Webinar: Integrating Social Media Platforms

Date: April 27, 2011
Speaker:
Steve Randazzo (SAMHSA) – to discuss how you can integrate social media platforms to increase engagement with the public.
http://www.slideshare.net/HHSNewMedia/webinar-social-media-integration
If you have questions regarding this webinar or the HHS Center for New Media Webinar series, email newmedia@hhs.gov.
Transcript

Hello everyone. I'm doing a part-time detail and we are excited to kick off our brown bag session today. The new media brown bag series will highlight innovative projects in different lessons learned across the HHS community. -- We will -- between 10 and 12 or one and three to share highlights and success or look at what is considered to be failures or lessons learned with community. I wanted to take a brief moment to introduce to you our keynote speaker for today in our present or is Stephen. -- He has been implementing SAMSA strategic information. He advised that Mr. on the social media strategy for SAMSA.

-- As a legislative liaison his responsibilities include managing healthcare, income assistance, the Haverhill health and child support legislation for the state of New Mexico and acting as a representative for the department. Some -- I am very very excited to present them to you. Before is yours Stephen.

Hello everyone. Today I was asked to go ahead and talk about our ask -- our Ask SAMSA blog. -- I will start going through my slides. What it is, we do it monthly, and it's based off of the White House the first question. If you're not familiar with that segment, what they do is they solicit questions through twitter on any topic and then they respond via you tube video. It looks like they have not done since Press Secretary has left, Robert Gibbs, but they were doing them somewhat frequently. We have actually adopted what they did that we have changed it in a couple of different ways. What we do is solicit questions through the blog and then we promote the blog posts on Facebook and Twitter. We also limit the scope of the questions because we want to steer people towards a particular topic and we do this because we recognize limited resources and also scheduling with our identified experts.

On the screen right now is the most recent solicitation for questions and what we did on this one that we have not done in previous posts wasn't actually give people some examples of questions I could ask. Something that could get them started and moving in the right directions. From there, after we posted the solicitation for questions, what we do at that point is we give an identified state, so that is what we now say now through April 24. What we have been doing is experimenting with time frames to see if a shorter amount of time will evoke a sense of urgency and give people more -- give people more engaged. What we did with our first one was left it open for about two weeks and we will see what questions we would get with this one and make that comparison.

We will compare what we have got their and that will help us determine what we do going forward. So after we get all of the questions, we then draft this response through video. But the process but we do is pretty simple. Once a solicitation for a question closes we then take the question that we receive and we review them. From there we get the questions to the experts and pick which questions to answer and that criteria we use actually for selecting these questions, we share online on the blog post prior to his election. -- Prior to the selection. We look at is the question on topic? Can they ask for actually answer the question and are the resources available to answer the question in a timely manner?

We also say if your question is not answered, pending available resources we will try to answer your question and get back to you. This is just an attempt to make everyone feel like they are involved and that just because your question did not get answered via video, it wasn't a good question. From there we shoot in response, we transcribe it and caption it and get it on the web.

What I am going to show you really quick is one of them. That was a screenshot but this is the actual video. [ Video example of Ask SAMSA ]

 

 

I will not keep playing it that that was the gist of it so you all could see what it looks like in action. So the next slide, I want to talk about resources a little bit and clearance because clearance is also an issue on any topic that we work on. The first research. The great part of its is that little resources are needed. We shot that with a flip cam in at six I think maybe 15 minutes because we do a lot of work ahead of time. We used a flip cam and you need a computer that at its. You need a computer that edits and I use the standard Windows editing software that comes with Windows 7. We will soon be using either these. You need time to do this. You need to ask questions ahead of time and you need time to shoot and probably I think one of the biggest challenges for us this time with the expert. It's really important to get on someone's calendar and say look, you need to review some of the questions ahead of time and we will sit down and shoot, the great part is you say when we shoot it will not take that long.

That way they are more willing to let you do it. And then with editing, video editing can sometimes take along time but with a format that we use it's basically a straight shoot. You saw the title slide. And all it takes maybe 20 minutes and there is maybe a couple of gaps in their where you will want to clip some of the video. Clearance is a big issue. We clear the concept beforehand and we identify the concept we talked to the appropriate people that we need so we can get clearance and we moved from there and we identified experts and talk to them about it and get them on board. One of the most critical things is sharing the questions of experts ahead of time because it's not live so it is not necessary to blindside you with questions.

I can help you get the best quality product if you share ahead of time. So, from what we have learned so far with this program is really it's a great way to integrate your show so media platform. It exposes -- it's a great way to integrate your social media platform and in it exposes other products. -- By integrating those other platforms, it helps in promotion of the blog of Twitter and a power YouTube account and for us to integrate all social media platforms that we are using except Flickr. Like I said it casts a wider net.

Now that Facebook has redone their organization pages, we can print a -- we can promote on other people's pages. For example, one of the people I work with she went ahead and posted our blog posts soliciting questions for this on the CDC page and we actually got questioning from there so it's opened up more areas for promotion. And fully utilizes social media platforms and it encourages engagement. By getting all of these different platforms and trying to integrate some of the social media components that we use, it really shows that we are trying to engage our users.

