Earlier today, MTV announced that they will ‘reward’ people for having STD check-ups if they show they have done so on Foursquare. For those that hate jargon, this basically means that if you are signed up to the social network Foursquare, which tells other Foursquare users where you are through the GPS location of your smartphone, MTV will see that you have physically entered an STD clinic and congratulate you for doing so. The reward is a Foursquare badge, which is basically the digital equivalent of saying “I woz ‘ere”. The badge shows other users where you have been, and a desirable way to show you’re an active member of the community. While other brands besides MTV have been rewarding Foursquare users, this is the first highly promoted use of the social network for healthcare that we’re aware of. There are surely therefore other applications of the network worth giving some more thought in terms of healthcare…
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Archive for the ‘Healthy Conversations’ Category
MTV reward you for STD check-ups shown on Foursquare
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010Tomasz Schafernaker: Bad publicity is good publicity
Monday, August 23rd, 2010While the Met Office was apologetic, one imagines weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker is now laughing about flipping the bird live on TV last week and doesn’t think much of it. It’s most definitely not BBC policy to swear on-air, but sticking your finger up to your colleague as a joke is something most people can forgive, and others actually love.
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How Twitter ‘fast follow’ can keep you updated at a conference
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010While this is not necessarily an amazing new development, the new ‘fast follow’ on Twitter does have some very practical, simple and crucially easy uses – one of which is particularly relevant for healthcare communications. At big conferences or events, following the official conference Twitter feed (such as @ASCO) will keep you up to date on what is being presented as it happens and what the most promoted sessions are by the organiser. There might also be particular feeds from specific pharma companies presenting new study data that you’d want to keep an eye on. But what if you don’t have a reliable internet connection all the time? Or if you are pretty unfamiliar with Twitter and don’t have an account yourself? ‘Fast follow’ offers a solution …
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Why privacy issues won’t put people off Facebook
Friday, July 30th, 2010The author of a report which features the personal details of 100 million Facebook users says he released the information to highlight the privacy issues associated with social networking. This has received widespread media pick-up because it is captivating, and a classic attention-grabbing scare story. But it is not the massive scandal it might appear to be. People who don’t want to share their personal lives online don’t. And people who are happy to be open about their information online aren’t going to stop using social networks just because of this report. Facebook scare stories are nothing new (as we said in a post not long ago). So is this a complete red herring? Should we care in the field of healthcare communications?
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How effective are Flash games at educating patients?
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010A new Flash game called ‘Privates’, made by Channel 4, has launched in the UK. Players control a squad of condom-hatted soldiers who run around the pubic region shooting sexually transmitted diseases with anti-viral bazookas (yes, really – watch the ‘Privates’ trailer if you want to see for yourself). So is this dumbing down to an absurd level, or does this kind of thing actually work?
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What can healthcare social media learn from the coolest brands on Facebook?
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010Recent blog posts over at Ignite Social Media show some great insights into what’s big on Facebook right now. For pharma and healthcare social media, Facebook offers quite a lot of opportunity, not least because of how easy it is to moderate comments and how ‘low-risk’ this is when compared to something like Twitter. While the only health ‘brand’ in Ignite’s top 50 is Breast Cancer Awareness (US), there is still much to be learned from non-health campaigns. So what are the brands with thousands of followers, who post hundreds of pro-brand comments on these pages, doing right?
In defence of healthcare communications
Monday, July 19th, 2010Our blog post last week ‘NHS White Paper: What the patient-centric approach means for healthcare communications’ ignited some debate on Twitter which we want to respond to. You can see the tweets people sent about the post on the page itself and our thoughts on these below.
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NHS White Paper: What the patient-centric approach means for healthcare comms
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010Press coverage around the publication of the NHS White Paper has been at best skeptical of the coalition’s reforms and at worst damning. Regardless of your opinion however, there is one point on which all must accept… that people are taking more responsibility for their own health, and that empowering patients – chiefly through choice – is a predictable and necessary course. For healthcare communications, this is highly significant. If patients are empowered to make decisions, who will inform and educate them about these decisions?
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