Twelve Tips for Creating Your Program's Social Media Footprint

Abstract

Social media is an emerging and underutilized tool in graduate medical education. Current generations of physicians increasingly rely on social media for information and connectedness. The use of social media in medical education provides a low-resource/high-impact strategy to improve physician wellness, reduce burnout, enhance medical knowledge, and supplement residency programs' recruiting efforts. Creating and maintaining an effective social media presence necessitates the use of a well-rounded team of residents at varying levels of training to ensure diverse posting perspectives. Account managers should establish goals and policies to ensure continuity and cohesiveness in their posting. Social media teams should work to increase the account's reach and interaction through engaging images, topical hashtags, location geo-tags, and tagging other accounts and follow their own progress through analytics. Using these twelve tips will help your program create a robust, impactful social media presence.

Twelve Tips for Utilizing Residency Program Social Media Accounts for Modified Residency Recruitment

“…Social media use by residency programs has expanded in recent years, with a growing body of literature analyzing its use. Reasons for use include education (both locally and on a broader/global level), dissemination of program and resident accomplishments, and resident engagement ( O’Glasser, Desai and Cooney, 2019 ; Scott et al , 2014 ; Bergl, Narang and Arora, 2015 ; Galiatsatos et al , 2016 ; Haas et al , 2016 ; Diller and Yarris, 2017 ; Sterling et al , 2017 ; Xie et al, 2018 ; Fick, Potini and Axon, 2019 ; St Claire et al , 2019 ; Azoury et al , 2020 ). There is also a small subset of literature that specifically explores the intersection between social media accounts and recruitment across specialties, in addition to more traditional web-based resources ( Embi, Desai and Cooney, 2003 ; Schweitzer, Hannan and Coren, 2012 ; Go, Klaassen and Chamberlain, 2012b , 2012a ; Golden et al , 2012 ; Deloney et al , 2014 ; George et al, 2014 ; McHugh et al , 2014 ; Pillow et al , 2014 ; Sterling et al , 2017 ; Renew et al , 2019 ; Matchett, Astor and Maursetter, 2020 ).…”

“…More recently, social media channels have been noted to be able to specifically convey residency program culture and other intangibles ( O’Glasser, Desai and Cooney, 2019 ). Today’s applicants are nearly all members of the millennial generation who may be uniquely suited to rapidly adapt to utilizing social media to learn about residency programs ( Fick, Potini and Axon, 2019 ).…”

Be in the Digital Room Where it Happens, Part I: Tweeting & Technology for Career Development

“…Hospital systems use SoMe to promote brand presence, patient education, and reputation scores. 5 An estimated 25–65% of medical professionals are using SoMe 6 – 10 for clinical outreach, 11 – 13 career development, 8 , 14 – 21 research, 15 , 22 – 33 education, 34 – 44 and advocacy efforts. 45 – 59 However, there are misconceptions, anecdotal stories, and fears surrounding a medical professional's use of SoMe use, which can foster inappropriate use, skepticism, and criticism.…”

“…Hospital systems use SoMe to promote brand presence, patient education, and reputation scores. 5 An estimated 25-65% of medical professionals are using SoMe [6][7][8][9][10] for clinical outreach, [11][12][13] career development, 8,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] research, 15,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] education, [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] and advocacy efforts. [45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]…”