Thanks to the lovely David Burton for alerting me to this one.

A GP who is also an education professional and an expert user of social media, Anne Marie is a natural and presents a superb discussion posing some difficult questions of her readers:

How are people using social marketing in health? Now you have surgeries tweeting, blogging, opening YouTube accounts but what has social media got to do with me as a health professional?  What does ‘engagement with consumers’ using social media, ‘establishing a brand’ got to do with health and health care organisations?

Anne Marie has a real life example of a Government organisation encouraging people to use twitter to contact a sexual health nurse, Zena.  Zena is using twitter, a website and a facebook page to contact patients. But:

• What about private issues being discussed between health professional and patient on a public site?
• How to guide patients online? To use it in a safe way?

This is what this presentation is about – well worth a listen to and if you are really struck with how good this is, the comments on Anne Marie’s blog from health professionals including Zena and patients are enlightening too.

Health professionals and social media

And my two pennies worth: – I admire what this sexual health nurse is doing – not only getting her head around the technology, but putting herself out there as a professional in social media opens her up to all sorts of discussions, comments and criticisms, in a very public way.

I agree with Anne Marie’s concerns that what happens online stays online.  Forever. And from the comments from patients here it’s worth remembering how vulnerable people are especially when they have health problems, their concerns may overtake their care for privacy.

I see what professionals like this nurse are doing as advertising good information to people on a variety of networks, giving them the channels to communicate/find someone, and then taking the conversation off line.

Even if you have the best expertise in health – if you don’t use social media how are patients going to find you?

In response Anne-Marie wrote

“I agree that social media may be a useful way to disseminate contact details. But I do have grave concerns about encouraging its use a contact medium. And it may be heresy but the people who probably most need Zena’s help probably have the least access to social media in any form. This is where enabling patients to make contact by SMS is really useful. Those are 140 private characters.”

Privacy, it seems, really isn’t an issue.  A new survey has come out with some surprising results.  While GenX is concerned about privacy on-line, this recent survey suggests this is not the case for the next generation.

the ‘digital natives’ who are known for enthusiastically embracing social networking – will retain their willingness to share personal information online even as they get older and take on more responsibilities…..

the advantages Millennials see in personal disclosure will outweigh their concerns about their privacy.[1,2]

In this case the term digital native or millennial describes those aged 18-28 years old. Here are some revealing quotes from the survey:

Most of those surveyed noted that the disclosure of personal information online carries many social benefits as people open up to others in order to build friendships, form and find communities, seek help, and build their reputations. They said Millennials have already seen the benefits and will not reduce their use of these social tools over the next decade as they take on more responsibilities while growing older.

The majority argued in answers to the survey that new social norms that reward disclosure are already in place among the young The experts also expressed hope that society will be more forgiving of those whose youthful mistakes are on display in social media such as Facebook picture albums or YouTube videos.

Some said new definitions of “private” and “public” information are taking shape in networked society. They argued that this means that Millennials might change the kinds of personal information they share as they age, but the aging process will not fundamentally change the incentives to share.

At the same time, some experts said an awkward trial-and-error period is unfolding and will continue over the next decade, as people adjust to new realities about how social networks perform and as new boundaries are set about the personal information that is appropriate to share.

Differences between generations are interesting, how about this one – do you sleep with your cell phone next to your bed?[2]

I do.  It’s got my alarm on it.

References and Notes

[1] http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Future-of-Millennials.aspx
[2] http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/751/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change

The ‘pinch of salt stuff’:

First off – this is an American Survey, which means it’s only applicable in America and we can only guess if this would be the case in other countries.

And as PEW say, the survey results are based on a non-random online sample of 895 internet experts and other internet users, recruited via email invitation, Twitter or Facebook from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University. Since the data are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error cannot be computed, and the results are not projectable to any population other than the experts in this sample.

