BellinHeart is blogging into social media
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PrintBELLINHEART IS BLOGGING INTO SOCIAL MEDIA TO CONNECT AND EDUCATE THE COMMUNITY This is the title of the abstract and poster that I recently took to the Preventative Cardiovascular Nurses Association. I thought that I would share my abstract with you here.
Purpose: To be successful at reducing cardiovascular risk, the community must be engaged. Blogging, social-web-applications and networking are rapidly growing arenas for interacting with community members. Society values opportunities to ask questions and receive answers. Public dialogue on cardiovascular issues builds relationships while the user participates in their health.
Implementation: www.BellinHeart.org and www.BellinHeartblog.org deliver messages about cardiovascular disease prevention and management. The heart blog gives detailed information on these topics and offers interaction. “Ask Kelly” is a tool where the reader can send a secure email question. The blogger can also write a public comment on any post. @BellinHeart is real-time, micro-blogging with Twitter. This reaches more followers with headline stats and links them into the blog. Additional drivers include online key-words, Facebook and Google ads, plus refrigerator magnets, t-shirts at public events, and local business presentations.
Evaluation and outcomes: Site traffic over the past eleven months reveals BellinHeart’s success. Compared to similar sites, BellinHeart.org has 611% more pageviews, and BellinHeartblog.org has 6.6% more pageviews with an average time on the site 122.7% longer. This time demonstrates superior engagement with BellinHeart and is further supported by 27% recurring visits, 1-2 “Ask Kelly” questions per week and 13 article comments. @BellinHeart has 460 followers, 882 tweets, refers 15% of traffic to the blog and is frequently retweeted and mentioned.
Implication for practice: BellinHeart has effectively formed a virtual community where public engagement is strong. Trustworthy, interactive posts that personalize each member’s heart health will keep them visiting. Instead of reaching one person in clinic, or small groups with presentations, social media allows BellinHeart to reach thousands everyday, all day. It is feasible to expand social media as a means of cardiovascular prevention to other organizations while BellinHeart will continue current practice, expand to other specialties and add online chats.
Thanks for your support and your questions!
Kelly
