Waynesville Health was shocked at a sudden surge in web traffic and social media mentions after the launch of their latest patient testimonial campaign titled: “That’s What She Said.”

Waynesville Health director of marketing, Garth Sanders, remarked, “We know for a fact that reaching women is critical to the success of almost any healthcare marketing campaign. They wear the pants, so to speak, when it comes to making healthcare decisions. We needed a campaign that not only spoke to women, but was spoken by women. After a month of brainstorming we came up with ‘That’s what she said,’ a campaign that focuses on testimonials from women who’ve experienced the compassionate care of our hospital and clinics.” Read the full story »

In a move aimed at further restricting any form of socializing or unproductive behavior among hospital staff, officials at Knuckles Medical Center have removed more than 60 water coolers from the facility. While many hospitals have followed a similar philosophy in blocking social web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, KMC is believed to be the first organization in the country to take the strategy to this level.

“Everyone says these web sites are online versions of the water cooler, so we went ahead and eliminated the actual water coolers,” said KMC Vice President of Compliance, Staffing and Totalitarianism, E. B. Skruge. “Boom! That’s what I’m talking about!” Read the full story »

Following the implementation of a new Facebook strategy, Pantaloon Hospital’s CEO Terry Becker held a press conference Thursday to announce the hospital has determined that it, according to a popular online quiz, is the color beige.

“We’ve jumped head first into social media, and what we’ve learned through Facebook is truly eye opening,” said Becker. “Following the completion of the ‘What color are you?’ quiz, the result of ‘beige’ gives us tremendous insight into how to engage our community, and we’re acting immediately on that information.” Read the full story »

The marketing department at General Hospital has developed a new approach they call “Billboards 2.0.” They developed the strategy after reviewing search terms people used to find the General Hospital website. When they discovered that visitors were using very specific terms, they realized it could help them target their billboard messages. Read the full story »

A new service called Smatter is set to compete with the growing social network Twitter, but with a twist. Instead of limiting posts to 140 characters like Twitter, the new service will limit member posts to just 14.

“It’s our belief that you’ll get ten times the content value from posts that are one tenth the size,” says Smatter CEO Thomas Smidge.

The social media entrant will introduce a whole new vernacular as well. Instead of posting “tweets,” members will post “smatts,” forwarded posts will be called “resmatts” and group conversations will be “smatt-chats.” Read the full story »