Using social media
There are now many different social media platforms to choose from to help promote the work that you are doing, and you will benefit from considering all of these when developing your communications and marketing strategies.
Using social media for marketing will help you to gain attention to your ‘DESMOND service. Social media is a great way to build awareness and spread the word about the importance of diabetes education as well as share with your community the different modes of delivery you have available. It also provides an opportunity to build richer patient experiences, as social media acts as a communication tool after attendance, and may also provide the opportunity for you to interact with patients before and after to ensure you are remaining current and providing the service that they need/want.
It is good to understand the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ to using each platform and to consider the following:
How much manpower is needed to add content and keep it fresh?
Can posts be uploaded before publishing to save time?
What types of people use each platform and which will provide the best reach for your service?
Linking with your organisation’s communications team may help you to be more strategic about how you use the social media platforms you choose, and will ensure that you are ‘kept in check’ with current organisational policies around this.
Here is an outline of some popular social media sites and how you may consider using them:
Probably the best known of all social media sites. Organisations such as yours can create a ‘ public-facing page’ and get people to ‘like’ your page so that they can see your posts on their personal ‘wall’.
With no word limit, you can add posts of any kind. Here are some ideas:
Stat updates – number of courses running this month
Upload videos of patient and HCP narratives and testimonials
Link to news articles and publications in the world of diabetes
Promote events you have upcoming
Link to other websites containing useful information
Link to national/international campaigns such as ‘World Diabetes Day’ in November and ‘Diabetes Week’ in June
Blogs from patients – ‘A Day/Week in the Life of…’
Include surveys to get feedback
In addition to this you can also set up closed groups (like our DESMOND Educator and Provider Network) - this can be a great tool for providing ongoing support for those that have already taken part in a DESMOND group.
For some ideas of how you can make this work in your area check out the DESMOND Nottinghamshire Facebook page.
Using short messages, otherwise known as ‘tweets’, organisations like yourselves can provide short, sharp messages to your ‘followers’. Link to current events through the use of #hashtags and your followers can ‘retweet’ your tweets to their followers. Ideas for using Twitter can be:
Testimonial sound bites from patients
Quick event promotion
Retweet posts from other reputable organisations such as Diabetes UK, NHS England
Link with and retweet local health organisations
Use hashtags where possible to increase hits to your profile page
Add us to your posts and we will retweet for you - find us @desmond_tweets
DOWNLOAD SOME SAMPLE TWEETS THAT YOU CAN ADAPT FOR YOUR LOCAL AREA HERE
DOWNLOAD A ZIPPED FOLDER OF IMAGES & LOGOS THAT YOU CAN USE ACROSS YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA
Although this is a photo/video sharing site, this is a great avenue to pursue to reach a potentially different audience. Text can be added to each photo, and the use of hashtags extends the reach of your posts. All ‘posts’ will then be seen by your ‘followers’ on their main thread and they can ‘like’ those they are interested in. You could:
Add photos or videos from promotional events
Share video patient testimonials
Share images to promote the key messages from your programme
These three platforms interact with each other, so where relevant, you can add a post to one and share it to the others to ensure full coverage. There are numerous other social media platforms available but our advice would be to start with these to keep it manageable.