Social Media Workshop

Blogging and tweeting the Evidence

Douglas Badenoch & André Tomlin

Minervation Ltd

Minervation Ltd

• 20 years in evidence-based healthcare

• The go-to company for ‘evidence-based’

websites

• Digital agency with experience in:

– Health information

– User-centred design

– Coproduction

– Blogging and social media

Child, Commissioning, Dental, Diabetes, Education,

Lifestyle, Learning Disabilities, Mental Health,

Musculoskeletal, Social Care, Stroke

Why use social media?

Why use social media?

1. It’s good for you– Networking and keeping up to date

2. It’s good for your content/evidence– Search engines love blogs

3. It’s good for your readers– They can engage with you directly

4. An increasingly important source of general information for the public

– About half of Facebook users get news from it

– About half of them get health news from it1. Pew Research 2014

Why use social media?

Keeping up to

date

Following

publications,

organisations and

individuals in your

area

Networking

Forming

relationships &

engaging in a

dialogue with these

people

Promoting

evidence

Putting reliable

evidence into the

ring with the ‘click

bait’ and

‘infotainment’

Objectives of this session

Pre-workshop feedback

• Advice for newbies (lots of these!)

• Using social media to make your life easier

• How to get professional colleagues using Twitter

• Building audience and raising profile through

social media

• Developing a successful strategy

• Using analytics to measure impact

• Using social media to promote reliable evidence-

based messages

Activity 1 – Social media

strategy

5 mins: think about:

1. Objectives

2. Tools or tips

• Groups of 5-6, at least one

“advanced user” in each

• Make sure everyone gets

some objectives down and

some ideas

• Then we’ll take feedback

look at relevant examples

and move on.

Beginner Advanced

Keeping up

to date

Networking

Promoting

your

content

Managing Social Media

(with a particular focus on Twitter)

https://support.twitter.com/groups/50-welcome-to-twitter#topic_204

Deciding your online identity

“Social media is a mirror of

offline life that can afford a

more equitable

perspective”

- Victoria

Your identity could be:

• Yourself

• Your organisation or

website

• A made-up character

Be yourself• Pros:

– More easily findable

– More open, honest and human

• Cons:

– Harder to hide

• Examples:

– Dr Kate Granger @GrangerKate

– Insp Michael Brown @MentalHealthCop

– Alex Langford @PsychiatrySHO

Be your organisation

or website• Pros:

– Strong branding can work well

– Clear link between website & social

media

• Cons:

– Harder to connect personally with people

– May have guidelines to adhere to

• Examples:

– WeNurses @WeNurses

– The King’s Fund @TheKingsFund

– Lancet Psychiatry @TheLancetPsych

Be a made up character

• Pros:

– Stand out from the crowd

– Easier to create a new online identity

• Cons:

– People may not take you seriously

– Building trust may be harder

• Examples:

– Ermintrude @Ermintrude2

– The Mental Elf @Mental_Elf

– Neuroskeptic @Neuro_Skeptic

Get you profile right

• Profile photo

• Header photo

• Choose theme colour

• Profile text

• Geographical location

• Website link

• Consider mobile

Find out what’s going on in your

area

Find out what’s going on in your

area

• Connecting with other active tweeters will

improve your reach

• Who’s in charge of social media in your

organisation?

Testing Treatments interactive

Testing Treatments interactive

Getting started!

Getting started!

• Follow the right people

• Listen

• Take the plunge!

• Share share share

• Re-tweet things that interest you

• Use native tools (Twitter #Discover/hashtags/lists, Facebook hashtags/groups)

• If you like it, consider using Tweetdeck, Hootsuite etc.

• What high-

activity users

are doing?

• What are people

saying about

your topic?

• What sorts of

conversations

are successful?

Plan your activity

• Commit enough time

• Use your smartphone as well as your computer

• Use all appropriate sites: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube etc.

• Make use of “old” material in context

• Repeat your activity at different times of day, e.g.– Publish blog at 7.30am (auto-post to Twitter)

– Auto-schedule tweets (at 9.00am, 10.30am, 12.30pm, 2.00pm, 5.00pm, 7.30pm, 10.15pm) to highlight different aspects of the blog

Use a template for strategy

http://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-templates/

It’s about community

It’s about community

• Parallels with real social life

– It takes time and commitment

– Be nice

– Be yourself

– Be professional

• Identify shared interests

• Offer help and support

• Use direct messaging for privacy, but don’t be shy

– contact people who you want to connect with

Measuring impact

Analytics

• Start with the in-built metrics (e.g. Tweet

activity, Facebook insights etc.)

• Beware vanity analytics

• Consider using paid tools if you’re serious

about measuring engagement

Beware vanity analytics

• Hits, page views, visits: don’t count these,

count people

• Unique visits: tells you nothing about what

they actually did on your site

• Followers/friends/likes: active/engaged

followers is what you need

• Time on site/number of pages: poor

substitute for actual engagement

• Email subscribers: email opens and clicks

• Downloads: activations or account creations

Croll & Yoskovitz, Lean Analytics, 2013

Measuring engagement

Occam’s Razor (a blog) by Avinash Kaushik Best social media

metrics.

Conversatio

n

• Number of

comments or

replies per

post

Amplificatio

n

• Number of

shares

(retweets)

per post

Applause

• Number of

likes

(favourites)

per post

Analytics tools

• Google Analytics: your starting point if you have a website

• True Social Metrics: in-depth tracking of social media across platforms

• iPerceptions: exit survey

• Altmetrics: monitor SM activity for academic papers

• Many many more!!!

What to look for:

• Works across multiple social networks

• Comparisons with industry standards

• Using segments to compare different types of activity

• Time of day analysis

• Influencer analysis

True impact

• Does social media change beliefs, behaviour

or health outcomes?

• Quantitative studies not all that impressive to

date

• Qualitative studies are more encouraging

• Engagement and empowerment are key

outcomes

• Do we know what outcomes to measure?

Activity 2: cannabis

Activity 2: bloggingSilins, Edmund et al. (2014) Young adult sequelae of adolescent

cannabis use: an integrative analysis. Lancet-Psych 1 (4) 286-

293.

The press release

Suzi Gage in The Guardian

“The sample size is still not large where outcomes

are very rare. In the case of suicide attempts,

despite a sample size of 2,537 participants, only 78

people in the analysis attempted suicide, and of

them, only two were daily cannabis users. This

means the strength of evidence is low (as can be

seen by the uncertainty around the estimated

risk, which ranges from a doubling of risk for

daily users to a 22-fold increase), and any bias in

the data will have a larger effect when the numbers

are very small.”

Media coverage

Activity 2: 10 mins

• You are an evidence-based blogger and become

aware of the Lancet-Psych paper

• You see that it’s getting lots of media attention

• But are its results being reported accurately?

Plan a social media strategy for countering

this

1. Which channels will you use?

2. What outcomes do you want to achieve?

3. What tweets would you plan?

4. How will you measure impact?

• Douglas Badenoch @DBadenoch

• André Tomlin @Mental_Elf

• Minervation @Minervation

• #EvidenceLive