Healthcare is a heavy regulated industry so many healthcare organizations avoid the use of social media. But patients, healthcare professionals and hospitals don’t.

Consumers use social media to research and to make health decisions. Patients consider themselves part of a tribe trusting others on social media more than other sources. Physicians use social media to network professionally with colleagues and peers and participate in forums, sharing medical knowledge within their community.

Social media is a platform where the public, patients and healthcare professionals can communicate about health issues and possibly improve health outcomes.

Here are 27 surprising stats how social media is changing healthcare.

1. 90% of Millennials say they would trust medical information shared by others on their social media networks (source: Search Engine Watch)
2. 81% of hospitals said service lines expressed an interest in participating in the hospital’s social media strategy (source: AFIA)
3. 66% of doctors use social media for professional purposes, often preferring an open forum as opposed to a physician-only online community (source: EMR Thoughts)
4. 60% of doctors say social media improves the quality of care delivered to patients (source: Demi & Cooper Advertising and DC Interactive Group)
5. 60% of consumers say they trust doctors’ posts versus 36% who trust posts from a pharma firm (source: MDDI)
6. 60% of physicians most popular activities on social are following what colleagues are sharing and discussing (source: Health Care Communication)
7. 54% of patients are very comfortable with their providers seeking advice from online communities to better treat their conditions (source: Mediabistro)
8. 50% of healthcare apps available to consumers can be downloaded for free and are produced by a variety of types of developer (source: IMS Institute)
9. 49% of those polled expect to hear from their doctor when requesting an appointment or follow-up discussion via social media within a few hours. (source: HealthCare Finance News)
10. 41% of people said social media would affect their choice of a specific doctor, hospital, or medical facility (source: Demi & Cooper Advertising and DC Interactive Group)
11. 40% of people polled said information found on social media affects how someone coped with a chronic condition, their view of diet and exercise and their selection of a physician (source: HealthCare Finance News)
12. 40% of consumers say that information found via social media affects the way they deal with their health.(source: Mediabistro)
13. 31% of health care professionals use social media for professional networking (source: Mediabistro)
14. 31% of health care organizations have specific social media guidelines in writing (source: Institute for Health)
15. 30% of adults are likely to share information about their health on social media sites with other patients, 47% with doctors, 43% with hospitals, 38% with a health insurance company and 32% with a drug company. (source: Fluency Media)
16. 28% of health-related conversations on Facebook are supporting health-related causes, followed by 27% of people commenting about health experiences or updates (source: Infographics Archive)
17. 27% of patients comment or post status updates based on health-related experiences (source: MDDI)
18. 26% of all hospitals in the US participate in social media (source: Demi & Cooper Advertising and DC Interactive Group)
19. 23% of drug companies have not addressed security and privacy in terms of social media (source: Mediabistro)
20. 19% of smartphone owners have at least one health app on their phone. Exercise, diet, and weight apps are the most popular types (source: Demi & Cooper Advertising and DC Interactive Group)
21. 12% of apps accounted for 90% of all downloads (source: iMedicalApps)
22. 18 to 24 year olds are more than 2x as likely than 45 to 54 year olds to use social media for health-related discussions (source: Mediabistro)
23. YouTube traffic to hospital sites has increased 119% year-over-year (source: Google’s Think Insights)
24. The Mayo Clinic’s podcast listeners rose by 76,000 after the clinic started using social media (source: Infographics Archive)
25. Among the 165,000 health & medical apps now on the market, nearly two thirds are focused on general wellness issues like fitness, lifestyle & stress, and diet. The remainder is made up by apps focused on specific health conditions (9%), medication info & reminders (6%), and women’s health & pregnancy (7%). Mental health apps led among disease specific apps, followed by diabetes (source: iMedicalApps)
26. $392,000,000 is the revenue from mobile healthcare apps in 2015 (source: Northern Kentucky University)
27. Of more than 1,500 hospitals nationwide who have an online presence, Facebook is most popular (source: WHPRMS)

Below are three infographics that also deliver statistics on the impact social media is having on healthcare.

Do these facts align with your healthcare behaviors. Do you believe social media is changing healthcare?

Good listening is the key to developing fresh insights and ideas that fuel success. If you talk less than you listen, are respectful and pick the right time to challenge assumptions, you display the characteristics of an effective listener; one that usually succeeds at what they set out to do.

