Category Archives: Social Technology

Healthcare Social Media Review #41: Tap into Visual Storytelling

Visual Storytelling

How can visual media bring healthcare social media to life?

This edition of the Healthcare Social Media  (HCSM) Review explores visual storytelling. Storytelling alone could have been our sole focus, but the increasing prominence of visual media, especially across social networking sites, couldn’t go unnoticed. Posts span visual communication research, content strategy, and storytelling techniques. Continue reading


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Visual Communication

Call for Submissions: Health Care Social Media Review #41

Visual Communication

How can we harness the power of visual storytelling in healthcare social media?

65% of the American population are visual learners. You may want to read that a second time. And should we be surprised? Photos and videos (visual, multimedia content) serve as social currencies online as evidenced by the infographic explosion combined with social network sites bringing this content to bear: Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest to name a few. Even Twitter recently updated to offer more visual tweets.

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Health Care Social Media Review #30: The Research Edition

Home Library at Sunset

Where do you turn for the latest research on the impact and influence of social media?

This edition of the Health Care Social Media Review (HCSM) provides the latest research your fellow colleagues are studying by highlighting social media research and related resources. Whether you’re talking with your stakeholders, board, manager, customer, or colleague, being well-versed in the research equips you with the evidence and theory needed to optimize your impact.

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Call for Submissions: Health Care Social Media Review #30

Healthcare Social Media Review: Social Media Research

What’s the latest social media research you’re reading?

Weekly, Daily, a new social media research report or study is released, competing for our attention and analysis. What are some of the latest research nuggets you’ve found most useful? And what are some of the information sources that help you stay up-to-date as the research works to catch up with practice?

On Wednesday, June 5, SocialButterfly will again host the Health Care Social Media Review, the peer reviewed blog carnival focused on health care social media, curating some of the latest research and resources shared by our fellow colleagues.

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How to Rock Social Media

How to Rock Social Media Doesn’t Involve Social Media

How to Rock Social Media

How are you rocking social media in just 30 minutes a day? What’s your best tip?

One of my favorite people, Beth Kanter, asked her Facebook community this very question after coming across the latest infographic offering advice on the topic (link to full infographic). Given the expanding waistline of digital content, conversations and online communities, it’s a question experts continue to assess and re-assess, adjusting their daily/weekly routines to “keep up”. You may have noticed I’m a bit “quieter” these days. This is because, in the past year, one of the greatest items I’ve learned mirrors the advice I offered in response to Beth’s question.

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Red States. Blue States. These are Social Health States. (Kind of)

Social Health States

How social is your state’s health department?

Newly announced, the “Social Media for Public Health” Twitter chat will be hosted the second Tuesday of every month at 1pm, EST. The host account, @phsocmed, already has over 50 followers and participants are invited to use the hashtag #SM4PH to chime in. But just how social are our health departments anyway? Research shows we still have a ways to go.

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Social Media Health Care Review: Social Media Meets Digital Health

Health Care Social Media Review #21: Social Media Taps Digital Health

Social Media Health Care Review: Social Media Meets Digital Health

This edition of the Health Care Social Media (HCSM) Review explores recent discussions and research on how social media collides with health promotion, prevention and wellness efforts. While a number of submissions highlighted social media, many spoke more to digital health as a whole vs. social media specifically, an important differentiation. So, let’s explore that first.

Digital Health Takes Center Stage

In health care social media discussions, lines quickly blur as people share and develop ideas that relate to possible close cousins of social media including big data, wearable tech or mobile technology. Refer to this article by Healthy Startups on the 100 Trends That Will Change Healthcare in 2013 for a full list of potential relatives.

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Call for Submissions: Healthcare Social Media Review #21

Health and Wellness

How can social media support prevention and wellness?

January is the month of new resolutions yet a study out of the University of Scranton finds that only 8% of us actually achieve these resolutions. At the same time, about 1 in 3 Americans plan on buying a new fitness tech in 2013. Yet as the image above reminds us, at varying degrees, health is more than a click of a button.

On Wednesday, Jan. 16, SocialButterfly will host the HealthCare Social Media Review, the peer reviewed blog carnival for everyone interested in health care social media. Given the importance of prevention amidst a nation with an expanding waistline, this edition will focus on how social media collides with health promotion, prevention and wellness.

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Unwinding the Art Behind the Science

Can online, social networks really help people stop smoking?

This is what 100 experts came together to discuss in a 2-day workshop in Washington, D.C. The result was a proposed research agenda on online social networks and smoking cessation. The group proposes 34 questions they deem most pressing in four categories: advancing theory, understanding fundamental mechanisms, intervention approaches, and evaluation.

This was 2010.

There is A Need

We are on the edge of 2013. And while the Web is ubiquitous–making qualms between offline and online approaches somewhat void when we should be looking at the overall customer experience…We’re still working to better understand many of the questions proposed:

  • How well do theoretical models of social influence translate between offline and online contexts?
  • How does information spread through an online social network? Are there identifiable patterns of information spread that can be leveraged in intervention research?
  • Can key participants in a network be identified and targeted to foster information diffusion or make it more efficient?
  • What are the drivers of the viral spread of an application, concept, or innovation through online networks?
  • What predicts engagement in an online social network?

