As you probably know by now, we assist clients in developing strategic, sustainable social media campaigns that are meaningful to their target audiences. What you may not know is that before embarking on this project, we perform a full social media assessment because every company is different and not every social media platform is right for you.

To provide advice for effectively launching a social media campaign, we’ve invited John Lynn to discuss insight into his success with social media and the Healthcare Scene Blog Network.

John (or as many of you may know him on Twitter, @techguy) is a leading social media influencer in the healthcare space, managing 14 blogs and a Twitter account with nearly 4,000 followers.

Dodge: What made you decide to begin blogging about healthcare and ultimately launch the Healthcare Scene blog network?

Lynn: Initially I just started with one blog and was really just bored on a weekend. My day job was implementing an EMR in a health and counseling center along with providing top to bottom IT support. I did have the original goals of showing my knowledge of EMR for future jobs and getting to the top of Google for the search term EMR, but otherwise I was just playing around. I saw it as a great way to learn about EMR and to pass that knowledge forward.

A few years later, I heard about the EHR incentive money when it was just “money for EMR software.”  I wrote about it really early and thanks to those posts traffic to my site exploded. I then started posting to the website on average about once a day for the next couple years. Along the way I kept adding websites to the mix and eventually decided to brand the network of healthcare IT websites The Healthcare Scene Blog Network.

Dodge: The Healthcare Scene network, which now includes an impressive 14 blogs, pushes out an enormous amount of relevant, targeted content. What’s your secret for not only staying on top of the most relevant EHR/EMR news, but keeping it fresh?

Lynn: Luckily, I now have 7-10 writers helping me to create content on the network. It would be a real challenge to create content for 14 websites by myself. With that said, I still personally create between 10-15 posts per week.

I do think I’m blessed with some special gifts to be able to create so much content that’s usually fresh and relevant. Not the least of which is a good memory and an ability to connect different stories very quickly.

However, I also believe a number of other things really help me. First, is Twitter is a great resource to find stories when the well of ideas is dry. Do a search for a relevant keyword and you’re bound to find something interesting.  Second, I believe the best writers are the best readers. When I read stories throughout my week, I’ll often come up with a post I want to write. I store those post ideas as draft blog posts on my website. I probably have 200-300 draft ideas sitting there waiting for me to write the rest of the story. Third, I try not to constrain what I write. At the end of the day, I try to create something that provides value to the reader. Once I reach that bar I feel I’ve done my job with that post. Fourth, my domain expertise really helps when writing about EMR and EHR. If I hadn’t actually participated in the grind of multiple EHR implementations, it would be hard to write as much as I do. Fifth, I try to meet and surround myself with smart people at conferences, on social media, etc. I often take kernels of an idea from these smart people and turn it into a post.

Dodge: Adoption of social media by healthcare providers and vendors continues to grow. How do you envision social media evolving for these audiences going forward?

Lynn: My gut reaction is that healthcare providers and vendors will likely take very different approaches to social media. However, one thing every organization needs to understand is that one of social media’s strengths is connecting people. Behind every Twitter account is a person. Behind every visitor to your blog is a person. Behind every like on Facebook is a person. Behind every LinkedIn profile is a person.

For healthcare providers, I’d suggest that they test out the social media waters and see if they like it. While many are likely concerned about patient interactions on social media, they can still interact with other doctors, experts in the field and other people who can support their practice. Start where it’s comfortable and provides real value and expand your use of social media over time.

For vendors, it’s going to be increasingly important to have an online presence. My most important suggestion to vendors is to create an authentic voice. A number of vendors have asked me Healthcare Scene could do their social media for them. While there are certain aspects of social media you could outsource, I think you miss out on a lot of social media value if the company isn’t the main voice of the company. I think the better model is to have a social media expert help your company create a culture of social media use.

Both of these audiences will need to have some social media presence as more and more people look to social media as ways to understand and interact with businesses. You can learn a lot about a business through their social media presence.

Dodge: So, you’ve already grown from one blog to 14; what can your readers look forward to next?

Lynn: I don’t have any big expectations to keep growing the network larger and larger. I’m sure we’ll cautiously add blogs to the network if we can do so in a sustainable way. For example, we’re just launching a new EMR & EHR Asia blog. Instead, the plan is to focus our efforts on making the existing websites more and more useful to those who read them.

I’ve also started a related site called Influential Networks which in some ways is an extension of the Healthcare Scene network. Influential Networks embraces social media and the new world of integrated marketing in a way that’s never been done before in healthcare IT. It will be a lot of fun to see it evolve as new media continues to evolve.

In many ways, I’m still doing what I did when I started. I’m just having a good time doing something I love.

Posterous: Posterous is a site that allows anyone to post any item of interest to the Web at any time, then provides the user with a custom URL that they may then share via their social networks. Acting as a sort of hybrid of a blog and Twitter, all a user has to do is send an e-mail with an attached photo, video, MP3, or other file, to the generic inbox. The site instantly responds to the user’s e-mail with a custom URL that will host whatever file that was sent. Similar to services like TwitPic, Posterous users’ information can be shared instantly and publicly.

Past Words of the Week
Ning, API, Lifecasting, Crowdsourcing, Meme, Social bookmarking, Trackback, Twitter Grader, Authority, TweetBeep, Compete, Astroturfing, WEGO Health, BackTweets, PDR.net, socialmention, Twazzup, Health Exchange, Health Tweeder, DIDGET, Thoora, Google Buzz, bit.ly, E-patient, Alltop, mHealth, Augmented reality, OpenID, ROI, #hcsm, Medpedia, Almost.at, Hashtag, FollowFriday, Beta, Microblogging, Sidewiki, Meta tags