We are social butterflies. Well, at least when it comes to managing and strategizing social media programs for our clients. At the most basic level, social media is another tool in the marketing toolbelt that can complement a variety of different initiatives. However, like most marketing tools, social media also requires a plan and a strategy to succeed.

We’ve been working with Moffitt Cancer Center on their social media efforts for a little over a year. Initially, we focused on building greater engagement on their main Moffitt Cancer Center fan page, with the understanding that additional department pages would be added to the strategic plan.

The main Moffitt page has flourished with new designs, custom tabs and planned monthly content calendars, increasing the fan base and engagement by more than 60%. With the main page continuing to grow and the strategy running smoothly, Moffitt asked that we begin focusing on building greater awareness about the department pages. Currently there are four department pages live on Facebook – Women’s Oncology, Sarcoma Oncology, Cutaneous Oncology and Thoracic Oncology.

Since the main Moffitt strategy has focused on specific cancer awareness months, we thought it best that we utilize a similar strategy in the promotion of the individual departments. The Thoracic department was the first to benefit from the new strategic efforts, as November is lung cancer awareness month. One of the main initiatives that we spearheaded to promote the Thoracic page was a real time Facebook chat. A real time chat means a representative from the company/brand speaks to members of the fan base in real time. For the thoracic chat, we were lucky enough to work with one of Moffitt’s thoracic oncologists, Dr. Pinder-Schneck.

The chat was hosted on November 8th from 12:30pm – 1:30pm. Although it was only one hour of one day, the efforts that went into making the chat a success began four weeks prior. We first worked with Moffitt’s marketing team and lead thoracic administrator to determine what doctor would be willing to spend an hour of their day on Facebook, then we scheduled a time and date that was best for the doctor and finalized a topic. With a doctor, date, time and topic in place we were able to develop specific marketing materials to announce the event on Facebook. The topic, “Focus on Lung Cancer,” was chosen to avoid narrowing the interest level.

Check out the below infographic to see the impressive results of the marketing efforts associated with the real time chat:

The chat and promotion worked to add value to the page, create awareness among a larger community about the many resources at Moffitt and foster brand evangelists who were not originally engaged with Moffitt’s Thoracic Oncology Department. The real time chat was only part of the lung cancer awareness efforts; bracelet giveaways and postcards discussing the value of liking the Thoracic page are also being distributed at Moffitt-hosted community events.

The Thoracic page is in its infancy, but with success of  promoted posts, a real time chat and additional marketing tools, the page will grow to be a well “liked” resource for those battling lung cancer.