City of Hope has entered the world of social media —Web sites and tools that enable users to share videos, photos, opinions, insights and experiences with each other.
Much like a get-together with friends or a cocktail party, social media encourage computer users to talk and interact openly.
As social media become part of daily life, City of Hope is moving into this space, joining patients, employees and supporters online. The platform may help City of Hope reach new supporters, prospective patients, students and colleagues, and keep existing supporters engaged.
To start, City of Hope has established official pages on some of the most popular social media sites: YouTube, Facebook and MySpace. These sites increase City of Hope’s exposure worldwide and yield new opportunities to connect with individuals and groups.
With more than 33 million users, YouTube — the world’s most popular video-sharing site — will enable people to embed and share City of Hope videos all over the Web. On Facebook and MySpace, the largest social networking sites, members can share City of Hope videos, photos, news and information about events and programs with their friends, family and colleagues.
Since social media rely on personal connections, employees can help build momentum for City of Hope by adding City of Hope to their own social networks. For example, a Facebook member can become a “fan” of City of Hope on that site and share City of Hope content with others (employees with restricted Internet access may do this from home). That increases visibility and exposure for the institution.
To get started, visit City of Hope’s social media reference site on the intranet: www.coh.org/EZref/web_marketing/social_marketing.
There, employees will find links to City of Hope’s official pages, as well as policies and e-mail templates to let friends, colleagues, partners and donors know about the pages.
Later this year, City of Hope’s social marketing efforts will expand further to include other social media tools including microblogging (such as Twitter), social content bookmarking and sharing (such as Delicious and Digg), news syndication and podcasts.
Share virtually any Web page from City of Hope
Readers can easily share nearly every page on City of Hope’s Web site, cityofhope.org, through dozens of social media sites like Facebook and Digg. Just click the “Share” button under the page’s search field and select the desired social media Web site.
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