We often hear from our healthcare clients “We have to have a blog.” or “We have to be on Facebook.” “Can you go ahead and setup that up us?” The answer is always “Yes, but why?”  At this point, I usually receive a blank stare or long pause.  The reason for my question is not to play mental judo with my colleagues.  Rather, it starts an essential dialogue about how to effectively implement social media within a healthcare organization, whether it is a medical association, not-for-profit, or university.

I recently presented at the Alliance for Continuing Medical Education on the results of a brief social media survey that Alicia Sutton and I conducted with members of the Alliance’s “Medical Education and Communications Companies Alliance” section (full results will be released in the near future). I was struck by our finding that of the 51% of respondents who use social media for CME, 71% said they used Twitter.  So I asked the audience if anyone could share an example of how they were successfully using Twitter in their organization.  To my surprise, not one person raised their hand. (more…)