Technology is changing. The healthcare industry is changing. How can you differentiate your practice from all the others?

A PricewaterhouseCoopers survey from 2010 revealed that 41% of patients would prefer to have more of their care delivered via a mobile device, and 31% would be interested in using an app to track and monitor their personal health information.

According to a recent Pew study, 37% of US mobile phone users between the ages of 18 and 49 have used their mobile device to look up health or medical information. Fifteen percent of those age 18 to 29 use a mobile app to track and monitor their health.

eMarketer Research Analyst Victoria Petrock explained, “more consumers are taking charge of their personal health and wellness. This presents an opportunity for marketers to encourage healthier behaviors and personalize the delivery of healthcare information and services.”

Marketer Philip Sheldrake and illustrator Nic Hinton joined forces to create this great infographic, “Content: An Illustrated History of Creation, Curation, Circulation and Consumption.”

Imagine the possibilities of revamping an often overlooked branding opportunity and customer touch point: the sales receipt.

London-based design consultancy Berg did just that. As Matt Jones explained, receipts are printed by machines that already manage a variety of complex information – most obviously, purchases. Consider that a receipt from CVS includes coupons for products in categories you’ve recently purchased in; Berg’s concept goes even further, with more useful and engaging personalization. As Berg explained to Icon magazine, “We think the humble receipt could be something like a paper ‘app’ and be valuable in small and playful ways.”

Engaged consumers generally become loyal consumers, and we all want loyal consumers. So, how and why do consumers engage? According to a recent study, more than 97% of respondents said that an online experience has influenced whether or not they bought a product or service from a particular brand… so it would be wise to know what spurs engagement. For some insight, check out GetSatisfaction’s infographic.

Customer relationship management is a major element of successful marketing. However, it’s often one-on-one, between the brand and a particular customer at a time. How can you leverage customer relationships to benefit your brand?

Having developed with the age of digital marketing is the concept of “sharing” – encouraging audiences to share compelling original content through with their social networks. Most commonly the items shared are in the form of blog posts, Tweets, photos, and videos, but even customer relationships can be shared…

Marketing Profs suggested the following scenario, regarding positive feedback emails from customers:

An email comes in.

An email goes out thanking them and asking if we can use it for marketing.

Permission is almost always granted.

Email goes out after content is posted, inviting the writer to see the content and SHARE it to their Facebook.

Writer almost always does.

New traffic comes in from both Organic Search and from Facebook Referrals.

Email subscriber list grows.

So, from one email that would have simply died (or, at best, been printed out and put on a bulletin board), you now get search traffic from Google and lots of referral traffic from Facebook.

It’s not uncommon for companies to receive these types of “love letters” – letters and emails praising your products and/or services. So, why not leverage these customer relationship interactions? They’re the best kind of testimonial you can share since they are completely unsolicited, coming from an honest and evidently passionate source. Chances are your customer will be honored to have the chance to “speak” on your behalf. Rather than ending the communication with a “thank you,” that communication can become original content to improve social media marketing and search engine optimization efforts.

What’s the difference between branding and personal branding? As Bernadette Jiwa of The Story of Telling explains, “‘Personal branding’ is simply how we market ourselves to others, we do it subconsciously every day in the way we dress, speak and act.” The same is true for companies – branding is the way companies market themselves to others in the way they “dress” (like with a logo or website), ”speak” (like in marketing communications), and “act” (like in public relations).

A great example Jiwa gives is regarding the graphic designer David Airey. As she explains, a Google search for the term “graphic designer” turns up over 25 million organic results and Airey is one of the first. If you think about it, through personal branding, designer Airey has made is name virtually synonymous with the general term “graphic designer” – an impressive feat! Just imagine the number of graphic designers and graphic design agencies all across the web that come up in those 25 million results.

After a discussion with Airey, Jiwa composed a list of ways in which he accomplished developing his personal brand. Though geared toward personal branding, many of these strategies could be tweaked to apply to companies as well:

• Invest time in creating a reputation – define who you are and what you stand for with an online presence.

• Decide how you would like to be perceived in your niche and set goals to achieve.

• Leverage your online platforms – communicate your abilities/services/products and showcase your expertise.

• Build a community and connections around your work using social media.

• Evolve your brand as your reputation grows.

• Openly display your work, ethics  and authenticity across all marketing platforms.

• Give your audience a place to stay up to date, interact, and acquire and share knowledge.

• Do great work!

Search and social marketing blog Single Grain recently created an interesting infographic showing how Facebook plays a role in our daily lives – and how life would be different without it.

From a marketing standpoint, Social Grain’s graphic shows that a whopping 70% of local businesses use Facebook for marketing. This is probably a massively helpful and valuable tool for local businesses. Just imagine, less than a decade ago it did not exist! Clearly Facebook marketing has caught on, and is fairly mainstream, from major global brands to your neighborhood small businesses.

Still not convinced about the power of content marketing? According to Social Grain, the average Facebook user creates 90 pieces of content per month… that’s an average of about 3 pieces of original content per day! Considering the number of Facebook users is now approximately 600 million (as of January 2011), this is an incredible statistic. At 600 million users, the “population” of Facebook has now surpassed the entire population of North America (344 million), exceeded the total number of internet users in all of Europe (475 million), and eclipsed the entire population of Russia (143 million) approximately 4 times. There are more people on Facebook today than there were in existence just 400 years ago (in the year 1600, the world population was 545 million).

With 770 billion page views per month, what would the world be like without Facebook?

Bing’s newly enhanced local listings will not only help the search engine continue to differentiate itself from Google (Bing being “The Decision Engine”), but will provide great value to businesses utilizing Bing’s business listings.

Bing’s Director of Product Management for Mobile Andy Chu told Fast Company that “fifty percent of mobile searches are users looking for businesses or entities related to local.” In addition, mobile searchers will typically come to a decision within an hour (as opposed to typically a week for those searching on a PC). Put simply, mobile searchers want local results – fast. As Fast Company noted, “That’s why it’s important for merchants to have as compelling information available as possible via mobile search. It could make the difference between that hungry searcher choosing your cute French bistro, or the one down the street.”

With Bing’s revamped local listings, businesses can verify and claim their pages faster, include deals and coupons directly within listings, and businesses like restaurants and bars can even include menus.

How are you utilizing local listings to differentiate your business?

Creating and optimizing original content for digital marketing is so important, as we’ve discussed before. Last week, Andrew Hanelly wrote a great post applying the lessons of legendary investor Warren Buffett to content development.

Buffett once said, “someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” As Hanelly explains, we need to remember that developing success with content marketing takes time! Specifically, no individual piece of content will “do the trick” by itself – a content marketing strategy takes time to grow and develop, gaining momentum, credibility, and trust among your audience or community. Even the smallest actions you take to improve your content marketing strategy could reveal the greatest benefits and rewards over time.

Buffett once said, “If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.” Hanelly expands, “don’t be afraid to experiment and innovate.” Recycling the same ideas from the past over and over again will not maintain success. It’s important to consider and utilize the best practices of content marketing, but not rely on the methods of the past. Rather, learning lessons from the past and applying them to today’s practices is valuable for developing new innovative and successful techniques.

Buffett once said, “Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.” For this point, Hanelly states, “Following the herd will ensure that you’re always just one of many… It’s true that you should fish where the fish are, but that’s also where all the other fishermen are.” This one is pretty easy to relate – don’t always follow the crowd, utilizing the same methods and channels as everyone else, or you’ll get lost in a sea of competitors.