I recently came across the Hootsuite Social Media Trends Report for 2022 and then the 2022 Hubspot Social Media Trends Report. Yes, they literally published a report with the exact same title. Of course, each of them had some different data and perspectives.
As someone who likes to hear what companies like Hootsuite and Hubspot are talking about, I was interested in reading what they saw as important to watch trends in 2022. Unfortunately, the curmudgeon side of me came out in full force. Maybe because a lot of these trends apply to consumers and not B2B and certainly not to healthcare.
Here’s are my thoughts. I’ll let you decide if I’m just getting old.
Trend 1: TikTok will take over social media, leaving other platforms to adapt
No. Just no. Yes, I get the viral nature of watching TikToks. Watching attractive people dance is addicting. Watching people make fools of themselves is similarly addicitve. I know there are even some healthcare people like Dr. Glaucomflecken (he’s super funny) that have done amazingly well on TikTok. Funny is a high bar for a marketer and it’s unclear if humor increases sales revenue. I can only think of one funny healthcare B2B marketing campaign in my 16 years in health IT that has driven some high quality leads (Check out the Fake Extormity EHR campaign). Funny is hard to execute consistently at a high level.
I know that TikTok is trying to bust out of their current niche and have a lot of other content. Brands want them to do that. However, I think YouTube has shown how it’s hard for really niche B2B content to compete against the entertaining content that is being put on TikTok today.
Build your company culture on TikTok sure. Public health may have some opportunities too. I just don’t see TikTok breaking through in health IT.
Trend 2: Social selling will simplify the customer journey
This one I find really ironic. When I look at customer journeys today, it’s pretty simple when compared to enterprise customer journeys, especially in healthcare. I think we have seen that influencers do make a difference in enterprise sales because they can influence a diverse group of people who can all hijack the sales process in healthcare. However, I’m not sure that really simplifies the customer journey. Enterprise sales with committee decisions and a wide variety of stakeholders just can’t be simplified socially the way a consumer customer journey can be influenced.
Show me some impulse buys in healthcare and I’ll change my mind.
Trend 3: Brands will lead in social media decentralization
I know most doctors are excited to hop on their health IT vendor’s social media platform. Considering most hospitals have 1000+ vendors, I guess that means that CIOs are going to have to join 1000 different decentralized communities? Ummm..no!
The one exception to this might be the EHR vendors. The EHR is such a massive undertaking and has such a massive influence on a healthcare organization, that access to a decentralized social media community for the EHR can be really powerful. There’s so much configuration that can be done that an EHR community makes a lot of sense. In fact, many have really active user communities. However, most health IT vendors don’t have that kind of impact on their users that they can create their own social community.
In most cases, health IT vendors are better to use the existing social media communities like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn where their users already have profiles. Even large organizations like HIMSS and CHIMEs have been trying to roll out their own decentralized communities with limited success. Most people underestimate how hard it is to really keep a community going and so they quickly languish similar to my garden in my backyard.
Trend 4: Communities will develop, and take control
This is slightly different than the above in that it’s talking about healthcare professionals creating communities of people that will bond together and influence the market. To be honest, this would be a welcome thing. I’d love to see doctors unite and improve healthcare. Unfortunately, doctors have been terrible at this. My theory is that most are highly paid and doing well and so it’s not been worth their effort to organize.
I’m trying to think of an example where this has happened in healthcare IT. Maybe I’m forgetting some. The closest I can come up with is movements to push through certain legislation. No doubt that has an impact. So, I guess there’s some potential there. Healthcare in general may be more vulnerable to this, but health IT is pretty immune I think.
Trend 5: Social quietly matures out of the marketing department
If I’m honest, I feel like this is more of an aspirational trend than an actual one. Every social media platform has tried to go after this and it’s never quite worked how they think it will work. Every marketing department knows those few social media influencers in their organization that have embraced it and often grown a nice following. However, I’ve seen almost no marketing department in health IT mature their social program out of their marketing department.
My theory on why this is the case is that many in healthcare still think that social media doesn’t impact B2B sales. While that’s not true, it also misses some of the 2nd order benefits of social. Let’s set aside influencing the buyer and just talk about getting access to journalists who then more easily write about you and influence your buyer. I could go on and on, but you get the point. Unfortunately, many in healthcare outside of marketing don’t understand this. Plus, even if they get it, it’s hard to get people to do social when it’s not in their job description or they aren’t naturally interested in it.
Trend 6: Social marketers rescue their brands from the customer service apocalypse
Go search your favorite health IT brand on social. How many customer service requests happen on social? Again, you’ll find some for the big EHR players, but most healthcare IT brands don’t get customer service comments on social. Lots of theories on why this could be the case, but most health IT companies have dedicated support that does a pretty good job. It’s not like consumer brands where you may get the run around.
As someone who gets a lot of their consumer products support on Twitter, I understand the power of brands doing customer service effectively on social. However, it’s pretty rare for that to happen in the enterprise health IT space.
Although, there was this one time in the comments of Healthcare IT Today where an EHR user was just blasting an EHR vendor’s support. The EHR vendor was subscribed to it and reached out to me to see if I could help. This EHR was willing to give the world to them and just asked if I could try and help get to a resolution. I emailed the commenter to see what they really needed. Turns out he really just needed $125 eFax and he was happy. The EHR vendor happily complied and all went away satisfied. So, I guess it works some times. It’s just pretty rare.
Am I wrong?
I’d love to hear what you think. Is there something I’m missing? I’m sure there are some other trends that are valuable to consider from the consumer side of things. However, I always have to read these various “Social Media Trends” reports with a grain of salt. Lots of the trends may apply to consumer marketing and social media, but not B2B marketing and not healthcare.
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