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Showing posts with label social networking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social networking. Show all posts

April 19, 2011

TimedRight....Is it?

Today I met with TimedRight, a group that has created a social networking site (of sorts) for the medical community. With them we will be creating a section for our members to use discussion boards, present/discuss case studies, continue with self-direct CME as well as interact with other medical specialties in open forum areas.

Our hope is to use this site to engage our members before the conference in June, during the conference and after the conference to poll them about the sessions and what take away messages were most useful to them.

The site itself is not unlike AlgonquinSocialMedia.Ning.com but not quite as social media heavy. You create a profile, join groups, start discussions. You can post documents or meeting minutes for circulation within a committee. I'm pretty sure you can even link your twitter feed.

What I'm not sure about is whether our members will use a site like this. As medical specialists their time is already quite tied up between seeing patients, maintaining their certification (CME), doing rounds, and journal study. Do they have time to join another networking site? Will they want to?

At what point do we say "enough is enough" and disconnect or go offline? For me that's right about now, it's been a long day.

Allowing for the dialogue

(I'm going to rant, I'm a bit frustrated.)

I think I mentioned in a previous post that the organization I work for has jumped on the band wagon and created a Facebook fan page. As the administrator of this page I'm running into some difficulties with some executive members of our Association who don't want to see the page opened up to the public for commenting.

I have a problem with this because the whole reason for social media is to engage with people, to start those dialogues and foster a spirit of trust and credibility in the organization. But we (the royal one) can't do that if people can't make comments to post content. It's how you respond to those comments (positive or negative) that people will appreciate and how quickly you can put out any fires should they happen. Why is it that some people are so fearful of change?? I'm just starting to get my feet wet when it comes to social media but even I understand the necessity for dialogue and feedback.

In any event, I'm going to continue to plead my case in hopes that the executives see "the light" as it were and move forward with me, knowing that strategies are in place to deal with any tricky situations before they happen. (I've found that having a communications crisis strategy in place before a crisis occurs to be super handy. Not only for the "what to do" aspect but also in making change happen.)

Rant over. Again sorry.