SLACK is pleased to present an excerpt from our latest title in nursing, Social Media in Health Care: A Guide to Creating Your Professional Digital Presence, by Mona Shattell (PhD, RN, FAAN), Melissa Batchelor (PhD, RN, FAAN), and Rebecca Darmoc (MS).

Social Media in Health Care

The path to influence and thought leadership has changed dramatically over the past decade. All types of mass communication, from the beginning of time, have had the same purpose—to educate, entertain, persuade, and influence public opinion. Now that we’re in the “age of mobile,” there has been a major shift in media influence—from corporate control to consumer control.

More Accessible Than Ever.

As consumers, all we need is a digital device and Wi-Fi connection to publish our own content, ideas, and expert opinions online. We also reap the benefits of a society that is skeptical of corporate communications. Studies of consumers show that the overwhelming majority of people trust individuals more than brands—even if they don’t personally know them. And online, we engage with people more than we engage with brands.

Beyond the Hospital Walls and Ivory Tower.

This offers an opportunity for healthcare professionals. It allows us to articulate the meaning of our work and research beyond our institutions and beyond professional presentations and publications in peer reviewed journals— anytime and anywhere. It allows us to connect with the public and specific patient communities to share our knowledge and expertise.

Social Media Is About Conversations.

Your online presence gives you an instant line of communication to your peers and the public; people are online right now looking for experts, having conversations, and making connections. A professional online presence allows you to share your own knowledge with a much larger audience. You become a trusted source of information that brings value to others.

Path to Digital Influence.

This book supports all engagement levels from healthcare students to seasoned professionals. It will take you through the Consume, Contribute, and Create model to help guide your journey. Whether you are a social media novice or have an established digital presence, our goal is to share proven ways that you can expand your influence and impact.

What to Expect.

This book can be read from cover to cover or used as a reference when you want to learn about a specific aspect of social media or need an idea for what to share. This is a book on principles for using social media because the platforms can, and do, change all the time. These principles are the same and are effective for all professions, and you will adapt them to the social media platform that is best for your professional development. Although we share tactics and examples for the principles, the examples are not exhaustive as the digital world changes daily. For more current, contextual examples for applying the principles, you can reference the Influence-Rx.com and MelissaBPhD.com websites, blogs, and podcasts.

Why Did We Write the Book?

We have experienced success using technology and social media to do everything we recommend and teach you to do in this book—we have walked the walk that we base our talk on. We each had a natural interest in developing our own social media skills and our different experiences complemented each other. We wanted to share our collective strategies with other health care professionals to amplify accurate health care messages for the public. We wanted to help health care professionals, academics, and scientists expand their reach, build a community, and/or raise awareness about health-related content.

- Excerpted from Social Media in Health Care: A Guide to Creating Your Professional Digital Presence by Mona Shattell, Melissa Batchelor, and Rebecca Darmoc. Copyright © 2022 by SLACK Incorporated. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews..

To keep reading or to learn more about the book, please visit: https://www.slackbooks.com/social-media-in-health-.... Plus, save with an exclusive offer of 15% off any purchase when using promotional code SB15.