If you’ve been trying to understand social media and what it can do for your communication, a new e-book by Fard Johnmar will enlighten you and help you understand the role of social media as part of an effective communication strategy.
Fard, who writes the excellent HealthCareVox blog on healthcare communications and marketing, has published From Command & Control To Engage & Encourage: A New Healthcare Communications Strategy For A Social Media World which is available on free download.
If you’re in the healthcare industry, you will certainly find this resource of distinct value. Yet it is relevant to anyone in almost any industry – just about where ever you see the word ‘healthcare’ in the e-book, you could substitute any other industry.
Here’s what the e-book will help you understand:
- Why traditional “command and control” communications is slowly becoming less relevant
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How to develop communications campaigns that will help you:
– Engage social media appropriately
– Encourage social media to communicate your messages accurately - How to produce social media and retain ownership of your content
Toby Bloomberg has a good overview of the publication.
I found Fard’s thinking on this topic pretty compelling, and it reflects much of how I see social media as part of an organization’s communication mix.
One thing I do in presentations, workshops and seminars that I lead about social media and communication is to help people see what social media actually is in terms of ‘enabling technologies.’ In the context of broad and deep discussion, this is helpful in seeing how and where social media fits in terms of organizational communication.
I use this slide or variants of it:
The key point I make when using this slide is re the bold text in the last paragraph on the right – social media tools can be powerful aids to building and developing relationships when used by organizations who recognize the social characteristics of effective communication.
That point is well covered by Fard in the e-book.
Finally, think about Fard’s conclusion:
Remember, we may live in a new world, but the old rules still apply. Powerful communications has always been about getting people to pay attention and take action. The engage and encourage strategy is just another means of achieving the same objective.
Don’t delay – get your copy now.
9 responses to “How to develop a social media communication strategy”
[…] I just caught a TV ad for the Australian version of McDonald’s new international Make Up Your Own Mind campaign. The ad features “Jess”, whom we’re told is a McDonalds employee on a road trip to find out the truth about McDonald’s. She wants the facts so she can do what we’re being urged to do – make up her own mind. The McDonald’s media release tells us that Jess is just one of the company’s “crew” taking part in the “rigorous” “Food Values” campaign. It’s a great premise. The brand has been chipped away at by persisent canards and is enduring a backlash from overweight people looking for someone to blame. Then came Supersize Me, a low-budget reality movie about a man who nearly killed himself in 30 days simply by using McDonald’s products as they are meant to be used. And what a great time to be mounting such a campaign, a time when you have an arsenal of social media tools at your disposal. You’ve lost trust and, as Neville Hobson wrote on Friday, social media is about facilitating communication, engagement, communication and trust. […]
A useful diagram showing the social media ecosystem. I’m new to blogging and graphics such as this make the whole spere easier to understand.
Glad you found it helpful, Andrew.
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A few weeks ago, I announced that I published an e-book, “From Command & Control To Engage & Encourage” designed to help players in the healthcare industry get a handle on social media. I’ve been very happy with the resp…
[…] A few weeks ago, I announced that I published an e-book, “From Command & Control To Engage & Encourage†designed to help players in the healthcare industry get a handle on social media. I’ve been very happy with the response to the e-book and honored that people like Nedra Weinreich, Toby Bloomberg, Neville Hobson, Lee Hopkins and Dmitriy Kruglyak have found it helpful and recommended it to others. […]
[…] Neville Hobson outlines how to create a social media communications strategy. […]
Nice roundup. It inspired me for a few presentations I have ahead of me.
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How to develop a social media communication strategy http://ow.ly/3Bud8 #sm #socialmedia