By Stephen Tweed
For the past year or so, I’ve been asking lots of questions in and around home health, hospice, and private duty home care about the effectiveness of social media marketing. It seems that everyone is doing it, but no one is tracking the results. I’ve only gotten one specific example of how a home health care sales rep has used LinkedIn successfully to generate a significant number of new patients using SMM. (I’ll write about that soon). I’ve gotten absolutely no indication that anyone in home care is getting new clients from Facebook.
I was not surprised, then, when I got a note from my friend and colleague Steve Miller at Two Hat Marketing. Steve has a tremendously successful business in Federal Way, Washington. He says he’s an author, a professional speaker, and business advisor, known for his edgy, no-spin-zone style. He’s the son of the inventor of the 8-track, played on the PGA Tour, worked in the copper mines of Arizona, and even worked in Hollywood (all of which means he can’t hold a job). Through speeches (both live and online) and consulting projects, he delivers growth and success for corporations and associations,
On his most recent post, Steve talked about Mark Cuban, the Billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and how he has instructed all of his companies to de-emphasize their participation on Facebook.
Cuban says, “First, I’m not recommending to any of my companies that we leave facebook. I am recommending that we de-emphasize pushing consumers or partners to like us on FB and focus on building up our followings across all existing social media platforms and to evaluate those that we feel can grow a material following. In the past we put FB first, twitter second. FB has been moved to the bottom of a longer list.
Steve says, ” Many years ago, I learned a great business lesson: If you can make a profit, you’re a business. If you can’t, you’re a hobby. As Cuban basically points out (and I’m sure you can guess I agree with him), FB is a hobby. It doesn’t really have a business model.”
What do you think?
Is Facebook a business or a hobby for you?
How are you using Facebook to generate home care referrals? How do you track results?
