Aug 13 in Uncategorized
Written by: Heather Rast
This is both the risk and the opportunity: You lose control of much of your message, but you can tap into far more powerful authenticity than traditional approaches allow. Therefore, your strategy needs to be more subtle, and tap into emotional connections with the individuals that are already there.
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The old way |
The new way |
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Tell your organization’s story |
Patients and donors will publicly speak of their experiences with your organization |
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Tell your patients’ stories for your benefit |
Patients and donors tell their own stories, their own way |
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Distribute your controlled message |
Attempt to influence the narrative that the public creates |
Possible applications of social networking technology
1. It allows your patients to tell their stories in an authentic way, in their own words.
Your patients already have profiles online. In some cases they may specifically reference the care they received, perhaps even mentioning specialists or programs by name. Consider recommending that patients connect with each other to share their experiences. Or, consider searching for these stories, and, with the patient’s permission, expanding them and using them for other purposes such as listing them on your web site for your patients’ stories.
2. It allows your donors to tell their stories online.
Encourage your donors to create Facebook profiles, and connect to each other, and explain how and why they chose to give. Include videos (that you or they produce). Be a part of the world they inhabit, and encourage them to speak out online.
3. It allows you to create an identity for your hospital and be a part of their world.
If your patients or donors are using social networking sites today, you can reach them at their level, within their comfort zone, by creating a profile for your organization (or even selected specialist providers) and building relationships between your providers and patients. This could include:
· Linking to your experts’ Facebook profiles from the existing website’s provider directory
· Discharge materials could include links to patients with similar conditions’ Facebook profiles (presumably they have agreed to participate)
Ask for Their Stories
Cleveland Clinic’s Letters to Tomorrow campaign is a great example of using the Internet to collect stories, and more importantly, talk about them. To twist that approach via social networking, you could build an application that patients could place on their profiles, something akin to a “My story” button, than links to your web site with videos or text, and then cross-links to related stories and related donation opportunities.
Appeal to current events
A key part of fundraising is to tap the emotional connected needed to prompt donations. The country is riddled with emotion about the ongoing war in Iraq. Build a campaign to care for soldiers with rehabilitation needs, or fund research specific to a condition like TBI might be a way to tap into this raw emotion, and spread throughout the blogosphere and social networking communities.
To be continued. . .
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