It has been interesting so far. But the challenges that we face, I think like anything, one is promotion which is a big one. In order for this to be successful we have to have questions that come in and that is probably the most difficult thing which is getting promotion at their and we have been experimenting with promotion. Aside from social media avenues we use EBlast which is like listservs so we are experiencing with promotion that is a big deal. Additionally scope of topic. Unlike the White House, like I said, we don't just take a question on anything. Our primary focus is behavioral health that we have been experimenting with the scope of topic. Initially our scope is very narrow. -- We did one on mental health which is a narrow topic but on the second one we just did give us your questions on substance abuse prevention. This one that we just went out and did on our call was general because of the alcohol awareness month. --

Lasley, timing is another issue you just have to have the time and their and like I said we are experiencing with timing and how to get people to ask questions. The last thing which I know it's an issue that we all deal with his accessibility and captioning what we use for the captioning is the YouTube auto caption. But when you use it you have to transcribe the video ahead of time and you load your transcription into the YouTube auto caption and they seek each other out. It does a good job but granted our longest video, I think it's something around four minutes and 13 seconds. It took me a good while to transcribe that one.

But, it's worth it. The purpose of these is not to have the longest video in the world because I think you lose people after a certain point but accessibility is always an issue. It's something that we deal with but I think it is something that we kind of figured out at this point, the YouTube auto caption is working well. That is everything about SAMHSA it if you want have questions go ahead.

Stephen, I have a quick rush to. -- I have a quick question. What has been the level of participation so far?

Our level of participation has been kind of like a roller coaster. Initially, we had some pretty good participation. When we approached this thing on Facebook without a whole lot of lights which is great and all but we don't get a lot of questions sometimes that is really difficult. That is why we are kind of playing with how we promote it. It has been good, it's been okay, but it could definitely get a lot better. I think that will just come through promotion.

Thank you Stephen. To the HHS new media community if you have any questions please fill free to type this questions out and submit them to Stephen at this time.

Stephen, this is read -- this is Reed and I have a two-pronged approach questions. Who is really your target audience?

Great question. It's the same audience that we have for our website and blog. What we really found out is that our audience for our website and blog, they are a lot of behavioral health workforce. Also people or consumers, mental health consumers and people who are in recovery for substance abuse. We have now met to be our primary audience. We get the most engagement, depending upon the topic, it's where we get the most engagement. Whether or not it's for people in recovery and consumers or people from states and state staff or providers. It's a mixed bag but in general it's the same audience that we have for our webpage.

In the second, the second half of the question is sort of a larger philosophy around engagement. No you don't have a whole lot of engagement or interaction right now, down the road if you're really successful, you will be flooded. Have you thought through than, identify which ones you would be able to answer? Good noted so far the three criteria and one of them the resources. Eventually there will be a point at which you will not have the resource answer all of them you have to pick and choose. Have you all brought -- have you all thought through what that might look like? -- That may lend itself to reviewing a biased or something along those lines?

That is definitely an issue in the future. But, it's something we have not had to deal with but we have not put too much thought I'd it yet. But definitely I totally see the issue. If there happens to be too many questions and we start picking and choosing, people will not be happy. I can sense that already. I do not know yet. I think from there we start expanding our criteria to be honest and maybe make it a little bit more specific. But I guess until that comes, it is we are kind of putting off. I think pending the resources available, it's kind of like our get out of jail free card. We said well, we did not have pending resources available to do it. We have not had the issue yet so it will be interesting to want to get there. I hope that we have that problem to be honest so at least we know that we're getting a lot of engagement.

Stephen, you have a question on the floor from Siouxland -- Sue Shirazi heavy total about about the profiles of the people submitting their questions.

A lot of the questions they've gotten for our comments section of our blog or from Facebook. And they look like they are consumers or people in recovery and kind of a mixed bag between men and women. It is primarily engaged people in behavioral health section or people seeking treatment. I really have not seen provider questions which I'm a little bit surprised, especially given our first topic on parity because mental health and addiction. He is a big issue for the provider community. It's also a big issue for consumers and people in recovery that is really their benefit whether or not there in parity or not. For the most part it's been more of the public but it is a segment in the public and constituency that we can serve.

You have another question from Deborah. How long from the first idea of a topic to the posting the actual video and how big is the team who actually produces this?

A question. We have been experimenting with it. The first one, we put the question out for two weeks. And when we closed it, we had the closing date on the third and we took all the questions and review the questions and gave them to the expert and decided on which ones on the night of the third, and then the fourth in our -- and the fourth or the fifth is what we shot we posted on the sixth. The thing that takes the longest is the solicitation of questions initially but we teach were not up as well. The team to do it is a small team and it was Janis Stevens and I and we managed to blog. She manages. And also Andrew Wilson who manages Twitter. He looks there and monitors those questions and she monitors Facebook and I keep my eye on the blog. But to the actual production of it, it's myself and Deana and we round up the questions and then we go to the experts and share the questions, and then we all shoot -- and then I will edit it and I think the more you edit the faster you get at it so at this point everything is really quick. I usually do it at night when I am a home.

