#Hastags and URLs: My first 2 weeks in social media – Was it worth it?

When I started my Fellowship I decided I needed to get out there – to mobilise! 

If I’m considering knowledge mobilisation (#KMb), I have to explore ways there are to do that.  And I have to be prepared to have a go at new things if I’m going to be asking other people to try new things in the future.

2 weeks ago I was trying to work out what ‘hosting’ was,  deciding which URL to buy for my new website and working out what name I should use on twitter.

AND, of course, behind that sentence there are stacks of ‘what on earth?’s, ‘how do you do that?’s and ‘I have to do what?!’s…  Talk about a learning curve!  Phew!

BUT…

2 weeks later I’ve got a website with 100s of hits and a twitter account with 70 tweets and 35 followers.  I can’t quite believe this has all happened in two weeks.

Mostly, it’s because people are kind, and amazingly willing to help.

I’m absolutely thrilled – there are some absolute doozies in the 35 ‘tweeps’:

• Prof Trish Greenhalgh (@TrishGreenhalgh): academic superhero – who not only shared my website link with #proud, but also kindly retweeted the link to my blog summary of the Health Foundation Leading Networks Report.  This created a spike of hits on my website including the first visitors from Canada and Australia.  She also left a comment and a link to a relevant paper on one of the more ‘fun’ posts.
• Sarah Fraser (@Sarahfraser): Independent consultant with too many credits to mention – who gave me my very first #ff, which I’m sure led to new followers, including Jan Radford (@JanRadford) who describes herself as “Tasmanian academic GP. Humanist. Eternal leaner.”  Sounds fab.  And, then Sarah listed me on her Improving Healthcare blog too.
• Mike Davidge (@MikeDavidge): Measurement guru – who kindly visited my blog summary report of the CLAHRC for Northwest London learning event and then even more kindly left a comment saying the projects were impressive.  Thanks to Mike of course for being in at the beginning of the @CLAHRC_NWL and helping get them on track with measurement for improvement.
• Fran Husson (@FranHusson): Patient Involvee and change leader extraordinaire – who gets stuck in to making practical change and ensuring the voice of the patient is loud and clear.

*humbled*

On the website the summary report of the Health Foundation Leading Networks has had the most hits – perhaps not surprisingly given the above.  It’s been viewed 50 times by people who have stayed an average of almost 12 minutes.  Pretty cool.  Even allowing for ‘browser left open’, that suggests people are actually reading it.  Becky Malby (@CIHM_Becky) tweeted the other day the full document has been downloaded 300 times.

I’ve declared seven comments as ‘spam’ – I just don’t believe that the woman with the @ bigstring.com address was genuinely inspired by everything I’d written, especially from her yourtube url …

There have also been some great comments – I’ve mentioned Mike and Trish, but also Alison Cameron who is a patient who has just been awarded a CLAHRC NWL fellowship and commented on the report of the recent learning event and is bound to make a difference to how things are done.

Tabitha McGowan (@Tabitha_McGowan) was super-chuffed that I’d been inspired to blog based on her book, The Tied Man, and she’s tweeted that page to her followers.  A completely different audience than I’d get by myself.

Conutant has put up a totally free youtube video called “How To Make a WordPress Website” which was invaluable – though it took me a LOT longer than the hour he can clearly do it in.

Dr Alan Poots (@theallboutme) helped me install google analytics after I’d completely failed to work out where to put the code.  Now I may not know who you are, but I know where you were when you were looking at my site!

Dr Rowan Myron (@RowanM) has helped me distinguish my RTs from my MTs and DMs.

And last but by no means least, Professor Derek Bell (@ProfDerekBell) whose role modelling provides inspiration.

Overall, has it been hard?  Yes.  The time it takes is important and needs to be value adding.

Has it been exciting? Absolutely.

Would I recommend it?  Definitely.

Was it worth it? So far so good 🙂 I’ve had new conversations with people (new and old) and shared with people things that wouldn’t have been shared.

Thanks everyone, I couldn’t have done it without you <3

From tiny acorns…