I agree with your main point: that your organization’s web presence is just as important as your web site. Since I wrote this blog post, our team has implemented a social media campaign: Scripps Health now has a presence on Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. We’re very cognizant of the many social utilities out there, and how we need to participate as a health care org—our patients, prospective patients, employees and future recruits are already there in full force. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re jumping in.

We’re also looking into monitoring tools to track the online chatter regarding our brand, across many channels. We hope to use this information from a marketing standpoint, but also to improve our clinical care quality: our facilities have dedicated quality teams that we’ll be sending online feedback to.

However, our nascent efforts to cultivate an effective web presence have further underscored the fact that we still need a strong web site. After all, the purpose of many social utilities is to drive visitors to your site, to further familiarize them with your org and its medical services, work in the community, events, etc.

Every time we build landing pages for AdWords campaigns, refine our SEO or post a link somewhere, I’m reminded that we need robust content for those users to come to. And since web users are now coming more to specific pages (via search or your web presence), rather than just through your home page, each page in that long tail needs to work harder to communicate your distinct identity and strengths.

You’re absolutely right, though: authentic, lucid health care brands must be well-traveled online.

I have mixed reactions – feelings, if you will – to some of Mr. Hayley’s comments and assertions. As a marketer and long-time brand steward and a professional in the healthcare vertical, I wholeheartedly support the trueism that healthcare – as with any consumer brand – requires strong branding to form the skeleton of communications strategies.

Consumer values – control, self-expression, technology, and many others – serve as filters for how people evaluate and prioritize the information and stimuli surrounding them. These values manifest themselves into products and services, many of which set the standard of experience people carry with them into other environs. Consider wifi accessibility, availability of quality coffee, choice of service hours. Consumers experience these (and many other) attributes in other sectors and permeate their “lenses” for viewing healthcare and physicians. Can I make an online appointment? Will the doctor or his nurse email me? Is telemed an option?

Meanwhile, as the value filters evolve, so do the products and services that germinate from them. It’s entirely accurate that credibility and authenticity are critical components of marketing, one of the reasons that so much consideration must go into the development (and maintenance) of the “voice and tone” aspects of a brand identity bible.

Which in my opinion is one of the areas the Web becomes so powerful as a brand-building channel. The question shouldn’t be “how you implement branding components on your website,” as originally mentioned above. It’s about your brand’s Web presence. A brand is a living, growing, evolving entity (and as suggested above, if not nurtured, could stagnate, fail, or turn at an undesirable corner) that holds consumer value through needs assessment and relevence – presenting opportunities for emotional connections. Those are the ties that will bind.

But I agree 100% that branding that isn’t supported by actual patient or customer experience is worthless!

We’ve always had a very strongly worded mission/vision/values statement – and the firm we selected to help with the redesign cottoned right onto those terms, and is vehemently using them as the guideline in what we build, and how. Basically, our ‘values statements’ are the metric against which all development is being weighed. It’s nice to see those statements strike a chord with a partner, and now to see them ‘come to life’ and used as a measuring stick. Hopefully our end result is commensurate with our ideals.