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.

Full story

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

Full story

Now, I know mom always said it wasn't right to brag on yourself, but go ahead and do it just this time. You deserve it. After all, we all know how hard you work and without many resources. So nominate your hospital or healthcare system for a Best in Class award. The nomination process just opened (and will close on August 20th). Entries are bein

Full story

We are pleased to release the conference brochure for the 14th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference, which will be held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas beginning November 15-17, 2010.  It took a ton of work to get the program in place, but it was also a lot of fun. Download a copy of it from our Web site. We think it is offers a wide and strong var

Full story

I do, and so do 63.2 million others. The popularity of smart phones has soared during the last decade, especially within the past three years, thanks to Apple’s iPhone, which was only just introduced in 2007. So amazing to me because I remember a time when cell phones didn’t exist. It was a time when I actually had to pay attention to the road i

Full story

As I deliberated on a topic for this week’s blog, I ended up changing my course. I had originally planned to discuss the recent social media privacy issues that have been in the main stream media, and then ran across the article, Social Media Boosts Organ Donors. We all have seen several examples of organizational fund-raising through social med

Full story

“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

Full story

Lately I've been thinking quite a lot about transparency in the online world. Transparency is, after all, one of the basic tenets of social media. You must be transparent to remain credible when it comes to social media. That's been taught to all of us as we've jumped into the social media world. When social media first started on the scene, th

Full story

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

Full story

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

Full story

It seems, especially in health care, that we tend to get wrapped up in our day-to-day duties and the brainstorming and creativity of promoting our organizations online gets lost along the way. That’s why I feel it’s important to keep our eyes open in our everyday life and experiences, and draw ideas from places other than competitors and peers heal

Full story

Three….Word….Taglines Lately, here at Greystone we’ve been talking about updating our printed marketing materials. As I was tossing around ideas for a possible folder cover, I found myself using the dreaded “three word tagline.” My decision came about simply enough. I was thinking of a simple, straightforward design with the possibility of inclu

Full story

Every day people say great things about your hospital or healthcare system. "They saved my brother's life", "They are some of the nicest people around", "We've had our babies there and it was a great experience". They say it in the grocery store, in church, during poker night, and at the salon. But, rest assured, a few people will say things you

Full story

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

Full story

One of my responsibilities here at Greystone is to assess hospital and healthcare system Web sites. When we complete an assessment, we use a grade system to determine the quality of a Web site. Thirty-one categories are evaluated using a consistent and quantitative scoring system, and we assign grades to each category ranging from an A to a D-.  Yo

Full story

Do your physicians actively participate on your healthcare organization’s Web site? We all know a Web site can be a powerful tool for our organizations. Unfortunately, getting that message across to certain areas of the healthcare organization can be a difficult task.  Even for those who are lucky enough to be working in a Web savvy environment, fi

Full story

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

Full story

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

Full story

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

Full story

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

Full story