One of my favorite board games is Stratego. For those not familiar, this is a game that is similar to chess, except in Stratego you don’t know the identity of your opponent’s pieces. The goal in Stratego is to capture your opponent’s flag, and victory requires (according to Wikipedia) “collecting information, planning, and strategic thinking.” M

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Tomorrow is the launch of Greystone's first OpenSpace, Unconference. For those of you who know me, you probably already realize this presents a bit of an uncomfortable spot for me. I'm the kind of person who likes to write to-do lists and craves structure. And, the idea of hosting a meeting of senior Web leaders with no pre-set agenda and no pre-ge

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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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Hello my friends – Prediction came true: the Convergence is here! For a long time now I’ve been involved in Web technology and healthcare. Many others and I have been predicting that there will be a convergence of technology / marketing and how healthcare organizations utilize the Web. Ok, so it isn’t that far reaching of a prediction but fo

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It is with immense sadness that we announce the passing of John A. Eudes, after a courageous battle with cancer. John was an innovative leader in healthcare marketing, a Greystone.Net founder and the chief architect of the Annual Healthcare Internet Conference, now in its 15th year. He was a mentor to many in this industry, a change agent with an e

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Ok, so Kathy Divis said some very nice things in her New Year’s blog post about me joining the Greystone team. I thank her for that and want everyone to know I feel just as fortunate to be a part of such a great organization and an incredible group of people. From the very first day I met John Eudes, many years ago, I had this feeling that we may w

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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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I spent the last week at the 14th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference, and I’m not sure I can accurately describe how I am excited, exhausted and grateful all at the same time. The Conference had an all time record attendance – over 570 folks for 100s of organizations country-wide – and what a great time. The keynoters were great from the kick of

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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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ROI is very important to any organization when defining the efficiency of an investment. Intranets are no exception and organizations believe ROI is very important, but defining what an organization wants to measure can be difficult to determine. We observe that most hospitals see the inherent value in intranets and while measurements are less t

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Surfing the Web nowadays, I guess you get used to being bombarded by advertisements on almost every Web site that you visit …. no, not THOSE sites … I’m talking about your normal everyday run-of-the-mill Web sites. I usually make it a point not to click on any paid ads that I happen run across … mainly just for spite. Well, that and because I feel

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To do list: Work on client Web site assessment report Complete Web site grade cards for client Complete client Internet business plan Work on client survey questions Work on client SEO project Follow-up on Healthcare Internet Conference BLOG!!! These are just a FEW of my “to do” list items for one day! I’m sure you too have a lis

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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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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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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

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