Mining information about your target market and potential customers just got easier. While many marketing pros still scoff at using Twitter for professional applications, healthcare consumers are riding the train and it's not stopping anytime soon. Not only can you directly interact with consumers, you can create an entire shift in how you present your brand by extrapolating this information to drive the trends rather than follow them. 

How To Make Twitter Work For Your Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategy

Know who your target market is to strategize your healthcare digital marketing plans. 

Twitter allows you to track how your consumers discover, digest and respond to information in both real time and across time. Rather than relying on expensive, second-hand information from hired-out research consulting firms, do the work in-house to see a more immediate result. Real-time, plus in-house tracking could spell a fiscal upswing if you know your target market well enough. Studying consumers in real time also allows marketers to understand how their target base is changing or expanding. If you think you know the ins and outs about your target market, researching their personal values, needs and wants should not be a daunting, but rather an encouraging task for your social media marketing team. 

It pays to know the Twitter lingo- trending and hashtagging.

If you come home from work only to hear your teenager speaking some foreign language about Twitter trending and hashtagging for the day, it's time to listen in. Yes, hashtagging is an insightful tool that modern marketing professionals can make use of too. Hashtags drive the trends of the moment and allow you to use Twitter as a refined search engine. 

How does this benefit your marketing strategy?  

• Ability to offer in-the-moment solutions to consumers. "We care about each and every one of you at X Healthcare." "Really," says John, 24, single dad with a daughter, "prove it." You can interact with consumers in real time to help them troubleshoot potential problems with their in-the-moment care, insurance questions and frustrations. If John is waiting forever in the emergency room with his daughter and tweets that nobody has attended to them yet, hashtagging your company's name, you can intervene directly with a solution for John and his daughter and plan for later to increase efficiency in your healthcare settings. A video camera in the waiting room does nothing but stay behind closed doors, maybe to be reviewed for quality control later, but Twitter speaks a thousand words to millions of people potentially nipping problems in the bud before they escalate. You can influence what those millions hear- especially if you interact, show you care and facilitate solutions to consumers. Who can deny a digital marketing strategy that intercepts potential problems in real time, saving money on admin labor and utilities for phone calls consumers don't have time for! If you take care of John immediately, he's happy- he knows you care about his daughter's health and you saved money by eliminating a disgruntled customer phone call that wastes everyone's time in the long run. 
• Mining informatics for future use
• When your brand develops a new marketing campaign, take it to Twitter. Hashtag events, products and wellness events to track what motivates your consumers most. You can even host live Twitter events to discover how many of your customers use the platform to research your brand from their end.  
• Record the five top hashtags generated by your customers related to wellness and health. Do they align with how you market information to them? Hashtagging also allows you to discover what sources your customers trust for at-home advice. By mirroring the info they're seeking across your brand's blogs and websites, then hashtagging it via Twitter, you can stay connected to your target for the long haul.