Church: Take a Clue from Mayo Clinic's Center for Social Media (#MCCSM) Guidelines

Follow me on Twitter or any other social media; attend one of my talks or workshops; read my books and you cannot help but notice how frequently I reference the healthcare industry in general and #hcsm (healthcare social media) in particular.

Many of my posts include counsel like this: "swap church for healthcare or hospital..."  Healthcare and church are indeed that interchangeable more often than not. I should know.

I've been involved with healthcare communications for decades...before, during, and after getting into the ministry of church communications, and:

• A charter member-participant of the weekly #hcsm chat on Twitter, everything I learned there came in handy when starting our weekly #chsocm chat. 

• My involvement with the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media's (#MCCSM) external advisory board since it's inception has provided deep, durable lessons about using social media in an environment where safety, privacy, and confidentiality are as important as information and education.

• The privilege of helping develop curriculum for the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media's Social Media Residency program has been invaluable for developing similar training for church types. 

Although most of my digital strategy and communications work these days is with and for local churches and judicatories, I hope to always be involved with healthcare communications. Not only do I learn from my colleagues in that secular environment, but I'm also keen on when and how health and faith intersection. But that's a different topic for another time!

Here and now I'm sharing this video about Mayo Clinic's Social Media Guidelines. It runs long (8:42) but worth watching carefully in full... and more than once. Again, I invite you to swap church for healthcare; faith for health as you listen to what my MCCSM colleagues have to say about social media, starting with this pull quote:

"This isn't an addition to your job, this is a part of your job. This is a conversation, which is what we're trained to do. We are about the needs of the patient, and this is where our patients are and this is where their needs are met most effectively." 

─ Dr. Farris Timimi, Medical Director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media