Last week I presented at the Mayo Ragan Social Media Summit and shared data on hospital use of social media. One data source was the Ubicare Healthcare EQ Chart. This post provides more detail about the chart methodology and its results. (Full disclosure – I am a paid adviser to Ubicare)
Ubicare is a content and communications vendor for healthcare organizations. For the past six months, they’ve monitored activity on the Facebook pages of 1,000 hospitals, calculating the interactions, and publishing the results. The goal is to go beyond simple fan counts and look for robust, active communities:
This Engagement Quotient (or “EQ”) Chart details activity on more than 1,000 hospital and healthcare-related Facebook pages. It offers a measurement of fan interaction with those pages by culling data from Facebook, which is then used to calculate an EQ percentile.
Because more fans does not equal more conversation, this calculation is used:
EQ = Likes + (7 x Comments) + (7 x Fan Posts) + (2 x estimated Clicks) / Fans (min. = 500)
…which balances out results between large and small communities. (the FAQ has a deeper explanation of the formula)
Each week the chart gets updated, the top 50 hospitals identified and links provided to their Facebook pages. Take a look at the leaders. They are usually not large, well-known institutions but smaller facilities with close connections to their physical community and internal staff:
- Fort Belvoir Community Hospital – Virginia
- Northport VA Medical Center – New York
- Kishwaukee Community Hospital – Illinois
- Lexington Medical Center – South Carolina
- Mercy Sacramento – California
Some Stats:
Ubicare is currently tracking 1,078 healthcare Facebook pages.
- 67% of these pages have < 1,000 fans, 41% have < 500 fans.
- Fan bases are increasing – about 1 percent per month for those with over 500 fans: The median of fans per page is now about 625, up from about 470 in March/April.
- The average likes per comment is 7.4 to 1
- Posts on these pages consistently get about 3 likes per 1,000 fans.
- Pages in the top 10th percentile of EQ average nearly 8 posts per week.
- Pages below the top 10th percentile average < 4 posts per week.
During the first 22 weeks of tracking healthcare’s engagement on Facebook:
- 120,464 posts were made on the pages being tracked.
- These posts garnered 651,053 “Likes and 104,321 “Comments.”
What’s Working for the Top Communities
- They post at least 4 times per week, and up to as often as 3 times per day.
- They post “eye candy”: videos and photos of people.
- They post “interactive” things such as quizzes and contests.