Staffing Robot - Healthcare Staffing, Marketing and Technology Blog

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.

Trying To Find A Business (Or Just Any) Use For Twitter? [pt. 2]

In my post earlier this week I showed you how to set up a Twitter account.  Now I’ll show you how it can benefit you as a hospital or staffing supplier in the healthcare staffing industry. 

First, like all marketing efforts you have to think about your objective and strategy regarding how you will promote yourself or your company on Twitter.  You need to also consider how you will provide some kind of value to the community. 

Twitter is a social networking site that can certainly be used for business/marketing purposes.  However, many people using Twitter aren’t on there for business reasons.  Therefore, coming off as simply trying to promote your business without any strategy will ensure you’re treated like the guy at the party who won’t stop talking about himself.

Here are some goals/strategies you might want to consider:

• Build Brand Awareness
• Gain new customers
• Improve or expand upon your company image
• Monitor the activities of your competitors
• Measure customer satisfaction

Here are some suggested promotional ideas:

• Post linked items to articles on your website or other relevant sites
• Create surveys on how to better your business
• Share new job openings or opportunities
• Address customer complaints
• Offer discounts or rewards
• Show people how to use/benefit from your service
• Answer business related questions
• Promote company events
• Announce new product/service lines

Essentially, just because you heard about Twitter from your kids first doesn't mean that the fundamental rules of marketing don't apply.  The most important thing to do is to listen to your followers and respond with content that is relevant, engaging and meets a need.   If you do this correctly you will build relationships and gain followers.  Ultimately this will result in the promotion of your business by not just you and your company, but also your followers!  What better promotion is there?

The following video will show you how to get some business use (new leads, recruiting healthcare professionals, etc.) out of Twitter for your hosptial or staffing agency by making use of another application called TweetDeck.  You can get similar functionality from other apps like Twhirl but I think Tweetdeck is the best.

Related posts:

Trying To Find A Business (Or Just Any) Use For Twitter? [pt. 1]