A fellow MSc student’s post about the public sector and Facebook has inspired me to revisit a topic I first mentioned back in November last year.
As Lee states, a number of NHS organisations are now using facebook as a way to engage with their local communities, and I think in part the drive for trusts to become successful Foundation Trusts has encouraged this interaction. But she rightly asks the question, are any of these sites really capturing the imagination?
Late last year the NHS communications community took part in an online forum specifically looking at digital and social media. While the majority of people were asking questions about how best to use facebook and wikis to spread the word about their organisation, there were a number of posters who were keen to share their success stories. One which generated a lot of publicity was South West Yorkshire Mental Health NHS Trust which set up a group not only to encourage foundation trust membership, but also to challenge the stigma around mental health issues. The discussion forums aren’t bursting, but they’re there and the last post was only 3 days ago.
Unfortunately, one of the issues still seems to be that many NHS trusts block access to facebook so even if a successful site was established, staff wouldn’t be able to get involved, at least not during work hours. Another is the facebook bandwagon. Are trusts setting up facebook pages just because everyone else is? Or because they’ve actually thought about their communications objectives, the benefits for their target audiences and are convinced they’ll get value from it?
So to answer Lee’s question, are any NHS trusts creating a facebook buzz? When I searched for NHS groups I got over 500 results, But aside from the one mentioned above, other organisations with a fairly healthy and active membership include I’ve signed up for the NHS organ donation register and The North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust.
Now, they may be buzzing in their own way, but compared to the real facebook champions – Wispa and Obama – they’re only quietly humming.
