By Shelley Ratcliffe Is Fitspiration all bad? Culture and community vs public health messaging A little bit about me… Hi everyone, my name is Shelley Ratcliffe and I’m a third year health science student, majoring in health promotion at Flinders University. I am writing this as part of the work placement I’m currently undertaking with Zockmelon. For someone who, up until about 8 weeks ago, was a complete social media novice, this placement has been an eye-opening experience. Prior to university, I worked in the fitness industry. I was a personal trainer, I taught fitness classes and also
Keep reading →By Kristy Schirmer Are Anzac Day social media fails ‘Fresh in your Memories’? If you are reading our humble little blog, there’s a good chance you are not part of an Australian supermarket duopoly. Rather you are most likely a health or community-based service, small Government agency or other NGO. If your organisation is nervous or unsure about what to post on social media on Anzac day there is a good reason. Social media posting sans strategy (AKA posting content willy-nilly) is a big risk. Let’s talk about the pros and cons of putting out Anzac
Keep reading →By Kristy Schirmer This morning I received an email from someone I didn’t know called Dane Atkinson. An annoyance of mine is businesses who send emails from employees rather than the business name in an attempt to get people to open their emails. This is a pet peeve of mine (I’m looking at you PostPlanner) but that’s not what today’s rant is about. Instead, SumAll (ahem, Dane) was letting me know that their free service is is becoming premium only, and at a cost of $99/month, or half price for existing users. First of all, that is quite
Keep reading →Huge thanks to Sarah Horwood, Online Manager, COPMI for sharing her insights with our blog readers. Background The Children of Parents with a Mental Illness (COPMI) national initiative promotes better outcomes for children who have a parent with a mental illness. We produce information for parents with mental illness, young people, their family and friends that complements interactive online training courses and resources for allied health professionals who work with them. The COPMI national initiative has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more recently on LinkedIn. Whilst there are pros and cons to the use of each platform, Facebook is the most effective driver
Keep reading →By Rebecca Zosel, Health Promotion Advisor, Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA). I recently had the privilege of managing a national fertility awareness campaign, which gave me the opportunity to engage with social media more intimately than before. I suspect like many Gen X’ers, I’m familiar with different platforms (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) but was not au fait with using social media professionally, in order to promote health. My experience with Fertility Week confirmed my suspicion: social media is an extremely useful and cost-effective tool for targeting, reaching and engaging new audiences. As public health practitioners concerned with access and
Keep reading →By Kristy Schirmer Every day I read one or more recent articles, blog posts or stats about social media. Most of the time, these are written for businesses in mind who have different objectives than public health organisations. My job is to then translate social media tools and trends for public health purposes. The following are the people and pages I follow that I find the most helpful in keeping up to date on social media. If you want to fully immerse yourself in social media as much as I do, you might like to check these out. In no
Keep reading →By Kristy Schirmer We recently moved house. With two little kids. I can sense your sympathetic looks as you read this. Amid the chaos, I realised that not only do social media and health promotion have a lot in common, but so do social media and moving house. Here’s why: Both cost time AND money. Need I say more. Outsourcing is an option but it has risks. You can outsource your packing, removalists and even your unpacking, but unless your removalists are well briefed you can end up with a new house with all the wrong things and all the wrong places.
Keep reading →At one of my first speaking engagements on social media and health promotion I was asked this question: So, how can we make something go viral? Even the concept of making something go viral makes me chuckle when thinking about social media and health promotion as previously working in the blood borne virus field we were trying so hard to not make viruses, er, go viral. Geeky virus joke. Sorry. Back to the question: “How can we make something go viral?” This person worked in local community setting, that is, in. a particular geographical area. She was organising a local
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