Turnaround time, you could really push it if you wanted and you could probably do it in for five days and have a complete product.

That is great. There is another question. How long is a process to obtain approval from the office of communications to prepare responses through to you?

That is a good question. I like to say that you're lucky enough that it was very very short. I am not in communications but I work really close with them and Deana and Andrew are in the Office of Communications. It's great. Granted, so far we have not had really controversial questions. Depending upon the question that you get, that will help determine how you answer. Another thing we have been really lucky with is our experts are actually believes in areas because -- they are actually the leads in the areas. -- For the one on prevention and the one on our call -- the one on prevention and alcohol, she is the substance abuse prevention expert. We are getting the top people involved which is great.

They are already dubbed spokespeople for SAMHSA ever work with communications and they look at what is going in and coming out. -- We use high-level people as our experts.

Okay, you have another question from Austin. He wanted to do is are you finding the questions were being asked on topics, are they topics from the website? Is there a correlation between what is being asked in topics being promoted throughout the website?

Good question. I think yes is the short answer. But what we are trying to do now is, we are trying to tie some of the topics that we actually say please ask questions on things going on around SAMHSA in parity with our first one which was a shot in the dark. -- [ Indiscernible-muffled speaker ]  and then the substance abuse prevention with another one where we said hey, let's try a broader topic this time. But now we are trying to actually tie it to things going on in this promoted on the website. For instance, this one is about alcohol and this can be tied to April's Alcohol Awareness Month and next month will be Mental Health not -- and it is someone to get up next week.

Sometimes the questions are way out in left field. Like anything, they are just outliers and we don't answer the -- answer them through the video if they are not applicable to the topic and are just way off. But we do try to get back to them regardless via blog comments or Facebook or whatever. What we're really trying to do from now on is to have that correlation itself between what is on the site, what we are asking, and try to get people putting to the end to together and then come up with other resources if they want more research or information as well.

Thank you Stephen. Are there any other questions from the community they would like to raise at this point? While I wait for you guys are questions I have one last question for you Stephen. Has the timing of the postings made a difference in the number of questions that you get?

That is a good question. So far, no. But I think and I hope that next week we do it with a shorter amount of time, that we actually get that sense of urgency like you are going to miss out and this is your chance. I hope that we kind of get a ramp-up of questions. But compared to what we left it open for two weeks and compare it to we left ourselves open for five days, there has really not been that much of a difference which is somewhat interesting. I'm thinking we might ratchet down the timing even more and see if engaging -- if engagement goes up which is what I'm hoping for.

I have a question from Deborah and she wanted to find out -- number of questions that you receive?

I would say that the high end is seven or eight in the low end right now, I think we have three or four for the alcohol once. This kind of goes back to Reed's question of what we are going to do when we get to many and like I said, I really hope that we have that problem. I think part of issue that we have is with promotion and promotion of the blog and I've Ask SAMHSA been experimenting and reaching out. And with Facebook being revamped that helps promotion and doing EBlasts so I think promotion and timing are the two things that I hope will help boost the engagement. But right now are engagement is on the low end.

To piggyback on that last question, what do you do if you do not have enough questions?

[ Laughter ]

Good question. We write the period -- we write them a. I don't want to cancel the second one and I don't want to just do a video with one question. So we sit down and I will come up with some questions were the expert will come up with some questions and we will try to throw one or two in there. But the questions that are out, if we get questions from the field and they meet the criteria, those are the questions that we use. We do not plant questions for the sake of planting questions, that is kind of a last ditch effort.

I have one other question. How do you want other agencies to actually promote the?

If you all have a blog or your Facebook pages, that would be very helpful. And also Twitter. Also should media avenues would be helpful if you could promote through there and if there are some other avenues that I do not know about you all go through for engagement, I think that would be phenomenal if you promoted that way. The social media channels and then if you all have a way that you are doing engagement in other ways and you think this would be a good fit for promotion, I think that would be helpful as well.

Thank you so much Stephen for your time. I think that was the last question that we had. We thank you for taking the time out of share the best practices. I wanted to take a quick update -- a quick moment to update the community. We are actually doing another special webinar next Wednesday,. We are actually doing another special webinar next Wednesday, May 4 at 2 PM and I was about the meeting invite shortly after this call concludes. We are having a guest representative from YouTube to discuss YouTube and the federal government and that date is May 4 on Wednesday at 2 PM Eastern time. Also I want to bring to your attention we are doing round robins every second Wednesday and this is an opportunity for you to call in and share what you are doing across trans-HHS and that is led by Richie Friedman.

The next round will take place on Wednesday, May 11 with more details to follow. Again I want to take this time to thank you guys for calling in for our kickoff webinar series. This will happen again every fourth Wednesday either 10 to 12 or 123 -- or one through three and a survey was -- a survey will follow shortly. Thank you again for your time.

Thank you again Stephen.

Thank you.

[ Event concluded ]
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Webinar: Integrating Social Media Platforms

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