LinkedIn Stories – Hospital Branding and Recruitment Opportunity?

In LinkedIn's drive to be the Facebook of business, LinkedIn Stories was launched on Sunday, September 27. week. In essence, it is the same digital story opportunity that one finds on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. With a few notable exceptions, the stories from the first 24-48 hours left a lot be desired, even the LinkedIn Story demo, which has been revised. Content has improved as major corporations figure out its place in the marketing mix.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

I did create some content and found it easy to use and create content. It's very similar to other social media platforms' story options for content creation, sharing, tagging, etc. My one disappointing note, besides the lack of content, is that stories only appear on the LinkedIn app side. If you're creating on a desktop or laptop, stories are not available. For me, that is a significant shortcoming. Maybe someday, LinkedIn will figure out that the user experience needs to be the same across all devices.

The branding and recruitment opportunity for hospitals.

As I have written in the past, digital stories are an area where hospitals and doctors, for that matter, can improve their marketing and digital presence. In case you missed the post from August 25, it was "Digital Stories- the Missing Hospital Marketing Opportunity?" https://bit.ly/3aSTuoW. In the blog post, there are ten steps for creating compelling stories so that I won't revisit them here.All ten steps apply to create a dynamic LinkedIn Story.

In an interesting twist to our topic, I wrote about hospital stories in 2014 with the post "Is storytelling the new healthcare marketing?" http://bit.ly/108kfjF. What is old is new from six years ago. Go figure.

Image by Yogesh Moore from Pixabay

From a marketing viewpoint, I believe that the new LinkedIn story capability provides a visual and dynamic platform for hospitals and health systems to marketing their hospital, company page, and recruit staff and physicians.

Differentiating from your competition.

With thousands of position postings and the difficulty sourcing staff, stories show the human side of the brand and the daily impact on lives. You can answer the question, why us, visually. Who is the best brand ambassador? An influencer that you pay or your employees representing you?

As an industry, we need to move more fully into developing compelling content to engage and frame the experience of the hospital and health system brand for the audience. And that means storytelling assumes greater importance.

Stories can provide rich content, engage, frame the experience, and impart critical information influencing choice.

Stories are here to stay. Make the best use of them you can.

Michael is a healthcare business, marketing, communications strategist, and thought leader. As an internationally followed healthcare strategy blogger, his blog, Healthcare Marketing Matters, is read in 52 countries and is listed on the 100 Top Healthcare Marketing Blogs & Websites ranked at No. 3 on the list by Feedspot.com. Michael is a Life Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives. An expert in healthcare marketing strategy, digital marketing, and social media, Michael is in the top 10 percent of social media experts nationwide and is considered an established influencer. For inquiries regarding strategic consulting engagements, you can email me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com. Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, and now TikTok. The opinions expressed are my own.

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