You are what you tweet (part 2)
With a week to go to the Health and Care Innovation Expo I’m delighted to have a guest post from my co-presenter at the Pop-up University, Dominic Stenning aka @Patient_Leader. We’ll be running a session on social media: Only one week to go until the Expo that I’m presenting at with @VictoriaBetton. Both Victoria and I love our social media and know just how valuable a tool it can be for sharing ideas and more importantly, building relationships. If you’re honest, genuine and open to other people’s views then, in my experience, you have nothing to fear from Twitter. Yes it will challenge your thinking and yes you won’t agree with everyone, but that doesn’t mean you have anything to fear. On the whole if you stick to the rule ‘you are what you tweet’ – such as being considerate – then you can only get the very best social media has to offer. Building relationships and networking in general is what it’s all about. My advice is get stuck in and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. We’re a forgiving bunch on Twitter and if you get something wrong, just say sorry and if the other person doesn’t understand, then that’s their problem. We all make mistakes or say something without thinking, on the whole you will not only learn from it but make new friends in the process, as I have. My life has significantly changed since using social media (Mainly Twitter) and that’s mainly to do with following up online relationships with real life meet ups. I’ve ended up working with various healthcare professionals and also making friends with people...
#MentalPatient – where it all started and what it all means
Where it all started When I sneaked a peak at my emails (ironically in the middle of a Time to Change Leeds steering group meeting) and clicked on an Asda link from one of our consultant psychiatrists, @nuwandiss, my heart started palpitating. I couldn’t believe the image in front of me. Surely this Halloween costume was a wind up? But the URL was legit. I shared it with colleagues around the table. We all gasped. My first thought was that it had to come down quickly – it was going to upset and offend so many people. Asda’s headquarters are in Leeds and Dom, Head of Social, has been fantastic in supporting myself and my comms team in our use of social media. He’s even blogged about mental health taboos himself – you can read it here. So I sent him a DM. Dom got it straight away and put things in motion to get it taken down. Unfortunately for Asda the web page remained up. Going viral Later that morning our chief executive (who also received the email) tweeted Asda with the link, and a response came quickly: ‘Thanks for your feedback. We agree. Our George colleagues had already picked up on this and are taking action. #timetochange’. There was no further interaction until the ChrisButlernhs tweet was re-tweeted by MrsGracePoole in the evening and at this point the topic went rapidly viral over the next 24 hours, resulting in prime time national TV and radio coverage plus print media the next day. A review using the analytics engine Topsy shows that during the twenty four hour period from 12am on 26 September there were 22,371 tweets mentioning the word Asda, compared to...
What I love about Twitter – inconsequential frippery
My partner recently (and reluctantly) joined Twitter in order to promote his business. This has led to more than a few heated debates about the culture and etiquette of this social media channel. He has found himself particularly irritated by what he regards as frippery and nonsense flying around his timeline. Why on earth would anyone be interested in what I’ve had for tea? Who cares what my views are about [insert subject] that doesn’t relate to my business in the slightest? He is finding it hard to fathom. And whilst on the surface I have been valiantly fighting Twitter’s corner, it has secretly caused me to reflect on my own behaviours and others in my timeline. Is it a problem to be inconsequential? I’m a real fan of the ‘party’ analogy for Twitter – if you’re at a party you tend to get out what you put in – make the effort and others will reciprocate. Talk about yourself and your work/business/professional interests the whole time, and other party-goers are likely to make a hasty retreat. Conversation is as much (if not more) about developing relationships as it is about sharing information and knowledge. And so it is in my experience on Twitter. I search out content relevant to my professional interests, but I also enjoy the odd bit of frippery in my timeline. Being inconsequential – snippets reflecting the shared experience of what it is to be human in 140 characters – is a means of creating connection. Put that way it doesn’t sound so inconsequential to me after all. I am fascinated by our different...
What I love about Twitter – spontaneity
My What I love about Twitter posts are intended as tiny vignettes of transient moments that capture the joys of Twitter for me. They are a personal record of my social media learning curve and I hope also illustrate the possibilities of Twitter to people who are getting to grips with the platform. What I love about Twitter is the way it can sponateously connect me to others during a particular moment or experience. This week I spent a couple of days at the NHS Expo #ExPo2013 which was a mix of speeches, workshops and stands all about innovation in health. Twitter made the event a multi-dimensional one for me. I found myself seamlessly navigating my experience of attending the event both in person and via Twitter in ways which reinforced, developed and shifted my journey during each day in many and varied ways. A few examples are: Discovering who, where, what and when (I barely looked at the programme) Unexpected encounters with people in passing “are you so-and-so off Twitter?” Arranging to meet up with people when we both realised we were there “fancy a coffee and a catch up?” Pre-arranged plans to follow up on conversations we had started on Twitter Reinforcing new connections with follow up with conversations on Twitter (still continuing) Making new online connections through retweets using the #ExPo2013 hashtag. I also managed to miss quite a few people who I’d have loved to have met up. My almost meeting with @MrBen_King was the one that really made me giggle though: Even though I was at the event all on my own,...
What I love about Twitter – crowdsourcing
In my experience social media evokes strong reactions in people whose primary reference point is their teenager posting Facebook status updates at the dinner table, in preference to polite conversation with their parents. So when I give presentations about social media to colleagues (particularly senior managers who are dealing day-in-day out with limited resources, meeting targets, responding to incidents, managing disciplinaries and so on) I always try to start where they are, what is important to them, and how social media might be able to help them. We often come back to the fundamental point – like it or not, social media is here, so we need to understand and engage. If I am overly zealous in my promotion of social media, I know I run the risk of further alienating people whose starting point is already fairly sceptical. But sometimes I do just have a strong desire to say ‘this is what I absolutely love about Twitter!’ and I had one of those moments last night when I crowdsourced information about mental health mood monitoring apps after an email request from a clinician. What I love is that within moments I had some information and links to apps; a colleague had been in touch to say they were looking at developing one in their service and could we discuss; it was re-tweeted, and others got in touch to see if I could send any information to them (which I did); and a few lovely people even offered to road-test a few of the apps to see how well they worked. And I had some enjoyable conversations along the...about.me
Victoria Betton
victoria betton
director mHabitat | NHS | social media & mental health doctorate | interested in digital inclusion | parma violets fiend | http://codesigndigitalhealth.co.uk