All 34 questions themselves are invigorating. I encourage you to take them back to your team to fodder discussion and brainstorming. We need to be asking these questions. We need to test our ideas, explore what’s working and share it with our colleagues. But there’s a greater need.

You Can Help Solve It

As a practitioner, one item stood out among the research agenda. It’s worth filing in your back pocket and pulling out as evidence when you’re in one of those meetings:

“While there are ways in which offline and online behaviors overlap and can reciprocally inform models, mechanisms, implementation, and evaluation, there are also important differences that require critical thinking about online networks. There is a need to challenge and test the assumptions inherent in traditional models when developing, implementing, and evaluating online interventions.”

You are called to challenge traditional models–even tested ones. Rather, find inspirational models. Study them. Find what’s working. Lean on your training, work to better understand people and unwind the assumptions you bring to even the tiniest of tasks. If you’re a graphic designer for example, maybe you look into the psychology of color and how that impacts design and behavior. This is the art behind the science, so go grab your paintbrush.

What do you think about the proposed research agenda? What questions would you add?

Imagineering InstaGood: 7 Examples You Won’t Find On Mashable

How do you think about your content?

A new comScore report reminds us that audiences are not audiences and that content can be discovered as much as broadcasted. According to the report, Instagram tops Twitter in mobile engagement achieving an average of 7.3 million daily active users compared with Twitter’s 6.9 million. This means 7.3 million people access and use Instagram on any given day. What’s more,  the study also found that the average Instagram user spends more time accessing the app, 257 minutes compared to 169.9 minutes spent on Twitter.

Sharing Experiences

image courtesy of reavel

Does anyone else feel like Twitter has become a broadcast mechanism? I’m guilty of this myself. But Instagram, now that takes true imagineering. Just look at Sharpie for inspiration. Rather than trying to configure Instagram into a promotional tool, Sharpie uses it for storytelling with its images receiving an average of 1300 likes and over 21 comments.

For those unfamiliar, Instagram is a photo-sharing application that can be downloaded for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. You know–that app Facebook bought for a billion dollars? You snap a photo and can apply a variety of filters to it to make it look weathered, faded, vintage, or enhanced. While you follow friends like you might on Twitter, the use of hashtags become all the more important as people tag photos as a main way to find content. Oh, and there’s a number of third-party apps to play with as well.

What makes Instagram unique is that is can capture moments, visually, from one person or from a crowds–while on the go. As Geoff Livingston shares, “People are sharing real experiences [on Instagram].” Another descriptor: “The revolution won’t be televised, it will be instagrammed.

7 Unique Examples of Using Instagram for Good

With over 40% of the top brands on Instagram, I’ve rounded up some examples of using Instagram for good that go beyond Mashable’s list of 10 inspiring nonprofits using Instagram. If you know of others, please add them in the comments below!

photo by Jeffrey Young from the BART InstaWalk

  • Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) InstaWalk: East Bay Instgrammers, are one of three large Instagram groups in the Bay Area that organize photo-walks. This past January, their photo walk was amongst the BART system.  If you want to address commuter health or promote walking, biking or taking the rail to work, this could be up your ally. Note: There are InstaWalks and then there’s InstaMarketing.
  • Green NYC: The New York City Government is using Instagram in its Green NYC initiative by having their Mascot, Birdie, snap and share photos of his New York adventures. Green NYC looks to reduce greenhouse gas emission by encouraging New Yorkers to reduce their energy use, choose a more sustainable lifestyle, and take small actions that will help shrink the citywide carbon footprint and improve environmental quality.
  • The #Kenya365 Instagram Project: A grassroots group of friends are starting a photo-a-day hashtag #Kenya365 to highlight life and community in Kenya.  How can you expand perceptions of a geographic location or use the picture-a-day concept for your mission?
  • Capturing moments: This may be taking things too far but Instagram was recently used to livestream a toddler’s open heart surgery. How can you provide access to big events or give view to the inbe-details of your work?
  • U.S. Forestry Service’s Digital Leaf Press: Using Instagram, the service is taking conservation education digital! How else could you use Instagram for education?
  • From Instagram to Inspired Media: This link actually shares five brillinatly creative uses of Instagram. While not necessarily social good specific examples, the creative concepts could be easily adaptable–an instagrammed music video? menu? mosaic art? Say no more.
  • Advocating Through Visual Storytelling: Jana Baldwin, activist and blogger is a graduate of The George Washington School of Public Health who observed how many students never left campus to understand how different life is from NW to SW to NE to SE in Washington D.C. Thus, NW to SE was born where Jana sheds light on differences in life and culture within DC’s own city limits focusing on public health and safety issues. Instagram has become her latest tool of choice, sharing compelling images that capture life from NW to SE.

Try it out: Visual content shouldn’t be an after thought. See how your organization or content area is viewed on Instagram. Use tools like PinstagramWebstagram and Statigram to search hashtags like #climatechange, #empowerment or #medicare. Are you inspired?