The benefits of being a good listener apply to social media marketing. If you find social media too time consuming, too big to manage and question its business contributions to the bottom line, the chances are you haven’t done enough good listening.

What should you do? How does it benefit your business? Here are 22 practical tips on how social media listening builds business.

STRATEGY

• REACH: Start by determining the size of your audience adding up how many people you reach – the number of all the people who you are connected, follow you or like you.
• KEYWORD AND CONTENT IMPROVEMENT: Use keywords, topics and conversions from social media listening to improve not only social media engagement but branded content, SEO and SEM strategies and programs.
• SENTIMENT ANALYSIS: Is used to measure opinions about topics you would consider or are talking about by scoring text in comments as positive or negative. It is the social equivalent of an opinion poll.
• COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE: Do the same exercises for your primary competitors and determine your competitive advantage.
• TAG CLOUD: Is a visual representation of user-generated electronic tags or keywords that classify and describe online content in different font sizes, to show relative frequency or provide links to further information.
• CONVERSATION MAPPING: Is an efficient way of collecting a large amount of data from a diverse group of experts and/or stakeholders in a short period of time. The purpose is to provide clarity on key issues.
• COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY: With these building blocks, you have the tool to create a Communication Strategy, your blueprint for exchanging relevant information with your target audience.

TARGETING

• KEY INFLUENCES: Need to how to reach Key Influencers? Use social media listening to see who is engaging on social media and the size of their social following. Look at their their Klout Score as a ranking tool. Start a Twitter Chat to accelerate the process. Build relationships with the people you’ve identified.
• COMMUNITY BUILDING: Interact with customers in a way that builds a positive image of your brand and fosters better relationships, which eventually form a tight community of loyal followers.
• LIST BUILDING: Create a list of those who have an interest in your industry, category, competition or brand that is authentic, more reliable and less costly through social media listening.
• CRM INTEGRATION: If your business uses a CRM system, integrate your list with your CRM system to make social media listening work with marketing automation and prove cost savings.
• TARGET AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION: Whether you are a B2C or B2B business, these social media listening activities help create a high value target audience.

CUSTOMER SERVICE AND ENGAGEMENT

• ANSWER AUDIENCE QUESTIONS: Connect people with questions to people with answers.
• RESPOND TO COMPLAINTS: Quickly address a gripe before it snowballs into a bigger undertaking.
• SHARE COMPLIMENTS: Find compliments and leverage them to position yourself as a trusted information source. Don’t forget to say “thanks.”
• AGILITY: Time of reaction is also important for building a positive brand image. A recent study from Lithium Technologies shows 53% of consumers who tweet a brand expect a response within an hour. Things get even more extreme when the tweet in question is a complaint – the figure above rises to 72%,
• CRISIS MANAGEMENT: If a sudden peak occurs, or a conversation appears to be increasing at an unusual rate, it’s a good idea to monitor conversations about your brand and respond to negative posts on a regular basis. Customers who are angry or dissatisfied are likely to be get more indignant and angry when they feel they are being ignored.
• READY PROSPECTS: Know who’s looking for what you offer right now. Only social media gives you this kind of instant insight into the habits of your best prospects.

FUTURE PLANNING

• SOCIAL MEDIA OPTIMIZATION: Connect all of your social media accounts in a cohesive, consistently branded network that points your potential customers where you want them to go. By connecting with people in various online venues, you extend the reach of your business and increase opportunities for people to link to your main business page.
• CONSUMER BEHAVIOR: Understand the main problems, motivations and issues customers might have with their products or services. This in turn helps them to come up with more efficient customer service.
• PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT: By intelligently listening in social media, you can uncover various problems consumers experience when using your product and then address them when releasing a corrected version. Monitoring the reviews of your product, you’ll gain additional input and lots of ideas on how to improve it.
• KEY INFLUENCER RECRUITING: Uncover new key experts and influencers and build the social currency of your brand on a continuous basis.
• EVALUATION: Determine how the use of social media listening has helped not  business results directly and indirectly. Plan for social media listening to be a part of your operation based on the value it provides.

Do these reasons prove the value of social media listening to you? Does it convince you to do it? Does your business need help being a good social media listener?

