Chatbots help consumers interact with many different industries, and now are coming to healthcare. Automated chatbot conversations, occurring throughout the year, help build true relationships. Timely check-ins with patients gather health data, provide relevant information and offer a smooth way to register or set appointments. In this HCIC session, participants saw an example of a cool interface, experienced a chat and learned how chatbots are used at Centura Penrose St. Francis and other hospitals.

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As a group of healthcare-specific Website consultants, we spend our day-to-day freshening up on the digital trends within and outside of our industry. It’s no secret that healthcare is typically one step behind most industries in the adoption of trendy tech gadgets. And it often makes sense, as we are typically on tighter budgets because marketing

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As we’ve covered briefly in our GreyMatters e-newsletter over the last few months, the era of Big Data is upon us. Have you wondered where marketers stand on the Big Data topic? While not healthcare specific, some answers to those questions are available. Recently, the CMO Council and SAS published results of their cross-industry survey of world

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We all know that Big Data is a hot topic. In fact, according to Reuters, Big Data will grow by 45% annually to reach a $25b industry by 2015.  And, it's a hot topic in healthcare too; although the  focus of many articles on the topic tend to center around the use of data to improve care or disease management, and rightly so. By using data to track

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Free is good, especially when it comes to marketing your hospital or health system. So you jump in with free opportunities to display your brand through social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter; then you start a blog and then all of a sudden, it doesn’t feel so free anymore. In fact, social media-based marketing costs real money. Gra

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What a great group we had for the Webmaster Workshop last week in Chicago!  I thought the food and the service at the Sofitel was fantastic.  The networking and the conversations seemed to be valuable to all and, as usual, it was like drinking through a fire hose as we were trying to take in all of the good ideas and case studies. As you settle

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Ask any market researcher if they have some examples of funny things people have said on surveys, and then stand back and watch what happens. I am willing to bet that you will have to stop him or her after a few minutes. Do not be surprised at any excessive exuberance, as we research geeks are generally not called upon for humorous insight and tend

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The results of our recent research on internal reporting of external Web analytics data are in, and have been sent to all who participated in the study.  According to the 40 organizations who participated in the research, it is clear that this is an area where many continue to struggle.  Here are some of the major findings: ROI remains elusive.

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This week we went live with two new areas in our Greystone.Net Benchmarking database:   traffic from referring sites, and mobile traffic. Both areas were added based on feedback from participants. After I had a chance to review the preliminary data, two interesting findings jumped out: 1) Mobile traffic to hospital Web sites continues to increas

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The results of Greystone.Net’s recent research on intranets in hospitals and health systems are in. Thanks to all who participated! We received responses from nearly half (46%) of our 125-member panel of healthcare marketers. All respondents who completed the survey have received a complete copy of the results.

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Good internal reporting of Web data should document successes, illuminate failures, and serve as a key component in evaluating overall strategy. Yet for many healthcare Web marketers, the challenge of producing quality reports has proven to be extremely elusive and frustrating. In my experience, most organizations do not go much further than tracki

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“I don’t really pay attention to our top search terms,” says one of my customers, a marketing analyst at a prestigious academic medical center. “They are mostly just a variation of our hospital’s name.” For a lot of analysts at hospitals and health systems, especially those cursed with having an easily misspelled name, I can understand why they fee

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Health content is essential to the success of a hospital’s Web site. If a patient or user is searching for information on a particular diagnosis or treatment but are unable to find relevant information on your Web site, they will not only visit another site, but their experience may also leave a lasting negative impression of your organization. As

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Greystone is pleased to announce the results of our recent survey on hospital/ health system Web budgets. We sent the survey invitation to more than 100 healthcare marketers, and received responses from 65. (please note:  Greystone’s research panel is made up of hospitals or health care systems with at least one FTE dedicated to the Web, and member

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We have recently received inquiries  from several hospital or health systems Webmasters who want to know our opinion about Web sites like Alexa, Compete.com, and Quantcast.com. These  “third party web data providers” use proprietary algorithms to estimate the number of visitors on any Web site, and have become a major resource for many Web marketer

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Over the last week and a half during the Vancouver Olympics, several of my colleagues here at Greystone and I have been held hostage during our lunch hour watching the unique and exciting sport of curling. If you’ve never watched curling, the sport is very similar to shuffleboard on ice, but with a few interesting wrinkles. A thrower from each team

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At the height of last year’s financial struggles, Greystone.Net sent out a survey to its current and former customers about their budget outlook for the coming year. We certainly struck a chord with our hospital and health system audience, who at the time were wondering if the sky truly was falling. We received a tremendous response, with more than

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Our recent study on social media has generated a lot of buzz from healthcare bloggers. The high level of response is really encouraging, and Greystone.Net will continue to do this type of research in the future. There seems to be a tremendous demand from healthcare marketers for information on current industry topics. The goal of our study was n

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According to our just released research, 9 in 10 hospitals or health systems are currently involved to some degree with Social Media. Other key results from the study: • Only one in three hospitals/health systems has a formal Social Media marketing plan. • Hiring and budgeting for Social Media is rare, but starting to happen more and more. • T

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Recently, Greystone.Net was helping a client hospital with a business plan for its Web site. As part of the arrangement, we designed, launched and managed a web satisfaction study for them. This is something that we are doing more and more these days, as organizations seek to add customer input into their redesign efforts. My background is in resea

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