Staffing Robot - Healthcare Staffing Technology, Design & Marketing Blog

Hively Video: Happy Customers Make Happy Teams!

Check out our new video for Hively. Happy customers make happy teams. And friend us on YouTube!

It’s just over 1 minute and a great way to better understand the value of Hively for your staffing company. There's never been an easier way to meaure customer happiness. Stop sending surveys and start using Hively!

Give it a view. We think you’ll get a kick out of it.

Also - if you like the video and want one for your business let us know. We can make one for you! These short videos are a great way to communicate your business value in a simple and entertaining way. Just let us know! Contact Staffing Robot.

Pink Glove Dance Going Viral. Again!

A couple of years ago Portland's own St. Vincent's Medical Center put out an amazing viral video called The Pink Glove Dance. The video got them national attention and raised a lot of awareness for breast cancer

This year, the company that created the concept - Medline - put the vidoe concept out as a contest challenge to hospitals, schools and healthcar companies. They have so far received lots of great entries. Winners will be announced Oct. 28, with the first place winner receiving $10,000 to donate to its favorite breast cancer charity.

We've seen at least one healthcare staffing company enter the contest - Cross Country Staffing Pink Glove Dance. Any others you know of?

Check out the Pink Glove Dance Video entries here and vote for your favorite.

 

Medical Solutions Nurse's Week T-Shirt Design Contest

A few weeks back I blogged about Favorite Healthcare's video contest for Nurse's Week. I thought you should be aware of another staffing agency that is sponsoring another great contest for Nurses's Week.

Medical Solutions and Fibers.com are putting on a contest titled "Give it a Shot!" The contests asks "Nurses and Nurse-aficionados" to create t-shirt designs showing their appreciation of the Nursing profession.

Nurse's Week is May 6-12 and this contest ends on May 12th. Here is the link to learn more about and participate in the Medical Solutions Nurse's Week contest.

They've also created a YouTube video to promote the contest:

 

Favorite Healthcare Nurses Week Video Contest

Favorite Healthcare is sponsoring a contest for National Nurses Week this year. They are asking you to submit a picture or short video of you and your nursing friends. From the submitted entries, Favorite Healthcare will create a video and launch it on YouTube for Nurses Week. 

All participants will be entered in a raffle to win one of three Netbooks.

To participate, submit your pictures and videos by April 23rd, along with your contact information, to YouTube@FavoriteStaffing.com.

To kick it off, Favorite Healthcare has made their own video. You can watch it here.

What if Booking A Plane Ticket Worked Like Our Healthcare System?

Whether you're for or against healthcare reform I think it's difficult to argue that our current system is working.

Think about the services you make use of every day from business to personal. Booking a hotel, finding a photo online, sharing information with your friends, or managing your internal work projects. Imagine if any of these services were as difficult to work with as our current healthcare system. Would you continue to use them?

Not being a big fan of the government, what shocks me is that, in this case, we're not talking about the government running something inefficiently. We're talking about private business. It's the private insurance companies that have failed to deliver a viable model or useful service when it comes to healthcare. How people can continue to support this broken system when they would have no tolerance for a similar level of service from the services they use everyday is beyond me.

This video is a parody of what it would be like to book a plane ticket with a travel agency that had a business model similar to our current healthcare system. Makes you think.

Google Search Getting More "Social"

Seems the rage these days is aggregating content and data from social networking sites. As the web becomes more segmented through various platforms from search to social media, having a single source to search, deliver and index data is becoming increasingly important. Especially when it comes to monitoring and promoting your brand online. Google Social Search is making this easier.

After creating a Google profile and linking your social, blog and other similar sites, you can begin searching your content as well as the content of people to whom you are connected on these sites.

Here's a video that describes this in more detail:

My favorite feature of this new service is seeing the connections and content behind the search result sources. Google lets you drill down into your search contacts and see the various methods by which you are connected to each of them.

Google Social Search will certainly have a further effect on your SEO | SEM campaigns as it puts more emphasis and personalized, social search. More and more, Google is enabling ways for people to search based on their preferences, location and connections as opposed to content in aggregate across the Web.

Google is definitely keeping it interesting.

St. Vincents Medical Center Gets It Right With Their Video That's Going Viral

The video below is an exceptional example of a hospital using a catchy, fun video to promote their hospital. The video features the entire staff of St Vincent’s Medical Center in Portland, Oregon dancing in pink gloves for breast cancer awareness. I've personally known several women from family members, to friends, to co-workers that have all survived breast cancer so I found this video inspiring.

From a marketing perspective this video is perfect. This is exactly the kind of marketing that can go viral and really promote your hospital or healthcare staffing company. Interestingly, nothing is being sold here. There is no pitch, no "contact us today."

So what makes it great?

Basically, this video sends the message that the staff at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Portland are approachable, real people. From the healthcare professionals, to the lab techs, to the service employees, this video makes you feel that these people are fun, thoughtful and caring. It leaves the viewer with the impression that both the employees and the environment at the hospital are upbeat and inspiring. They make their sale without overtly selling anything.

If you're considering making a video to promote your company do yourself a favor and take some notes here. Kudos to the St. Vincent's Medical Center.

Social Media Revolution

I found this video fascinating. It asks if you think social media is a fad. It then goes on to show you several statistics (in a very interesting way) to suggest it is anything but.

What's your social media strategy?

via www.youtube.com

The Fun Theory

I came across a site called The Fun Theory. It's an initiative of Volkswagen, dedicated to the thought that making things simple and fun is the best way to change people’s behavior for the better. No matter what it is - yourself, your company, the environment, etc., the only thing that matters is change for the better. Essentially, it's a contest to have people create things that accomplish the goal of the initiative. 

It's an interesting concept. How often in your workday or when you're creating something are you thinking about keeping things simple and fun? When you're creating a form, designing a web page, making a new feature, presenting to a new client - are you just going through the standard motions? Or are you thinking about how to get people more engaged - how to grab their attention - to connect with them - to have fun? What  would be different if you did?

Something to think about.

This is my favorite one:

Does the staffing industry need its own YouTube?

This week I stumbled upon a new site called Staffing Industry Tube.  Staffing Industry Tube is a site that allows professionals in the staffing industry to post videos from funny to helpful, offering tips, advice, presentations, talks, commercials – and even some nonsense.  Basically, it’s like YouTube for the staffing industry.

My question - Does the staffing industry need a YouTube? 

A quick pass of the site will quickly let you see it’s a new service still trying to figure itself out.  The site describes itself as:

"Staffing Industry Tube is the only collection of solely Staffing Industry related training and topical videos on the web that is categorized for you. Find what you want, when you want it- From training to current news and economic insight. Every category/topic is industry specific!

So far, there seems to be a decent amount of activity and some useful information in the uploaded videos.  Aside from useful, there are also some videos for entertainment.  This one that gives a grim picture of the current state of the job market, called - "The Job" - had me laughing…and thinking. 

The site is user friendly (it feels like YouTube) and has several nice functions for rating videos and watching those that have been most played.  You can even create your own channels, customize your page with HTML/CSS and embed videos from other sites.

I’ve joined the site and created my own channel for Staffing Robot.  I imported a couple of videos on how hospitals and healthcare staffing companies can use Twitter for their business and recruiting efforts from my previous staffing robot blog post on the same topic.  There is a lot of potential with this site and I hope to see others join and contribute.  In general, I love seeing big sites like YouTube get segmented by specific niches.  Video is a great communication medium and it will be interesting to see if others in the industry pick up on it.

So, again, does the staffing industry need a YouTube?  I guess we’ll see.