INCREASING PATIENT INSIGHT IN A TOTAL OF 5-MINUTES A DAY (part 4)

Armed with relevant articles (here, here, and here) to inform your patients and guide them to increased well-being, you’ve done most of the heavy lifting in yours aims to educate and guide your patient population.  The final hurdle is broadcasting this information.

Recently Google Reader has enabled the ability to share a given article with a number of social networks.  Because we are focusing on the most widely available social network, Facebook, you will need to get an account (here) or sign into your account. 

Note: I prefer to use a business page (previously known as a fan page) in Facebook as it will send you weekly analytical data such as the number of visits, posts, new subscribers, etc.  All are good measurables as to the productivity and reach of your page.

Google Reader integration:

Having signed into your Facebook business page, here is the easy 3 step process:

1. Sign into your Google account and visit your Google Reader site.
2. Click on the Settings link.
3. Click on the ‘Send To’ tab, then check the ‘Facebook’ box. You may want to share with other social network options.  
4. In your article view of Google Reader, there will be a ‘Send to’ tab.  When clicked on, it now provides Facebook as an option.  Click on this tab for a given article.

A facebook page will pop up with the article title, link, and the first few sentences.  Here you have the opportunity to write your thoughts, include any included thumbnail picture, and post by clicking ‘Share’ much like you would any Facebook post.

It is as simple as that.  The article posts to your Facebook from Google Reader, your patients will receive this post in real time, and most of your work is nearly done.  Your final responsibility is promoting the site with your patients.  This is the easiest of tasks. 

Nearly half of all Americans have a Facebook account (and this number is growing).  All they have to do is ‘Fan’ your page to receive the feed of articles and thoughts into their own Facebook feeds. Telling a patient that you have a previous relevant posts to their condition is reason enough to ‘fan’ your page.  Patients can search your page for prior posts, interact through commenting and e-mailing, and post to your fan page.

Scanning through your Google Reader feed every day should take no more than 5-minutes per day.  Sharing those relevant pieces with a sentence or two should take a minimal amount of additional time.  Seamlessly you will have opened up the dialogue towards wellness with your patient through this powerful toolset.