Tenent Healthcare launched the MedPost urgent care brand and a comprehensive social media campaign to promote it. The campaign focuses on young professionals by posting weekly humorous health and wellness content to multiple channels. This helps differentiate MedPost in a competitive market by promoting a relatable brand image. While an early social media user, MedPost risks losing its advantage if competitors adopt similar strategies or if it cannot scale the campaign with its growth. It should focus on leveraging its large following through customer service to build loyalty.

1. Social Media Campaign Strategy – Tenent Urgent Care System
Erik Goodfriend | May 3, 2015©
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Tenent Healthcare corporation is a national, for profit healthcare provider of
both inpatient and outpatient services. In response to the rapidly expanding
urgent care market - and patient demand for healthcare delivered at the time
and place of their choosing – Tenent rebranded their urgent care system as
MedPost in May 20141
.
The MedPost urgent care chain began with 23 locations in Arizona, California,
Florida, Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee and Georgia, quickly growing
to 39 locations and continues to expand. All locations are in rapidly growing
metropolitan areas.
Concurrent with launching the MedPost brand, Tenent launched a
comprehensive social media campaign2
created by Social Control, a social
media company (www.socialcontrol.com) to promote the brand to a targeted
customer segment. This campaign won a 2014 Shorty Award for Best in Health
and Fitness.3
Product
In addition to providing traditional urgent care services for non-acute
healthcare needs, MedPost also offers pediatric urgent care, wellness visits,
seasonal care - such as allergies and flu, and minor occupational health injuries.
MedPost’s value proposition is based on access, convenience and price:
We know that illness and injury can be frustrating, and that
your regular doctor may not always be available. Our goal is
to provide quality care that not only fits into your schedule,
but is also much more affordable than a visit to the ER.4
The MedPost website offers on-line appointment functionality indicating next
available appointment timeslots and the ability to book a doctor visit
immediately. Price information is not available on the website.
Points of Parity and Differentiation
The care delivered by MedPost is not significantly different than the care
delivered by competing urgent care or doctors’ offices. While MedPost can offer
rapid access to an appointment that most doctors cannot, competing urgent
cares do the same. The ability to book appointments on-line and convenient
clinic locations are points of parity for most customers, depending on where
they live or work and their comfort with technology.
MedPost uses social media channels to build a unique brand image to create
the impression of differentiation in a highly competitive market with very small

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variations product – outpatient urgent care. This is a strategy commonly
deployed by retail businesses but not often seen in healthcare.
Target Audience
Based on the social media channels used and the tone of the content posted,
my assumption is MedPost is targeting an audience of young, professionally
employed people who may not have an existing relationship with a doctor.
To verify this assumption I looked at census data for the zip codes in which
MedPost urgent cares are located. While the adjusted gross income varies from
state to state, the median across all locations is $65,6615
. This appears to
roughly correlate with a target audience of young professionals.
By focusing on the young, professional market segment with their social media
campaign, MedPost is able to tightly focus posted content on topics this group
finds relevant and valuable. An additional benefit is the “sharing” frequency of
this demographic on social media channels, resulting in peer-to-peer referrals
and endorsements.
Social Media Mix
The MedPost social media campaign leverages clever, humorous health and
wellness messages posted to multiple social media channels each week. These
channels include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+
and LinkedIn. With the exception of LinkedIn the content is identical on each
channel with links between channels and to the MedPost website. The content
posted to LinkedIn takes a slightly more formal, traditional tone.
The content posted never directly promotes the services available at MedPost.
Instead it promotes living healthy, active lifestyles, eating well and not taking
workplace stress too seriously. The strategy mirrors the target customers’
lifestyle aspirations, sending the message “we are just like you.” Through this
messaging MedPost hopes to build a brand image that differentiates them from
other urgent care providers offering very similar products and services.
The functionality, linked content and traffic on each channel are summarized
below.

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Channel
Update
Frequency Traffic Content
Facebook 1x per week 53,000 likes
3,885 comments
Ability to “like” posts, comment and
share with friends
Aggregation site for all content –
videos, tweets, images
Twitter 3x per week 549 followers Ability to “re-tweet”
Links to recipes and wellness tips
YouTube 1x per week -- Weekly health and wellness videos
Host platform other channels link to
Google+ 1x per week 19 followers Ability to “like” posts, comment and
share with friends
Linked to YouTube and Twitter
content
Instagram 1x per week 62 comments
13 followers
Ability to “like” posts, comment and
share with friends
Linked to YouTube and Pinterest
content
Pinterest 1x per week 28 pins
7 followers
Ability to “like” posts, comment and
share with friends
Linked to YouTube and Instagram
content
LinkedIn 1x per week 166 followers Stress management and office
wellness focused content
Limited content
Primarily portal to MedPost website
Strengths and Weaknesses
The MedPost social media campaign is well managed and cleverly crafted. The
campaign strives to stake out a unique position in the crowded and competitive
urgent care market place by promoting a brand image customers can relate to
personally. In a healthcare sector with few opportunities to differentiate one
company from another this focus on brand image has good potential.
The weakness of MedPost’s social media campaign is primarily resource based.
Developing high quality, clever content every week, such as the infograhics
posted to Instagram and Pinterest, and video shorts like those on YouTube
requires continuous engagement of an outside advertising agency. These

