With the dust settling over the chancellor’s £2bn “down payment” on NHS England’s Five Year Forward View, it’s becoming clear that its implementation will impact on all NHS and social care providers.
Applications are due by the end of January to become one of the new care models envisioned. NHS chief executive Simon Stevens has emphasised that radical change is both required and expected, a view reinforced by last week’s Dalton Report to NHS England on future care models.
This implementation challenge requires that health and care economies change how they listen, engage and communicate. If integrated properly with listening and engagement, social media can play a huge role in rising to this challenge.
Social media allows local NHS and care providers to connect and engage directly with thousands of people and organisations, be seen to understand and take on board their viewpoints and involve them in local solutions.
It also allows them to reply to questions and objections and, in some cases, challenge misinformation from sectional interests or campaign groups. This creates a much more transparent and healthy environment for debate and discussion. Ultimately it can lead to more robust long-term solutions.
On the downside, there are also examples of where NHS organisations have failed to develop and own their space in social media, leaving it to opponents to define them in highly negative terms to their reputational and operational damage.
Social media is no longer a “nice to have” option for the NHS. It is moving to become mission-critical.
Earlier this month, with support from NHS Providers, we published the results of the first comprehensive analysis of the use of social media by the NHS.
Four in five NHS organisations now use at least one social media channel for corporate communication and engagement, although almost one in three use only Twitter. NHS corporate social media use is almost entirely dominated by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. Just under 7% of NHS organisations were found to be using social media channels outside this “big four” – mainly Pinterest, Vimeo or Flickr. Our report also revealed some of the most pioneering and effective uses of NHS social media take place well away from the official channels of NHS bodies, in myriad tweet chats, campaigns, conversations, blogs and interactions.
This stealth revolution may not have been televised, but it has been tweeted, retweeted, favourited, liked, followed, tagged, poked, shared, webcast, thunder-clapped and crowdsourced.
There are an estimated 15m Twitter users in the UK. We used a pioneering NHS social media analysis tool – Find SoMeone in Health – to cut through those millions of Twitter accounts, drill down, identify and analyse the followers and activity of the 238,927 individuals or organisations with the highest concentration of interest and engagement with the main national UK NHS and health-related social media accounts, including the top 50 NHS organisations.
The top performers include the comms team for @MINDCharity; @ManchesterCCGs; @rogerkline – director of Patients First; @epsom_sthelier – NHS trust; @LDN-Ambulance – the London Ambulance Service; @NNUH – Norfolk and Norwich University hospitals NHS trust; @helenbevan – chief transformation officer, NHS Horizons Group; @nurse_w_glasses – a community mental health nurse; @jrf_uk – the Joseph Rowntree Foundation; @claireOT – occupational therapist; @stuartberry1 – GP lead; @SagefemmeSB – midwife for more than three decades; @nursemaiden – recovery nurse whose dad died of Alzheimer’s in 2012.
Just as important as the “where” it’s being used, is “how well?” To answer this question, we used a second unique tool, the Social Media Capability Analysis, completed by more than 400 individuals working at all levels over more than 30 NHS organisations, including national leadership organisations and agencies, acute trusts and community trusts.
This showed that overall the NHS is at a state of low maturity in its use of social media. It is at a reasonable state in:
The degree to which it is beginning to use social media beyond mere broadcasting activities
The degree to which it reviews its content
The degree to which boards are beginning to get engaged
But it is no more than adequate in:
Its involvement in others’ channels and communities
Its understanding of the views of its stakeholders
The degree to which it co-creates content across social media
The degree to which social media is integrated with improvement, listening and engagement
The degree to which social media is consciously and actively planned
The degree to which social media actively contributes to service improvement
If you’re an NHS organisation looking to move beyond Low Maturity, or even simply start out on your social media journey, here are ten top tips.
1. Benchmark your current activity and performance and agree a conscious Implementation Plan to improve – don’t leave it to chance
2. Fully map your local stakeholders and proactively engage with their own social media presences – follow them and they’re likely to follow you
3. Make sure your social media activity is closely integrated with your listening, engagement and improvement activities across your organisation – avoid silo behaviour or activity
4. Get your story and purpose straight and keep to it – don’t simply “do” social media for its own sake
5. Collate existing material across the organisation that can be reused – there will be loads of it
6. Maintain momentum, constantly review and refine
7. If possible, add a picture, video or link to your messages – text on its own gets a fraction of interest or engagement;
8. Don’t worry about getting things wrong at first, on the whole it’s a forgiving place
9. Do it with personality – corporate speak is quickly shunned
10. Never, ever, ghost-write a Twitter or other account on behalf of your chief executive – it is spotted in minutes
If you are an individual looking to get involved with social media on your own or your organisation’s behalf, keep the following list at hand and check regularly if you adhere to it:
It’s all about following and being followed
Engagement brings recognition and response
Tell it small, tell it often
Recognise and reward others’ contributions and opinions
Get involved in conversations with personality
Ask questions – offer advice
Provide content, links and signposts
Dip in and out – but with regularity
Invest time and show effort
Have opinions but never berate
The mantra for the future delivery of health and care services is to be more personalised, centred on individuals’ needs and preferences, and delivered through a plurality of sources. Shouldn’t that also apply to the way we listen, engage and improve?
Joe McCrea is managing director of JB McCrea Ltd. He is course tutor for the NHS Leadership Academy and has designed and delivered listening, engagement and social media strategies for a range of NHS and care providers in the acute and community sectors as well as national organisations and campaigns. He can be followed on Twitter @jbmccrea
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