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This article was written by Jessica Levco, a healthcare writer who covered HCIC19 for Greystone.Net. 

Marie Kondo has inspired a lot of us to clean up our junk drawer (or better yet — stop having a junk drawer), tell our socks “thank you” and/or inspire us to get rid of that cowboy hat from a love affair gone south in El Dorado.

She also inspired the Henry Ford Health System’s marketing team to get their social media content in tip-top shape. “Does your content spark joy?” at the 23rd annual Greystone.net Healthcare Internet conference in Orlando was led by Emily Stieber, lead social media strategist, and Brooke Hess, marketing manager for content strategy.

First, the duo figured out what type of images made followers smile. The top hits:

• Babies
• Dogs
• Employees
• Recipes
• User-generated content
• Behind-the-scenes photos

But it wasn’t all about sparking joy. Kondo’s guidelines for tidying up led them to better organization and clearer strategy. Here’s what they did:

• Showcase the “wins”: Based on their internal reporting, they sent out a quarterly infographic to teams around the hospital, highlighting conversions that matter most. They also have quarterly meetings with HR, risk, legal and clinical leadership to discuss marketing goals. Also, all of their social content is tagged with UTM codes for tracking purposes.
• Organizing the team: Multiple people post on their social media channels. They get together regularly to discuss AP style and their internal style. They also leave room in each meeting to ask for inspiration, where colleagues can share social media examples of non-healthcare brands they’ve liked.
• Politely decline: Goodbye grainy photos. Goodbye dull stories. Goodbye ho-hum videos. “Algorithms ding you for bad content, so there’s just no point of putting average content up there,” Stieber says. But what happens if someone approaches them with an idea that they know won’t work? “Instead of saying flat-out no, we say, ‘No, but…’ This phrase allows us to reframe their idea into something that might be more effective,” Stieber says.
• Be responsive: The team takes turns monitoring channels. “It’s not enough just to ‘like,’ a patient’s comment on your post,’” Stieber says. “You actively have to respond because Facebook counts it as an engagement. People want responses immediately and you have to be ready.”
• Connect with influencers: Since a big chunk of what sparks joy is user-generated content, the team is always happy to engage. They shared the story of how one of their biggest fans sent the marketing team a Christmas card because she liked their content so much. We can’t speak for Kondo, but we bet she might say it’s OK to hold onto that.