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promotional costs hit the profit/loss statement each month. In a low margin
business such as urgent care these promotional costs must demonstrate a
measurable ROI to be sustained. If costs are seen as exceeding benefits and the
quality of the campaign is reduced, the impact and success of the campaign
could be greatly diminished.
There are multiple strengths to MedPost’s integrated social media strategy. The
greatest is the focused targeting of a specific customer segment in a healthcare
marketplace slow to adopt social media techniques. A second strength is the
consistent set of messages that appear multiple times, in slightly varying
formats, reinforcing their brand image and building familiarity in the minds of
their customers. These include “sick days aren’t meant to be sick” and “did you
know…” (followed by a wellness tip) which appear every few weeks in differing
formats.
Opportunities and Risks
MedPost benefits from being early to market with a creative social media
strategy. They have succeeded in attracting a large number of followers on
Facebook and have consistently delivered quality content through the most
commonly used social media channels.
It is almost certain their competition will soon adopt a similar strategy, creating
the risk of loosing the brand advantage they have developed. This could
threaten their revenue and patient volume pipeline. There is also the challenge
of organizational growth. MedPost is aggressively expanding into new markets.
If the social media campaign cannot keep pace with the organizational growth
it will loose its impact and influence, both internally and in the marketplace.
It is not clear from the MedPost website if the social media channels are used to
gather customer feedback and proactively provide customer service and
manage their brand image.6
Leveraging their large group of followers as
advocates and promoters through personalized customer service and dialogue
is a significant opportunity to differentiate them from the competition and build
brand loyalty.
Conclusion
MedPost and Tenent Healthcare have crafted a well thought through social
media campaign and have dedicated the resources to insuring consistent
quality content across a full range of channels. This has resulted in an
impressive number of “followers” on Facebook, representing a unique
opportunity for peer-to-peer promotion.
While they are early to market in the social media realm, their early advantage
is not self-sustaining over the long-term. They have an opportunity to
aggressively capitalize on their early successes and continue to build

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momentum. This will require an on-going commitment of internal, external and
financial resources. As a for-profit corporation Tenent will be closely monitoring
the MedPost social media campaign ROI. A sustained commitment to leveraging
the early social media success may result in the MedPost brand establishing a
unique and well-differentiated position in the urgent care marketplace. A
reduced commitment could have the opposite effect, losing what has been so
quickly gained.

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Appendix
Demographics
MedPost urgent care centers appear to be primarily located in upper middle
class neighborhoods, based on zip code census data and average adjusted
gross income.
Zip
Code State
Adjusted
Gross
Income
Zip
Code State
Adjusted
Gross
Income
85296 Arizona $65,613 30331 Georgia $36,577
85339 Arizona $46,419 02038 Massachusetts $88,733
92808 California $94,134 48304 Michigan $202,657
92821 California $64,900 38654 Mississippi $55,951
90703 California $69,636 63131 Missouri $247,221
90807 California $65,708 38138 Tennessee $105,552
93446 California $49,866 79925 Texas $38,236
30062 Georgia $79,159 75961 Texas $37,582
Sample Posts
The following screen shots were taken from the MedPost Facebook and
Instagram pages. The content is representative of that regularly posted to
MedPost’s accounts. Comments and “likes” can be seen in the margins.
The clever, well-crafted content speaks in an informal voice and differentiates
the MedPost brand from more traditional healthcare providers.

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1
“Tenent Rebrands Its Urgent Care Centers;” Gales, A. Dallas Morning News; May 2014.
2
Based on a survey of Facebook posts looking at post initiation dates.
3
http://industry.shortyawards.com/category/7th_annual/health-and-fitness
4
MedPost website “about us” description; http://www.medpost.com
5
2011 Adjusted gross income data source: http://www.melissadata.com
6
“Should Healthcare Organizations Use Social Media?;” Lee, J. Lorincz, C. Drazen, E;
Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices; 2011.