[NMMC] Jon Bishop talks about Netcare and new technologies

(This is a synopsis of a talk given by Jon Bishop at the New Media Marketing Conference )

Jon spoke from his experience as Head of Visual Communications at Netcare.

He pointed out that Netcare has a large and varied audience:

• Patients
• Family
• Doctors
• Nurses
• Staff members
• Investors

Here are his ideas for a good online communication strategy:

Basics must be in place if you are going hi-tech

• Choose the right platform
• Follow best practices and create new ones
• Prove worth of new techniques by ding basics well

We were shown screen shots of the old and new Netcare website. the new site is clean, clear, not too radical. It’s most popular functions are “Find a Doctor” and “Baby Photos”. The site has a font size adjuster, which is an example of best practices.

Netcare has a “Digital Screens network” pilot. Jon explained why:

• To create own network of 10 million visitors
• To speak to a captive audience
• Offers centralised and targeted messaging
• Income generation
• To entertain, educate, push brand message

Netcare also has MMS messaging to its nurses and staff. There is a 80% uptake of this technology. Messages are groupable, and have high impacy. They allow for responses by SMS, and it is the most accessible internal communications platform.

Netcare encourage doctors to use wikis, which are not available to the public, but provide a great benefit to the public. The wikis are only available to Netcare doctors, which is good for recruiting purposes.

The Snap Comms tools (A company with which Jon is also affiliated) offers an internal communication solution with pop up alerts, screensavers, quizzes, surveys, RSS feeds. It is highly targetable, flexible and cost efficient. It also allows for Web 2.0 integration.

What is coming to Netcare?

• Netcare 922 video widget
• Online netcare videos
• Intranet revamp
• Netcare 911 news alert Twitter feed
• Netcare 911 story blog
• Media integration

Lessons learned:

• Tie everything in together, don’t operate in isolation
• Position yourself as thought leader to your peers and boss
• Do not use term web 2.0
• Sell solution not system
• You need platforms
• Scale solutions to your environment (bandwidth restrictions, for example)
• Filter – not every system is for your company
• All marketers will be New Media marketers in the future

Note: For photographs, videos and blog posts by Zoopy, the official social media sharing partner for the New Media Marketing conference, go to www.zoopy.com/newmedia.