Social networking is all the rage these days. Many companies in the healthcare staffing industry are finding tremendous growth and success from their marketing efforts in this area. Facebook and LinkedIn seem to be the platform of choice for most healthcare staffing companies. However, YouTube and Twitter are also gaining more traction in the healthcare staffing industry.
Industry specific social media sites can bring a lot of value to participants in that industry. One of the most successful industry specific social media sites is Avvo. Avvo started as a social networking and rating site for laywers. It now also includes Doctors. In the healthcare staffing industry MedXCentral and MedicalMingle have created fairly successful social networking environments. MedXCentral is a more general platform for healthcare and MedicalMingle is open for healthcare professionals, recruiters and companies in the space.
Last year, a new social networking site designed specifically for travel nurses started up called Healthcare Travelbook. The community is for everyone that works in the travel healthcare industry. This includes travelers and per diem staff, agency recruiters, and other supporting businesses. Although anyone in the industry can sign up, Healthcare Travelbook is primarily geared toward travel professionals. If you are a not an actual traveler your use of the site is more restricted.
The Healthcare Travelbook was created by Wes and Rebecca Herdlein. Wes has been a Physical Therapist for over 12 years and has been traveling for the past 6 years. As a traveler, Wes wanted a central environment online whereby travelers could share information and interact with each other. So he and his wife Rebecca created Healthcare Travelbook.
The goal of Heatlhcare Travelbook is to be the primary tool used by travelers and recruiters to educate, inform, and improve the lives and careers of other travelers. Currently the site has over 1400 members and is growing daily. In the past couple of months they have added almost 1000 new members. The members include nursing, allied, and recruiting professionals.
Some key features of the site include:
- Healthcare Staffing Blogs – from industry experts, companies and healthcare travelers
- Ask a Recruiter Forum – questions and answers to and from travelers
- Reviews – of agencies, recruiters, assignment locations, and hospitals
- Job Board – for allied and nursing careers
- Photo and video sharing
- Search - to find other travelers or professionals in your area
- File Sharing – to share licensing forms, resume templates, and other helpful files
- Groups – coming soon and will be open for the community to create
The Healthcare Travelbook certainly seems to be providing a great resource for travelers in the industry. Hopefully it will continue to gain traction. From our perspective, it would be nice to see more controls and participation features for companies in the industry. As travelers get in there and start commenting on everything, healthcare staffing companies and facilities will most likely need these features and controls to keep the site from turning into a complaint forum.
It's great to see new tech initiatives starting up in the industry and also incorporating a social aspect. Check out the Healthcare Travelbook. Sign up and tell us what you think. Also, once you're in, connect with Staffing Robot and be our friend!
I think this one of the best efforts at a traveler community I have seen. I would love for it to have more integration with outside platforms though.
Posted by: Jeff | Friday, January 07, 2011 at 07:12
You're right. That would be nice as well.
Posted by: Jason Lander | Friday, January 07, 2011 at 07:18
Health care travel book is really great. In social media discussing health topics makes lots of thing easier. Thanks for sharing such a nice post.
Posted by: Greet Verellen | Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 01:39