Social Media Maturity Model

Technology and consumer behavior are driving the development of new business models using social media for delivering healthcare, behavior support, and health information. This new environment creates opportunities for improving overall care. The effective adoption of social media into the business model requires that businesses reach certain levels of knowledge, sophistication, and integration of their social media strategy. A healthcare organization's position relative to the progression of capability levels reflects its social media maturity. A social media maturity model can be an important tool healthcare managers can use to determine where their organization stands in terms of its social media capabilities, what strategies are appropriate to its maturity level, and how to move to the next level. While the implementation of strategies employing social media has been extensively studied in marketing literature and applications in industry, none exist which identify the specific practices, criteria, and methodology for healthcare. This article seeks to develop a social media maturity model for healthcare organizations.

Definitive Source and Citation:

Thomas, Louise, Woodside, Joseph M. Social Media Maturity Model. (2015). International Journal of Healthcare Management. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20479700.2015.1101940