The Power of Social Networks

A Presentation to the Wisconsin State Asthma Coalition, May 6, 2011 in Green Bay

Power of Social Networks

View more presentations from Julie Swanson

Three Powerful Reasons to Use Social Networks

1. Content: Information is Power
Anyone can create and anyone can publish. You have content that can help others and others can help you improve your content. What can you share that adds value?

A great examples of publishing content that adds value is Beth Kantor's blog

2. Connections: Relationships are Power
Social capital may be our most powerful resource. People are influenced by people they are connected to and networks allow us to organize quickly and creatively.

If you want to leverage the power of connections you need to focus on building trusted relationships.

Example: The story of Sameer and Vinay from Dragonfly Effect.

3. Credibility: The Power of Authentic Voices

Social networks could limit us to connecting with people like us but they are more powerful if we use our networks to bridge to people who have different perspectives and experience. One of the most effective ways to share authentic voices and diverse wisdom is to share stories.

Mercy Corps is a great example of an organization that invests in storytelling.

Prevention Speaks, our newest project, is working with communities throughout the US, to tell stories about community change.


Resources
Beth Kantor's Blog

Connected Citizens

Networked Non Profit

Dragonfly Effect

CDC Social Media Tool Kit ( I use this resource when I am working with public sector employees.)

Working Wikily

Have resources to add to the list? Put them in the comments.

The Power of Online Networks

Hat tip to Michael Gilbert for this great article on how to support and engage online networks
5 tips for Creating Non-Proft Online Communities

The first two tips
The cause is the purpose....so don't set up an online space around our organization or our program...but rather the work of tobacco control and public health advocacy.

and

Listen...don't think of this as primarily a space to push information out. This is a space to listen and to help people connect to each other.

What Information do Communities Need

The Knight Commission published a report Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. The three objectives are:

-Maximizing availability of relevant, credible information
-Strengthening the capacity of individuals to engage with information
-Promoting individual engagement with information that leads to positive public change

This sounds like what we are working on in public health. Two things of note:
People are desperate for "trusted intermediaries"...credible people who can help them make sense of the information that is most important, relevant and useful.

Being social media savvy is an important strategy..because it can help people leverage available resources. Public Media 2.0, a report by the American University Center for Social Media identifies five ways social media is changing people's "media habits"
Choice, conversation, curation, creation, and collaboration.

CDC Expands their Social Media Tools

CDC just announced a new updated social media tools page. What is most interesting about this is there were rumors that the Health Marketing division of CDC was going to be cut.    Instead of waiting and wondering..someone took the intitiave to put out a  "New! Improved! "website.  What a great strategy! If your worried that your organization is going to cut you...go public with something that adds value.

Check out the New, Improved  Social Media at CDC

This is why I came!

The session this morning was just what I hoped for when I came!

Why CDC uses social media

• To reach more people
• Be where your audience is (make it easy for them to find you)
• Increase opportunities for conversation ( your audience can talk to you)
• Use the power of networks (make it easy for people to share your information with their friends)
• Access the wisdom of crowds (let your data go and people will create more than you ever could)

CDC lessons learned

1. Consolidate your social media in one place (make it easy to find)
2. Cross publisize (use each social media to promote others)
3. Challenge of 508 (government must meet accessibility requirements)
4. To convinced supervisors...use metrics. People want to see the data ( CDC has a metrics database on their website.)

Quotes
"Podcasts..we love them. People are using them in ways we never dreamed of...like teachers using in their classrooms."

"We have image files on our website but it doesn't hold a candle to the activity we are seeing on our Flickr site."

"Content syndication and RSS...our partners love it! They get up to date, credible content on their websites."

CDC is using social media

Erin Edgerton from CDC shared the social media tools they used to handle the Salmonella outbreak. They needed to reach a lot of people, so they tried a lot of tools.

Blogs
A webinar for bloggers
Buttons and Badges: like mini posters you can put on your webpage or your social network page
Widgets: an outbreak map, the FDA database ( you can put this content on your website and it is updated automatically)
Twitter: a micro blog ( you get mini test updates (140 characters)
Youtube: They created a what to do/not do video- 60 second video and Anatmony of an Outreak- 5 minutes (bet you can guess which one got more views)
E-cards
Mobile site This has information that people might need to check while they are away from home
My Space page ( they are on Facebook too)
An Island in Second Life
Podcasts

Flickr: need some photos for HINI?

Resources for partners: they create what they call mirror webpages...so state and local health departments can put CDC content up on their own website ( uses RSS to update)

If you want to see all the social media tools CDC is using. Go to their social media page.

Here are examples of how CDC has used social media in campaigns.

Want to know if anyone actually uses the CDC social media tools? They post their metrics dashboard. You can see what data they are collecting.

The Magic Words

Sanjay Koyani had to go to his boss at the FDA and convince her that they needed a Twitter account. He had to use the magic words. "It's going to be a pilot."

I loved this...we have discovered the magic in those words too!

Twitter: The FDA did start a Twitter account to get out the updates from a recent Salmonella outbreak. They ended up with 10,000 subscribers.

Widget: They also created a searchable database of which products were being recalled (there were over 3000) and then for the first time shared the code as a widget so others could put the database on their websites.

XML: this is a little beyond me but the basic idea is they shared the database as XML which means they shared the actual data. This will allow others to create new content and products: combine data with maps for instance.

Sanjay talked about the Wisdom of Crowds...the many will always be smarter than the few. If you are willing to share control, people may create things you never dreamed of ( I mean that in a good way!)