De-identified introduction and howto for hospital employees wishing to participate in social media.

1. A guide to SocialSites
What is SocialSites?
Thank you for your interest in being an online brand ambassador for Community Hospital! This is
your chance to share the story of your department or service line with our world class team, our
patients and our clinicians - you are part of a conversation about Community Hospital.
SocialSites is about doing what we do every day: showing our community that we are a system of
caregivers committed to bringing the best care every time. Daily, across Community Hospital
System, we commit ourselves to service excellence; to being the best we can be to our co-
workers and customers. SocialSites is about taking that passion beyond the four walls of our
hospitals, clinics and practices. SocialSites is the Community Hospital program for digital
communications such as FaceBook, blogs, Twitter, podcasts, YouTube and more. SocialSites
means engaging our team and patients in a dialogue about their experiences. It is two way, it is real
time and it is happening now!
SocialSites begins with good people. The more everyone contributes, the greater the conversation.
Below are some suggestions to think about as we all work together to grow our community.
Have a plan
Think about your commitment to SocialSites like a regular news paper column or magazine article.
Pick a schedule that works best for your message and stick with it. Your contribution can be
weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, and should remain regular. You can also involve your team, you are
welcome to think of creative ways to share as a group. For instance, each nurse on a unit can take
a turn, make it a regular event about a consistent topic or theme.
have a voice
Great blogs are written from the heart and often have a passionate and less formal voice. It may
take weeks or months to develop your voice. Here are a few simple guidelines:
•Be personal and professional. SocialSites (blogs, etc) is conversational in nature, try and have
that conversation as you would in our hospitals and offices.
•Informal does not mean poorly proofed. Practice good grammar, spelling and writing style. Editing
help is available and recommended
•When in doubt, remember the Community Hospital code of Commitment to Service Excellence
guide.
•Be engaging, invite your audience to respond and interact. The Community Engagement team
will help you monitor comments and questions.

2. go with with the flow
your
idea
Social media allow us to communicate with patients, employees and clinicians in different, exciting
ways. For instance, a 140 character tweet is a great way to spread the word about an event or
follow up on a service recovery. Sometimes a video makes more sense and other times it may be a
written blog post. Your message may work best in a podcast or photo essay. Think about what
you are trying to share and, more importantly, where your audience already is - that is where we
want to engage. It is those creative uses of social media that give us things to post on our
facebook page or tweet about. The SocialSites blog can be home to all types of social media
projects and can help drive what we talk about on other social media sites.
Some examples
Need some inspiration? Here are some healthcare social media sites you can follow:
• www.RunningAHospital.com - Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess & Harvard Med Center
• sharing.mayoclinic.org - Mayo Clinic’s blog, encompassing written text, video and photos
• youtube.com/user/UMMCVideos - University of Maryland Medical Center YouTube Channel
• youtube.com/watch?v=OEdVfyt - The Pink Glove Dance for breast cancer awareness
• healthsocmed.com - Sunday night “twitter chat” on healthcare and social media