In the Space

When it comes to social media, I strongly believe it can be used as an effective tool for communication. My active engagement on LinkedIn and the way I use my blog as a vehicle to disseminate thoughts on various topics is a clear example of that.

As a result, I read with great interest a recent interview with four health care influencers in Becker’s Hospital Review on the power of social media. It specifically discussed how they leverage technology to communicate more effectively.

As I read the interviews with Dr. Josh Luke, Chris Van Gorder, Dave Chase and Don Larsen - all four of whom are incredibly active in the health care social media space - I was struck by the collective similarities in their insights as well as how they mirrored my own. My takeaway was that engagement with social media offers the following benefits:

• Promotes transparency: gives readers insight into how ‘the sausage is made’.

• Enables connection with colleagues regardless of geography: you can form an ongoing relationship with thought leaders from across the country.

• Allows sharing of best practices and serves as a platform to test drive ideas: here you can engage your network on initiatives you are considering prior to implementation. Learnings that come from this can save you from failures down the road.

• Provides up-to-date insight on trends in the field: for many of us, Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections are like ‘having a personalized research staff’.

• Offers up a vessel to disseminate health care information much more efficiently: for policy issues, there is nothing more powerful than being able to share information and your stance on an issue via social media.

Like my colleagues, I realize that the first foray into engaging with social media for professional communication can be a bit daunting, but once adopted, there is no denying that it’s a professional tool that can offer tremendous benefits.