If your business uses social media, did you jump into it or do you have a strategy? Here’s what the facts say:

• 92% of marketing believe social media is important to their business (Social Media Examiner)
• 64% don’t know if their Facebook outreach is working (Social Media Examiner)
• Only 42% are able to measure social media activities (Social Media Examiner)

While the majority believe social media has a place in the marketing mix, many don’t appear to have a plan.

So this doesn’t happen to you, here are 7 infographics, to account for all different kinds of businesses, that explain how to develop a social media strategy. One should certainly be relevant to your business.

• KEY SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY QUESTIONS: If brand positioning is a critical component of your social media strategy and you like to articulate it with key questions in direct, straightforward language, here are the key questions to be answered to develop your social media strategy.

• STAGES OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA SALES FUNNEL: If the purpose of your social media effort is to connect in ways that show a measurable bottom-line result, then this infographic explains the sales funnel in four stages for you from its widest to narrowest diameters.

• SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS: If you think social media is more relevant for B2C than B2B businesses, then here is list of Do’s and Don’t for B2B companies.

• SOCIAL MEDIA ON A SHOESTRING: If you’re going into to social media because your business doesn’t have the money to be pursuing paid media, this infographic provides best practices and plenty of encouragement to help you get there.

• SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY FOR THE ORGANIZATION: If you believe social media shouldn’t be relegated to an individual or even a department; rather, it should draw from every area of the company. And this cross-functional group should listen, target and learn together, this is the social media strategy from your organization.

• SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY FOR NON PROFITS: Social media principles may but the same for all business sectors, but nonprofits definitely behave differently than for profit businesses. Here is how to develop a social media strategy for nonprofits

• SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY PRIMER: If you’re thinking about which social networks to get into for your social media strategy, then here is a guide with all the key information you need to know.

Do these infographics help determine if your company has a social media strategy? Did any seem particularly relevant for your business? Does your business need help to develop a social media strategy?

Few accomplishments in business are as gratifying as having an idea for something that didn’t exist before turn into a success through hard work, perseverance and smart decision making.

We (BarnRaisers) get approached by Startups for marketing services, as a full service digital marketing agency that builds brands with proven relationship principles and ROI; perhaps more than most businesses.

We’ve been inspired by Startups’ success but also know the many struggles. We admire people who follow their passions but have to make decisions knowing the realities. What have we learned?

Here are 30 statistics to explain struggles and success of Startups.

LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESS: Most won’t make it, but those who listen to change, remain flexible and know how to recover have a much better chance.

• 90% of Startups fail (Mashable)
• 74%, failed due to premature scaling. Premature scaling means spending money on marketing, hiring etc. either before you found a working business model (Quora)
• 62% of Startups fail due to co-founder conflicts (Funders and Founders)
• 52% are less likely to scale prematurely if the startup has “pivoted” once or twice (Quora)
• 50% face development problem (Five for Focus)
• 45% close their doors in six months (Five for Focus)
• 42% identified “lack of a market need for their product” as the single biggest reason for their failure (Forbes)
• 30% struggle with time issue (Five for Focus)
• 30% fail because their management was not experienced enough to handle finances, hiring and marketing (Entrepreneurial Insights)
• 20% find their hang-up in sales and marketing
• 10% of Startsups succeed because they listen to change, stay flexible and know how to recover. (Forbes)
• Customized eCommerce, Education Technology, Mobile App Development, Green Technology and Wearable Technology are areas where Startups that are expected to surge (Mashable)

FOUNDERS: Two heads are generally better than one. Experience counts, even if the experience at the previous Startup wasn’t a good one. A good VC firm can increase the chances of success.

• 80% and successful Startups have multiple founders (VC Josh Hannah)
• 68% of founders believe the odds of their succeeding are better than others in their sector (Harvard Business School)
• 48% of founders are between 35-44 (Gist)
• 29% are between 26-34 (Gist)
• 39% have experience as a Founder/CEO of another Startup (Mashable)
• 20% of founders who have failed on their first Startup, succeed on their second (Quora)
• 10% of first time founder succeed (Quora)
• Failed entrepreneurs who are funded by experienced VC firms have a 22.1% chance of succeeding (OnStartups)
• First-time entrepreneurs have a 17.6% chance of succeeding when funded by more experienced VC firms (OnStartups)
• Only 8% are female founders and 92% are male founders (Founder’s Guide)
• Founders could be making no salary to salaries that are competitive with other industries (Quora)

FUNDING: Only a small percentage of startups are funded by VC’s; most are self-funded.

