaged. I get asked about my company more than ever and people comment on how active I am on LinkedIn. It makes it easier for me to interact with my connections on social. I would highly recommend Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social to other companies considering it.

Carl Taggart
Vice President, Zone Leader NE & SE US—Spend Management Services and Delivery, Vizient

Elida points out that although employee advocacy is voluntary, the Vizient team shares posts because they find it beneficial and enjoy celebrating company culture.

Sprout Social helps Vizient extend brand awareness

For Elida and her team, employee advocacy has increased brand awareness, supported recruitment and generated lead opportunities. It’s also giving Vizient employees the ability to amplify content through their own voice and perspective.

Learn how Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social can help extend your social reach. Request your free demo today.

The post How employee advocacy tripled Vizient’s social media engagements appeared first on Sprout Social.

Compliance with industry regulations is a top priority for hospitals, insurance companies, medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical brands, and few directives loom as large as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

HIPAA violations can cost organizations major fines and even result in jail time. In short, using social media carelessly is not an option. Protecting patient privacy and staying within HIPAA compliance on social means understanding what you can and can not say, show or share.

We’ve pulled together information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the American Medical Association and LetsGetChecked to create a resource of tips and requirements related to HIPAA compliance and executing your social media strategy. This is not an exhaustive compliance guide, but rather a starting point. Always consult your legal or compliance teams regarding your social media policies and work with them to confirm that you’re remaining HIPAA compliant.

Download now to set your organization up for compliance and—dare we say—creativity in your healthcare social media strategy.

The post Supporting HIPAA Compliance on Social: A Cheat Sheet appeared first on Sprout Social.

Using Sprout’s Smart Inbox to send the right message

The unique nature of Inspire’s sleep apnea treatment drives a lot of interest and by extension, a lot of questions. Inspire has a small social team, but the Sprout Smart Inbox makes it possible for them to review and react to every inbound comment, private message or mention. Whether reacting means responding directly, assigning the message to a colleague or simply checking it off their review list, it’s all done within the Smart Inbox.

“Before I started at Inspire, the team had been monitoring natively. It’s so easy to miss things and let important conversations slip through the cracks that way,” said Inspire’s Social Media Community Manager Emily Allen. “When I joined the team, I recommended using Sprout to ensure we could be attentive on social. Initially I spent about 90% of my day in the inbox answering and saving all our audience’s questions, which was a great way to learn the business.”

Allen started as a team of one but gradually got more support, including an additional teammate and two agencies to assist with Inspire’s paid and organic social. Each person with a seat in the platform has the ability to task and tag messages in the inbox. If Allen’s teammates run into a question or comment they’re unable to address, they can simply task it to her.

Additionally, the team has Inbox Rules set up to automatically tag messages that align with a specific theme like insurance or cost, for example. Then, they can report on trends and commonalities within those message themes, identify the most frequently asked questions from potential patients and inform the focus of their content.

Providing critical customer care, stat

To address FAQs, Inspire relies on Saved Replies, available on the Advanced plan and stored in Sprout’s Asset Library. Once they’ve selected a scripted response as their jumping-off point, they customize their responses to incorporate their own personality, add emojis and sign their names. All of these capabilities enable seamless collaboration and more accurate and efficient customer service.

In an industry like healthcare, where patients will reach out with concerns related to their care, responding quickly is crucial. When the coronavirus pandemic began, patients faced new challenges with accessing care, so Allen set up Sprout’s COVID-19 Inbox Rule Template to identify all relevant messages. Understanding common concerns and roadblocks patients were facing helped Allen and her team develop new assets and response scripts covering telemedicine and patient safety.

Some of the VIP lists require immediate attention. The Inbox Rules we have set up ensure that any time someone from that list comments, I get an email so I can address it right away.

Emily Allen
Social Media Community Manager

VIP lists are another Sprout automation that ensures that important messages are addressed quickly.

“We love the VIP list. It helps us pay special attention to interactions with patients who reach out frequently, promising leads, brand ambassadors, our doctors and even people who bring unpleasant messages into our community,” said Allen. “Some of the VIP lists require immediate attention. The Inbox Rules we have set up ensure that any time someone from that list comments, I get an email so I can address it right away.”

The payoff is inspiring

The attentiveness and intentionality behind Inspire’s customer service is exceptional, and they had a 71% reply rate in Q2 2020 to prove it. Bolstered by Sprout’s robust capabilities, Inspire continues to provide the top-rate care people need to breathe normally and sleep peacefully.

The post Sprout Social is a breath of fresh air for Inspire Medical Systems appeared first on Sprout Social.