Envisioning 2.0

While scanning the headlines for interesting stories,
I often find little tidbits of healthcare-related information
and save them to blog about in the future. In this series, From the Back Pages I post links and commentary on a few of them. This month’s edition, which focuses on social media, is below.

Diabetes Blogger Relations: Prominent diabetes blogger, Amy Tenderich, posted an interesting article on her blog recently focusing on how public relations pros are approaching her and other healthcare bloggers more frequently. In her post she notes: As “a diabetes blogger being ever-more-aggressively inundated by organizations hoping to promote various products and initiatives, I must admit I am not exactly clear on how I would instruct them to do things differently in an ideal world.”

Commentary: Tenderich goes on to say that people should read her blog, send her a personalized pitch and keep it short. Hmm . . . this sounds like the same tactics PR pros should use to interact with a journalist. Her readers have a lot to say about this issue as well. This post is well worth reading – and re-reading.

CDC Getting A Second Life: Bloggers and the mainstream media have been buzzing lately about Second Life, an online virtual world that is attracting scores of people, PR pros, businesses and other organizations. Nedra Weinreich, who writes the excellent blog Spare Change, conducted a great interview with a representative from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), who has taken up residence in Second Life. Weinreich’s interview focuses on how the CDC is marketing health to this growing community.

Commentary: Weinreich’s post is a wonderful guide for other organizations seeking to become part of the burgeoning Second Life community. What the interview shows is that it is best to take it slow, learn the culture and start small.

Delivering The PI Via An iPod: Blind patients in Europe have reason to rejoice today. A new service, launched by the Royal National Institute for the Blind and Datapham Communications, is making content available on patient information leaflets as audio MP3 files. (These leaflets are included with prescription medicines.) Patients can access this audio content via a new Website, X-PIL.

Commentary: This is another great example of how people are using new technologies to deliver information in new and useful ways. I’m sure sighted patients will find the Website valuable as well.

This entry was posted on November 10, 2006 at 11:36 am and is filed under From The Back Pages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.