• Only 1% of funding for Startups comes from VC firms (Entrepreneur)
• 3% comes from Crowdsourcing (Entrepreneur)
• 3% comes from banks (Business Ideas Lab)
• 24% comes form friends and family (Entrepreneur)
• 41% are funded by loans (Entrepreneur)
• 41% are funded by lines of credit (Entrepreneur)
• 80% are self-funded (Entrepreneur)

Many Startups start with less than 5 employees according to Nathan Therrian, a benefits broker for startups. So a lot of work and responsibility is generally spread across a small number of people.

If you need more information to make your decision about working with or at a startup, there are some good Infographics on startups. Below is one of them.

Did this explain struggles and success of Startups for you? Did it inspire or discourage you? Or give you a perspective that you needed?

U.S. advertisers’ spending on digital advertising will overtake TV in 2016 and hit $103 billion in 2019 to represent 36% of all ad spending, according to Forrester’s latest estimates based on its ForecastView model.

That means a lot more businesses are going to be in need of an effective digital marketing plan.

To guide you through the development, here are 10 essential inforgraphics to create a digital marketing plan.

1. WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING? Begin with an understanding of what is digital marketing. Make sure your audience knows what they’re getting. How it works. What are ways to achieve desired results. What tactics are going to be in the plan and what the measurement tools are. This infographic from Pixaal starts you on your way.

2. TOP 10 DIGITAL BRANDING TRENDS: Account for key developments. Take them into consideration in developing your plan. Know what to be aware of, what to avoid and what to expect. This infographic from the Borenstein Group provides good perspective and context.

3. SEO: EXPLAINED: 54% of people find a website through natural search results according to Forrester. Understand how to reach the majority of people who find your website and attract even more. Search Engine Optimization, the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine, is a primary requisite to every digital marketing plan. This infographic from NerdyFace explains what to enable on your site for effective SEO.

4. SEO VS PPC: While 85% of clicks on a search engine page go to an organic search listing, if your site isn’t at a top listing, that click isn’t going to go to your business. PPC (Pay Per Click) allows a web owner a quick way to be listed in a top position by paying for ads. In addition to a high search rank, a PPC campaign is relatively easy to measure and manage through the accessible of measurement like CPC (Cost Per Click), CTR (Click Through Rate) and Conversions. The author of this infographic isn’t identified but has objectively explained the differences and benefits of each.

5.  THE ANATOMY OF CONTENT MARKETING: 70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company via articles rather than ads according to kapost. Content Marketing takes many forms and has many benefits. This infographic from Axonn explains the various forms Content Marketing takes, results it produces and why it is so important for effective digital marketing.

6. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: While Content Marketing is the primary ingredient of Social Media Marketing, there is an art and science to effectively using social network to accelerate, amplify and activate your audience. Social Media Marketing is a marketing discipline unto itself in any digital marketing plan. This infographic from Visual.ly created on PiktoChart puts the two in contest and the reasons to devote resources to both.

7. MOBILE MARKETING: US adults spent on average 34 hours per month using the mobile internet on smartphones. By comparison, they spend 27 hours on the PC internet. Of that smartphone internet time, apps capture 86 percent of usage. Only 14 percent of smartphone internet access time comes via the mobile web according to Marketing Land. This infographic from Milo shows how much of consumer behavior has gone mobile and the top tactics marketers should pursue.

8.EMAIL BEST PRACTICES: In 2014, email marketing was cited as the most effective digital marketing channel for customer retention in the United States according to the CMO Council. Email marketing requires discipline and steady attention. This infographic from eMerge gives best practice so you can carry on the due diligence that is required for email marketing.

9, MOST IMPORTANT DIGITAL MARKETING METRICS: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” said Peter Drucker. This infographic from Digital Marketing Philippines gives you the most important measurements to manage.

10. DIGITAL MARKETING ROI: Does digital marketing produce results? Here are 8 studies from an infographic BarnRaisers did for the IAB that proves it does, It also shows digital marketing works best when it is integrated into the overall marketing mix.

Do these infographics give you guidance for your digital marketing plan? Do you need help with a digital marketing plan that will build your business?