Social Media is a Team Sport

When I first began to try and figure out the social media plan for the hospital, I was the lone wolf in my office. I spent the first few weeks in my office doing research and trying to figure out the plan. Soon I realized that others were interested in what I was learning, so early on, I started a social media club for other employees who I knew were interested in the topic. We met every few weeks for lunch and learn sessions. In these meetings had lots of fun, and we taught each other all that we knew and shared our plans for experimentation and implementation.

Soon the need was so widespread that we outgrew the club, and moved on to training by department, then collaboration on multi department projects. Despite the fact that I did not have a team working on this... I did have a team.

Oddly, the folks in my own department were still a bit hesitant about jumping on board. Some of it was techno fear, some of it was disbelief in the concept of online social communications, some of it was time. They were already feeling over worked the effort it would take to learn yet another thing was overwhelming. But in the PR industry the tide began to turn. They were finding that they were not getting the same results with traditional pitching, and slowly but surely they began to see their media contacts not only showing up all over the place online, but they started finding pitching opportunities in social media.

A year and a few months later I have a team. Every pr person in my department is now trying to shoot video, taking their own pictures, setting up podcasts, submitting blog posts. They are almost all on facebook and/or twitter. Last year when the wall street journal called asking for doctors on twitter, I had 1! Today I know of at least 10 at my hospital, a few of them are actually doing some pretty groundbreaking things while tweeting.

Last year, to pull off social media I had a bowling team, this year I have a track team, which seems appropriate since last year it was a crap shoot, and this year it feels more like a marathon.

Who to follow on twitter from my hospital

http://twitter.com/oliverbogler
http://twitter.com/K_BasenEngquist
http://twitter.com/DrAnasYounes
http://twitter.com/Rndubois
http://twitter.com/LovellsPlace
http://twitter.com/bewellwithbill
http://twitter.com/ddestefano
http://twitter.com/cindergonz
http://twitter.com/smerv
http://twitter.com/johnwlittle
http://twitter.com/shamsha

I know there are mores, so let me know if you think you should be on this list by submitting your twitter link as a comment.