Are you connected? Social media and nuclear medicine
Social media provides a vibrant platform for physician consultation, communication, education, and marketing. Nuclear medicine physicians, societies, and practices participate in social media in a variety of ways. If you are not a social media user, please read on. Whether or not you actively use or post items on social media, valuable content exists in the news, education, and marketing arenas in nuclear medicine. It may be valuable for you and your practice to become familiar with social media and even to have a presence there. Connection is the upshot of social media.
Depending on your goals, there are several avenues of social media valuable for physicians. Note that these social media platforms can easily link to a society website, a personal physician website or a practice website.
Doximity and LinkedIn are two sites that allow for professional profiles to be housed. Think of these as a professional Facebook, where professional photos, accomplishments, resumes and updates such as promotions can be showcased. This can be a valuable tool and requires occasional updating, depending on your level of professional activity. These can be an adjunct to your institution or practice website that showcases your personal practice patterns and achievements. This is an important reference for your colleagues, referring physicians, and recruiters.
The ubiquity and ease of Facebook make it a natural choice for societies and physician practices to keep their user communities updated on vital news, events, and even educational posts. For example, the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging as well as the American Board of Nuclear Medicine both have active community Facebook pages. This is useful because people who are interested in keeping in touch with the societies can simply follow them and learn about new initiatives and professional topics.
The social media platform Instagram hosts several nuclear medicine content providers, including the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (@SNMMI), NucleoMed (@Nucleomed), and an educational feed (@nuclear_radiology and @dr_nuclear). This platform allows for a single photo, several photos within a slideshow, or short video content (one minute) along with space for captions. Hyperlinks to websites are not allowed within the captions in Instagram. Therefore, content providers often direct users to the provider’s biographical information, where a website hyperlink can be provided.
Twitter is a valuable social media platform in that users follow it for short snippets of information. This can increase user interest and direct users to other more comprehensive content sites such as websites, Instagram, or Facebook. Additionally, it is useful for healthcare policy discussions. For example, Dr. Geraldine McGinty (@DrGMcGinty) is a radiologist who advocates for healthcare policy, resident education, professional women’s issues, and imaging quality via Twitter.
There is a lot of information available within these social media communities if you are simply a consumer of this information. If you’re considering becoming part of social media with your professional information, ideas, or educational material, carefully consider your audience and what would motivate the social media user to read or search out your information. Potential audiences in the nuclear medicine community include:Society
- Society
- Learners of the healthcare
- Professionals seeking a larger community.
- Healthcare activists
- Referring physicians
- Colleagues
- Professional recruiters
You can see there are myriad ways to participate on these vibrant platforms. So, if you’re interested in being up-to- date in the nuclear medicine community and having a professional presence in this online world, consider participating or updating, reading, viewing, responding, and posting. See you on social media!
Editor’s Note: This is part one of multiple articles exploring social media and healthcare. In the next issue: Global Nuclear Medicine Education Via the Social Media Site Instagram