Australian Twitter Statistics

2010

Overall the state of the twittersphere is:

• Globally twitter’s audience levels grew by more than 400% in 2009 [1]
• Demographics globally show the majority of users (39%) are aged between 18-34 years and are Caucasian [2]
• UPDATE Nov 2010: Twitter has 190 millian users, tweeting 65M times a day [4]

Although Twitter accounts in Australia lag far behind Facebook, there has been a big rise in Twitter usage:

• There are approximately 2.5M twitter accounts in Australia although only 16% of twitter users are aged under 24 years old [2]
• Within Australia nearly a quarter of online Australians (23%) read ‘tweets’ in the past year [1]
• 14 percent ‘followed’ companies or organizations via Twitter (up from 5% in 2008) and 13 percent posted ‘tweets’ (up from 4% in 2008) [1]
• The majority of accounts are in NSW (over 35%), seconded by Victoria (27%) [3]

More Web Metrics

References

[1] http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/australia-getting-more-social-online-as-facebook-leads-and-twitter-grows
[2] http://www.webkrunk.com/2010/04/13/twitter-demographics-infographic/
[3] http://blog.tribalytic.com/2010/05/13/how-many-australian-twitter-users-are-there-and-where-are-they-from/
[4] http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/08/twitter-190-million-users/

Specific social media statistics for different networks are difficult to find.  Gathering Web 2.0 metrics into one place for reference, to be updated as new statistics are published is the next task in hand. Here is an overview of where Australia is in terms of social media based on information gathered and analysed at the end of 2009.

Nielsen[1] reported that social networking on sites such as Facebook was a key driver in Australians uptake of social media and that close to three quarters of online Australians (73%) have looked at others’ profiles on social networks.  That’s three quarters of Australians online using social media!

With well over one third (37%) of these reporting to be interacting with others via social networking sites on a daily basis it changes the way we are communicating and getting information – it changes a whole heap of things in a fundamental way. Australia topped even the U.S. when it came to time spent per person on social networks – but the country that spends the most time on social networks… Italy! [2]

The biggest increases in social media usage in Australia were reading and posting on Twitter, reading wikis and engaging with brands and organizations via social media.

References

[1] http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/australia-getting-more-social-online-as-facebook-leads-and-twitter-grows
[2] http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/global-audience-spends-two-hours-more-a-month-on-social-networks-than-last-year

After evesdropping into the conversation Doctors were having about their use of social media, I came back to thoughts in a previous post on how a busy clinician would use social media – and speculated that there are two ways it can be used – in actual clinical practice and as an information source.  It’s all very well to theorise, but is it actually the case?

This from Vegard Ølstørn, a manual therapist in Norway:

I started blogging as a manual therapist in February 2010. I wanted to do this because of mainly three things. I thought that was a way of keeping myself professionally updated. My thought was to write down a summary of interested things I read, write down how I am working, what I am thinking about my work and maybe present exercises I give etc. This way I put some pressure on myself to think twice why I do what I do.

My blogging is also done as information to my patients before or after they see me. Google listings for advertisement is important, and if patients read how I work before they come to see me, I think that is a positive start. I am also planning to use the blog as a resource for patients, where they can read about exercises and things I have presented after treatments.

Lastly, blogging also builds my professional brand amongst my peers. Other clinicians can comment on my way of doing things and interesting discussions hopefully comes out. I find it interesting to read how other clinicians solve their daily challenges, so it is nice to share my view on things.

Status today is that traffic to my site is increasing and I have got both new patients as well as interested clinicians from my blogging. For the word ‘manuellterapi’ I am scoring 4th in the Norwegian google search, so the traffic is increasing. I like it.

I really liked the quote by Dr Mike (@sandnsurf):

“Blogging can be lonely. Especially lonely if we constantly rely on viewer stats, page rank and comment counts to justify the time we take to document our cogitations …but I am surfing the blogging wave to taste the salt water; feel the rush of wind in my face; and brush up against dolphins…not to observe from the beach, ice cream in hand, blistered by the rays of apathy and indifference.”

Thanks Vegard, and if you have a case study that you would like to have included contact me.