HeSCA Social Media Presentation

Last Friday I had the opportunity to give a two-part presentation to HeSCA, and its 50th International Conference on Health & Science Communications. The first part was an overview entitled, “Why Social Media are Essential to the Future of Health and Science Communication” and the second was a hands-on workshop on Twitter and 10 steps to getting started with social media, first as an individual and then as an organization. Here, as I promised the group, are the slides:

I appreciated the opportunity to share with HeSCA, and look forward to feedback and to answering any questions here.

National Press Club Presentations

Here are the other members of the panel on which I presented this morning. Their presentation are embedded below.

Update: The other panelists were Sanjay Koyani, FDA; Craig Stoltz, Stoltz Digital Strategies (@craigstoltz); Nancy Shute, Contributing Editor, U.S. News & World Report (@nancyshute) and Bridget DeSimone, Health Unit Producer, Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

The first three had presentation decks, which they graciously allowed me to post on Slideshare and embed below. My slides are embedded in this post.

National Press Club Presentation

This morning I’m part of a panel at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. entitled “Using New Media to Promote Health & Medical News.”

Here are the slides from my presentation:

 

I will be tweeting this event using the #allhealth hashtag. If you’d like to follow along and share your thoughts and questions, I’d be delighted to extend the reach of the discussion.

Here is the link to the post on Sharing Mayo Clinic about the Cowans, which is referenced in the last part of the presentation.

I welcome your thoughts, questions or other ideas.

When is 137% Growth in 4 Months “Not Keeping Up?”

The highlight of this post earlier this month on Inside Facebook was that women over age 55 are the fastest growing demographic in Facebook.

While the fastest growing age group by total users is still 26-34, the number of women over 55 on Facebook grew by an astounding 175.3% since the end of September.  Their male counterparts, however, weren’t able to keep up – growing by only 137.8%.  The number of women over 55 on Facebook almost double the number of men over 55 on Facebook today.

It says something about the phenomenal growth of Facebook that men over 55 could increase by nearly 140 percent in just four months, and that it would be considered “not keeping up” with their female counterparts.

It’s not surprising to me that the growth among women is faster than that among men. I see that among colleagues at work, and with my wife and her friends (all of whom are well under 55, but still baby boomers.) This is particularly interesting for people involved in health care communications, since women play the primary role in family health care decisions.

If you work in health care and you’re not in Facebook yet, you should be.

The SMUG Facebook curriculum can help you get started.

Headed to Health Journalism 2008

I’m heading to Washington, DC this morning for Health Journalism 2008, the annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists.

This is an organization that is comprised predominantly of print reporters. It will be interesting to hear what they’re making of the new media/social media landscape and the changes happening in journalism. I’ll be blogging about the conference as I’m able and as it is relevant to SMUG readers.

I’m attending the conference and exhibiting on behalf of our Mayo Clinic media relations team.