One part funny and one part repulsive, but according to eMarketer, 17 percent of Twitter users do their Tweeting on the while in the restroom. Talk about multitasking (insert snare and cymbal crash)!

Click to see larger chart.

But seriously, folks, what is the relevance to healthcare marketing? At the highest levels, perhaps very little.

As we have regularly discussed in the blog, the best practices for social media do not advocate using social media as an explicit advertising channel, but instead, as an interactive and multidimensional communication tool.

The Real Story: Mobile Technology

Although charts such as this illustrate the phenomenally expansive use of social media, the real story is with how mobile technology has embraced social media and contributed to that expansion.

After all, it’s likely that virtually every one of those toilet Tweets were sent with a mobile device, and that any others were sent from a notebook computer with a wireless Internet connection (unless there happens to be somebody with a desktop computer in their john!).

But again, seriously, folks: Mobile is one of those incredibly important channels that many marketers—including healthcare marketers—have been overlooking.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that mobile technology is one of our top healthcare marketing concerns for 2010 (which coincidentally is the feature story for our November newsletter).

What do you think will be among the top subjects for healthcare marketers in 2010? And do you currently do any type of mobile healthcare marketing?

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 11:14 am and is filed under Best Practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.