Mayo Clinic Social Media Network Annual Conference, Day One

I recently returned from the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network Annual Conference and my boss asked me how it went. I replied that every single session was useful. That impressed both of us! Everything. I mean, quite literally, EVERYTHING. It’s all good, and there is nothing they offered that I didn’t want to see.

You can check out the program here, and I didn’t get to all the sessions offered, but I’d like to give you a quick run through of what I did see and why I thought it was so useful. You can’t be everywhere at once, and there were two in particular that I had hoped to see and just couldn’t, but there are links to some of the content! Or you could just browse the #MCSMN tweets in the Wakelets or through Symplur. The official highlights are captured in Mayo’s Day One and Day Two blogposts.

DAY ONE

Training

The big news was that Mayo offers detailed social media training for their own staff and students which has been tested over time and proven solid and useful.  Part of what I’m most excited about with this is access to training that is tool-based, issue-based, and includes online literacies, ethics, reputation management, and professionalism. Mayo has just upgraded their institutional site license from 10 users to the whole campus at a very reasonable cost.

Storytelling

The first keynote was from Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa who told the story of having come to the United States as an illegal immigrant and migrant farm laborer and becoming the Chair of Neurologic Surgery at Mayo Clinic. Quite an impressive story (read his book if you want more), but the takeaways from his talk focused on the importance of teams, collaboration, surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you, and listening to other people’s stories, helping people tell their own stories to create hope, understanding. My favorite quotes from Dr.Q’s talk:

“Our worth is not what we have but what we do to change the world.” Great quote from @DoctorQMd’s presentation #MCSMN

— Jessica Lewis (@JessLewis422) November 14, 2018

LOVE = Long (hours of patient suffering); Organize (and multitask); Very (big ideas & tons of them); Engage (everyone around you) #mcsmn

— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) November 14, 2018

Crisis Management

Dr Q (as he’s popularly known) was followed by a no-tweeting session on crisis communications in social media. The team of presenters (Lee Aase and Cynthia Manley) described real life scenarios, challenges, and solutions. The emphasis was in large part on what you know before the crisis starts — what is your organizational mission, focus, and purpose. Then when something goes wrong, at each step of the way, ask how does what you are doing support your mission, the ethics of your organization. The goodwill and trust you’ve built in advance can be your best defense. They also described challenges in knowing when the online problem is beyond your ability to manage, and some of the tools and strategies used by attackers to control the story to their own ends. The around-the-table conversations afterwards were pure gold.

Good takeaways from @LeeAase’s presentation on handling crises. #MCSMN

🔸There’s a time to stop being nice.
🔸 Stay true to your values.
🔸 Know when to stop.

— Alayna Curry (@alaynajolie) November 14, 2018

Civility

Maureen S. Marshall from the CDC spoke on the need for civility in social media, whether you agree or disagree with the views being expressed. This is especially challenging when communicating around controversial topics or people who are frustrated with their experiences with your organization or others. How to encourage civility? Be respectful, don’t judge, don’t block, stick to the facts, use data. You don’t have to reply to everyone; it’s alright to ignore people who are being rude or trying to strike up an argument. Prepare in advance for those who try to hijack Twitter chats or Facebook streams. Consider the scale — what works with an audience of 100 may not work for 6000. Be sensitive to the tricky balance between get folk to share your important messages around safety and tipping over to fear-mongering. Have a fast approval process to pull in content from your experts. Prepare talking points for and with your experts, and share them. Be wary of styling templates, because bad actors can imitate your style to their own ends. Here are my favorite quotes from Maureen’s talk.

"If you respond to a myth or misconception, it reinforces that negative message." "I could put hashtag FakeNews after all the false messaging, but that isn't really going to help anyone" "People claim they are not swayed by opposing messages" #mcsmn

— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) November 14, 2018

You need : Thick skin, an arsenal of facts, a boatload of empathy #mcsmn

— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) November 14, 2018

Mistrust & Misinformation

Wen-ying (Sylvia) Chou was an absolutely brilliant speaker. She presented on her research around health impacts of social media use. Like so many of the other speakers, a focus was the risks associated with fake news and misinformation, echo chambers and filter bubbles. She cited a ton of provocative articles and books. I was particularly  interested in LikeWar, the Weaponization of Social Media. Dr. Chou emphasized the motivations behind sharing, and how that impacts on the message and the receipt of the message. She described ways in which contentious health topics, like vaccines,  were used during the election to distract attention from specific political topics and also to foster mistrust of experts. The most powerful question she asked was, “Do we build trust? Or do we battle misinformation?” The impression I received was that it isn’t always possible to do both. Dr. Chou also relayed real world stories of patients asking questions triggered by things they read through social media, and being judged so harshly by the clinician that they fired the doctor and went elsewhere. Her research team is identifying communication best practices that are successful in addressing misinformation without undermining trust. Her strategy? Affirm their concerns. Praise them for being engaged. Then steer them to better information.

Affirm patients concerns. You are being engaged. That is a good thing. (Then steer them to good information) #mcsmn pic.twitter.com/trxu6hlwZ0

— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) November 14, 2018

GREAT Qs from Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou, Ph. D.:
Does misinformation exposure matter?
Are certain groups of people more at risk for misinformation?
How can we better leverage #socialmedia interactions as health data?
How can we foster health and science literacy in the public? #mcsmn pic.twitter.com/Ks77e0NSWt

— Jess Columbo (@JessColumbo) November 14, 2018

Chatbots

Rachel Haviland presented on how chatbots are being and can be used in healthcare. This is easily worth an entire blogpost just on this topic. The formative question from her talk was “What journey do we want to take our patients on?” She framed the ways in which chatbots can support a sense of caring and luxury and immediate thoughtful care, how chatbots can potentially support relationship building. She also discussed some of the risks, the pros and cons. Her marvelous slides are available here.

Responding to Non-Local Crises

Monique Tremblay and Tom Hardej’s presentation was a great followup to the morning’s crisis communications discussion, but with a different slant. When there is a crisis elsewhere or when there is social media buzz, how do you choose when and how to engage your communications or brand with that flow? Following examples of brands being blasted for doing this poorly, they described how their organization makes these decisions. Key takeaways:

Things to consider before brands share #thoughtsandprayers:
Does it fit into our overall mission?
Does it fit into our social strategy?
Does it impact our audience? #MCSMN

— Alayna Curry (@alaynajolie) November 14, 2018