Matt's Medical Device Thoughts

Inside Medtronic’s Twitter Team

Massive international medical device company, Medtronic Inc., shows the medical device community how to use twitter to connect with employees, patients, and customers. Lets take a look at some bullet points on how they achieve this:

Commitment to Philanthropy
- Philanthropy is a win-win for any large organization. “Corporate America” inherently has a negative stigma with a society ultra informed through social media. Medtronic has committed time, money, and engagement with a philanthropic commitment. Medtronic tenet 6 of their mission states: To maintain good citizenship as a company. Corporations can really brand themselves by illustrating their good deeds through social media. This also doubles as a great way to pre-plan to deal with crisis and opportunity. Having a social media management team that can communicate to employees and consumers in the face of disaster is vital (Weintraub, 2008).

Positive Social Change
- Medtronic does a wonderful job showing its understanding of its ability to create positive social change which again is great way to create a positive image and connection with those on social media.

Marketing
- Twitter is a great place for advertising and should be used extensively by a medical device company to inform potential customers of their product line(s) and the differences it can make for patients. Imagery and bold statements are a must.

Promote Expertise
- In the medical device field this is especially important. Consumers strongly desire trust in the products they purchase, especially when the products can adversely help or hurt their health. Building an emotional connection with consumers through Twitter is a must. Showing the every day people who support the company mission will do so. A company comprised of great people should be promoted (Schawbel, 2008).

Sources

Schawbel, D. (2009). 5 ways to take control of your personal brand. Mashable: The Social Media Guide. Retrieved from https://mashable.com/2009/04/30/control-personal-brand/

Weintraub, M. (2008). Nine essential tactics for reputation management in social media. Retrieved from https://searchengineland.com/nine-essential-tactics-for-reputation-management-in-social-media-13572

Social Media in Business Practice

5 Things Social Media Will Improve When Used Well

Improved Branding and Awareness; A company can use social media platforms as a great way to project the desired image of the company.
Additional Opportunities to Engage; Social media platforms provide the ability to add additional channels to attract and communicate with potential customers.
Public Relations; A major aspect of running a successful public relations division includes research of consumers. Social media can be greatly used to gain insight into the thoughts and actions of consumers.
Collaboration; social media can be used to communicate back and forth with consumers to learn perspective, ways that products and support could be improved.
Improved User Experience; Unlike simple websites, social media is now a gateway to community types, blogs, media, and other modalities. A Facebook page for example will offer a much more three dimensional look to the consumer enriched with a variety of applications.

Source: Postman, J. (2009). SocialCorp: Social media goes corporate. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Press.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
What topics do you think you’ll write about?
Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.