Social media for private healthcare companies started out quite slowly, but has quickly grown into a key part of a robust healthcare marketing program. The more casual approach to using Facebook pages originally used in the private healthcare space has evolved significantly. Companies need to curate the content on their pages more (and not let just anyone post content on their pages), designate "page administrators" whose job is to answer prospect enquiries or questions, stimulate conversation around topics of interest to their customers, share useful and brand-positive posts from other places, and create content specifically for sharing on Facebook. If you're interested in starting up your social networking community, keep the following tips in mind when launching...

We’ve been diving into the pros and cons of aligning your business with a political position. Now that we’ve looked at the topic from all angles, discover questions you can ask yourself before you decide to communicate your political positions with a wider audience, as well as some do’s and don’t for mixing business with politics...

In light of the political upheaval lately, we provide some pros, cons, benefits and risks of aligning yourself with a political position. Intermingling your business with political positions is not often straightforward. If you choose to stick with social convention and not speak about politics, you gain a certain emotional safety while losing democratic freedoms. If you make a stand and align yourself with a political position, you may gain a loyal group of customers and build a strong company culture, while losing other business that is...

Evidence shows that affiliating your business with politics can have both strong negative and strong positive impacts, depending on what your beliefs are. As we discussed at the beginning of this series, if you are merely trying to guess or predict where the public's interests may go (on a whim), you could wind up in hot water. It's best to not play the lottery and only back positions that you have deep convictions about where you can back up your beliefs with evidence and find a core market that shares your beliefs. This fits in well with niche positioning, which is a strategy we advise all of our clients to...(read more)

The reason a brand might want to associate itself with a political position (progressive immigration policy, gender pay-equity, income inequality, climate change, etc.) is to demonstrate they share the virtues of their market...