Sometime in the last few weeks Health AGEnda had its third birthday, making this a good time to review and reflect. Writing about the blog will also help me to get my thoughts in order for my upcoming presentation on the Foundation's use of social media in an American Geriatrics Society symposium in Seattle. Called "Facebook, Blogs, and Twitter: Using Social Media to Advance Geriatrics," it’s taking place Thursday, May 3 at 2:45 in room 4C 1/2 with the redoubtable Paula Span of the New York Times' New Old Age blog, and Alex Smith and Eric Widera from UCSF's GeriPal blog.
When we started blogging, our goal was to learn how to raise our voices about how health care could be better for older Americans and to shine a spotlight on the good work of our grantees, who are improving their care. We knew that our audience was relatively narrow, so we set our sights on influencing the key 500 or so stakeholders at the intersection of aging and health who could help transform ideas into action. We also were very excited about engaging our grantees and eventual audience in conversation; not just shouting out into the World Wide Web, but also hearing back.
Our 2010 communications evaluation by Brotherton was generally positive about Health AGEnda, and I feel that way too. We've achieved much of what we wanted. For example, we have over 2,000 registered users, and Google Analytics tells us we have about 3,000 unique readers each month. Plus, over 100 people subscribe to updates through Google reader or other syndication systems, almost 300 people "like" us on Facebook, where blog posts are cross-linked, and almost 1,000 follow us on Twitter. Finally, we've been exploring the world of video and video-blogs, interviewing board speakers for our Beyond the Boardroom series available on our YouTube Channel, named, like all our social media, JHARTFOUND.
But some objectives have eluded us. With only 768 non-spam comments, and many of those made from one Foundation staff member to another, we've learned not to expect too much by way of feedback from our readers. We expected some reticence from grantees. However, we clearly underestimated the “Foundation power” problem, and can only guess that grantees must feel that by posting on our—any foundation’s—blog, they risk seeming like a sycophant if they agree or scuttling any hope of financial support if they disagree. (Which, we’d like to state, is not the case, barring over-the-top insults.)
Still, some of our posts have elicited stronger audience engagement. When we asked for suggestions as part of our strategic planning process we were gratified and shared with our trustees the many thoughtful comments we received. But the best response has been to our stories of our parents and relatives and, in the last year, Amy's own story of her cancer, strongly reminding us of the power of the personal. As we have continued to produce these personal stories mixed with more analytic posts as well as reporting on the work of grantees, we’ve had a pleasant surprise; blogging has strengthened clarity and commitment among Foundation staff. We have learned from our own writing what we believe and why we believe it. We may not have succeeded yet in convincing everyone of the importance of improving the health of older adults, but we have convinced ourselves.
We look forward to continuing Health AGEnda, now more integrated into our overall redesigned website at www.jhartfound.org. We welcome suggestions as to topics, guest posts, and ways we can improve our communications efforts. And, of course, if you’re brave enough, we always welcome comments, too.