It’s that time of year again, folks. Time to begin spending a countless number of hours parked in front of the television donning your [insert your favorite team here] jersey with a cold beer beverage in hand and bowl of pretzels within reach, watching Sunday, Monday night and (sometimes) Thursday night football games. Hopefully all the mass number of hours you researched (off on your company’s time) in choosing your top fantasy football draft picks will pay off for your league’s team.
Are YOU ready for some Fantasy Football!
This year, AVID Design invites you—our readers and hospital marketing colleagues—to join our faux Fantasy Football League on espn.com. We’re not really putting a lot of effort into this, so we’ve decided to just do a fun Pigskin Pick’em League where you select the winner of each game (and to make it even easier, the spread will not be taken into account).
So, there will be no need to check out who is on the IR this week, or if that trade is going to happen between you and your commissioner, or what tight end you’ll need to pick up on waivers. This is easy, fun stuff, man. If interested in joining our league, here’s the info:
Group: AVID Design and Friends
Password: snuggy
But we DO have a few rules and regulations: To be eligible for our GRANDE prize (which is a $50 iTunes giftcard), you must be a hospital marketing or hospital IT employee. Also, we must have at least 10 people (teams) participate, not including AVID Design employees—who are ineligible for the prize (sorry, AVID employees only get to win bragging rights).
Although I have a few phobias, like my alarming fear of heights and flying in airplanes, Friggatriskaidekaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th) is not one of them. We all hear about myths and superstitions associated with this particular date, so with that day being today, I thought I’d compile a short list of myths relating to hospital Website design, SEO and the like.
Happy Friday the 13th from Jason Voorhees and AVID Design.
Since a list of 13 myths would be more apropos for this date, I thought I’d spare the folks out there who too suffer from phobias, like triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13).
1.) Website Design – A hospital (or any) Website redesign will solve all my Web problems.
Many hospital marketers believe that a redesign is simply the “cure” for solving any and all Website problems because a fresh design is all that is needed. This is untrue. These same people don’t take into consideration that the strategy that goes into a redesign can sometimes be as important, if not more important, than the actual design itself.
2.) Content— If users are going to be guided to my hospital’s Website to read up on procedures and services offered, then posting every bit of information I have online is the only way to go.
First things first…users don’t read on the Web, they simply scan, so it’s best to write relevant, bite-sized chunks of optimized copy that are easier to read (e.g. bulleted lists). Secondly, content is not just written text, it is also images, videos, etc. And don’t be fooled about trying to fit all information on one page, it is okay to have a few pages as long as the copy is relevant and includes at least one call-to-action and effective anchor text to navigate through the pages.
3.) Social Media and Web 2.0 – If I build a Facebook fan page for my hospital or I start a hospital CEO blog, it will accumulate numerous fans and page hits overnight.
This doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time and effort to cultivate an audience, and a good social media and Web 2.0 strategy should be put into place before embarking on this trip.
4.) Website Design – I have to do my hospital’s Website redesign all at once.
Truth be told, redesigns take an extended period of time to fully complete, so it’s best to break down the redesign process into phases where each phase allows you to concentrate in a particular area, like focusing one phase on your hospital’s specialties and content and another phase on examining rich media. Also, change is received better with your employees and users when made in increments rather than all at once.
5.) Search Engine Optimization—Once you optimize your hosptial’s Website, then you are good to go and should be ranking well in the major search engines from here on out.
SEO is an ongoing process and is never finished (much like that of your hospital Website). What your hospital ranks today for pediatric cancer quite possibly not be the same three months from now. It’s best to have a professional (like AVID Design) provide you with an SEO assessment (that’s FREE) of your hospital’s Website to get the ball rolling on developing a proper search engine marketing (SEM) campaign.
Lisa M. Federico | Content Specialist | AVID Design
One day when social media becomes a part of the mini case studies in textbooks for students of communications, marketing, law and other academic disciplines, this one deserves to be included, as it is indeed quite perplexing—both from a healthcare communications perspective and from a general online communications perspective.
Here are the basics: Cheryl James, a hospital employee at Oakwood Hospital in Dearborn, Michigan, wrote some comments at home on her personal Facebook page aboutcoming “face to face” with “cop killer” Tyress Mathews, a patient that also happened to be accused of murdering a local police officer.
Although James’ comments were indeed barbed—including a hope that Mathews “rot in hell”—they did not explicitly mention his name.
However, when James got wind that the hospital was investigating her comments, she immediately deleted the posting. However, it was too late: She was soon terminated for violating HIPAA regulations and for making “disparaging” comments.
Questions, Questions, Questions
Even if you don’t work in healthcare marketing and communications, this is still an extremely fascinating situation from a number of angles. It certainly has me pondering a number of questions, such as:
What defines “public” in social media? It’s not clear if James’ Facebook settings enabled only her network of “friends” to see her comments or if they were completely open for anybody to see. If she didn’t have any privacy settings enabled, then sure, whatever she wrote was almost undoubtedly public. But what if her settings only allowed authorized friends to view her comments? Does that change whether the comment was public or private?
What defines protected patient information? Neither Mathews nor Oakwood’s names appeared in James’ posting. So, is saying that if a person is admitted to a hospital, it is a violation of HIPAA…even if the person or the hospital is implied and not explicitly mentioned?
What was her interaction with patients? More specifically, how did she come “face to face” with Mathews, and was his safety and quality of care ever at risk of being compromised?
What else is there to this story? In particular, was James a popular and respected employee, or was this the perfect excuse to can an unpopular employee that had more than overstayed her welcome?
And regardless of her stature, how did the hospital discover the comments? Was she being monitored, or did somebody report her?
Even if James doesn’t file a lawsuit for wrongful termination (which would very likely examine these questions), this situation is ripe with precedents that could very well influence similar situations. What do you think?
Remember the transitive property from grade school Algebra? If a=b and b=c, then a=c. Also known more colloquially as the “bask in the glory of your clients” formula…which is precisely what we will be doing in today’s blog.
U.S. News and World Report recently published its prestigious “Best Hospitals” List for 2010–11, and we want to highlight the hospitals that not only made the cut, but also happen to be clients of ours. Congratulations, everybody!
Many times I have been on the phone with a client or sitting in a conference room with a group of stakeholders and I get asked a variation of this question:
What is the best way for us to edit images for use on our Website?
The quick answer that most firms will give their clients is to use Photoshop or some other premium image editing software. Many of our clients don’t own Photoshop and don’t know how to use it. In the past we’ve recommended Picasa as an option for image editing. When my Adobe suite quit working on my computer the other day, I needed something a little more powerful than Picasa. I found Pixlr.
Pick Pixlr for your image editing needs!
Pixlr claims to be the “most popular advanced online image editor in the world!”I would agree with them. It requires no installation, no sign-up and no fee.
Many of the features that you expect in Photoshop are in Pixlr, such as a familiar looking interface, layers, image adjustments and other common tools. Plus, Pixlr also sports some cool features like a crushed paper brush and a cloud brush, tutorials for the novice, and even an express feature (Pixlr Express) that allows for quick edits. It’s a perfect way to edit your images.
By no means is it a substitute for all of the power that comes with Photoshop, but it definitely takes the cake in accessible and affordable image editing. Try for yourself!
Have you used Pixlr? What do think about it? Let us know!
