AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN AND BREAST CANCER TASK FORCE  Online Presence Discussion  At the last meeting, we talked about possibly doing a Facebook page or something else, and I wanted to talk today a bit about what our options are and the pros and cons.

THE PLAN  First, I will quickly show you the options for social media, and then a little about the how they need to be used to be most effective.  Then, we can talk about what we want out of the presence and what the pros and cons might be.

MORE THAN FACEBOOK Facebook is not the only social media website, let’s look at this website together, for a second  master-social-media-outlets.html master-social-media-outlets.html  It shows you what some of the most popular social media sites are, and later we’ll see examples.

 First, I want to show you all the strategy that makes suggestions for the level of engagement needed to be a strong social media presence. Please note the time engagement that they are suggesting:  to-Maximize-Social-Media to-Maximize-Social-Media

EXAMPLES, USING YSC AS A MODEL  Why do these take so much time? What do they look like?  Here are some examples, using YSC (young survival coalition)—there are a lot of groups, but I am assuming the social media campaign is going to be geared towards 20s-40s (close to the YSC demographic)?  Twitter:  Facebook:  Their website:   Their blog:

PROS AND CONS  What are the pros and cons of each?  Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of a few and then afterwards we can talk as a group about what our goals would be for this.  We’ll look at the three most likely options:  Facebook  Blog or website  twitter

FACEBOOK ProsCons  Can be easily accessed via computers/tablets/phones  Is a popular website among a number of breast cancer organizations, so there is a built in connection to other groups (ie, we can “follow” and “like” other groups and share the info that they share)  It’s mostly free to do.  Will need to find a way for people to both like AND follow us. (If they follow, they will appear regularly in their feed, if you like but don’t follow, you have to actively look for us.)  Will need to be checked almost daily to catch any s/friend requests/requests for medical advice or referrals  Will need to be screened for irresponsible messages that might get sent to the wall or that we get “tagged” in  Is very “of the moment”--is less useful as a warehouse for info. In other words, it’s harder to “pin” a list of times/dates of breast centers and more permanent info. Will need to make notes and repost it regularly.

BLOG (LIKE WORDPRESS) OR WEBSITE ProsCons  Can be seen on various media formats— phones, tablets, computers. (There is a wordpress app, but I am not sure how popular it is?)  Can make categories/folders of information, so that people can navigate it (ie, this folder has survivor info, this one has screening info)  People can subscribe to get the messages in their inbox (wordpress blogs).  With websites like squarespace, people can be linked to mailchimp and send out newsletters or other things).  Still allows you to take things from other websites/facebook pages and post onto  May not be associated with an app (like facebook), so people will have to bookmark us or regularly check it on their own (or, after prompting by an ?)—so you will have to find a way to increase traffic  May cost money  Will still need to monitor inbox for messages from people  Will still need updating, if info changes.

TWITTER ProsCons  Popular with young people  255 million monthly active users (according to: ) 255 million monthly active users (according to:  Is connected to an app for smart phones, so can be seen on the go. Or, can be seen on the web. (According to their website 78% are on mobile.)  Community is created through “following”, so if Person A follows us and is friends with Person B, Person B might also look at us (think word of mouth)  Character limitations, can’t do a long message here; can link to longer stories/other pages  Still requires regular posting and monitoring.

UNIVERSALS  Some things will need to be universal across all of the platforms:  We will need to be mindful of the literacy and numeracy levels of the intended audience. For instance, if we highlight a recent study, we cannot just link to the journal article, we’ll need to explain it. In some cases, other organizations will have already done this in their own posts and we can use those (if we properly credit the source).  We will need to mix in things that are culturally relevant.  We will try to make an effort to localize it, highlighting something about the Omaha area and not just posting national data.  We will need to try to think about a way to get readers/followers involved—contest, posting comments, submitting stories/pictures (this is a lot of work, but might help)

FEEDBACK TIME  Now that you’ve seen the options, what are you thoughts?  What do you want social media to do:  Give information about cancer  Connect patients/survivors/families to each other  Provide inspirational stories  Something else?  Who do you think will use the site? Who’s the intended audience?  Patients  Family members/supporters of patients  Previvors/family members of patients/survivors  Providers (social service/medical) wishing to connect to the Af Am community?  It’s “social” media, so you need to be social to get the traffic on any of the fomates. So how do you want to get the word out about the social media?

THANKS! 