College students give up Facebook for week, reduce stress

By Jon Hurdle

PHILADELPHIA | Fri Dec 10, 2010 5:36pm EST

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Harrisburg University students gave up Facebook and other social media for a week in September and said they were less stressed and more attentive to course work, according to a study published on Friday.

The university in central Pennsylvania blocked the use of media such as Facebook and Twitter for a week to study its effect on students and faculty.

The survey found that 25 percent of students reported better concentration in the classroom, and 23 percent said they found lectures and seminars more interesting.

Forty percent of students said they spent between 11 and 20 hours a day using social media, and several faculty and staff reported spending up to 20 hours a day with the tools.

"One has to believe that this level of usage would likely interfere with school work and jobs," the survey's authors said.

A third of students reported feeling less stressed because they were unable to use social media. The survey quoted one student saying she felt like she had taken a vacation for the week because she was not constantly checking her messages.

Some students and faculty rediscovered the value of face-to-face communications when they were unable to communicate electronically.

Several professors said their students more easily understood a difficult biological concept through a conversation with faculty than they had after trying to grasp it using social media.

One student said he actually had to talk to his professor during the blackout.

"The results suggest that a healthier, more productive life style was practiced by a significant portion of the students during the blackout," the survey said.

Six percent of students reported eating better and exercising more during blackout week. And 21 percent used the time they usually spent on Facebook to do homework, whereas 10 percent said they spent the time usually spent on Facebook to read online news.

(Reporting by Jon Hurdle, Editing by Greg McCune)

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Why More Health Experts Are Embracing the <b>Social</b> Web

Unity Stoakes is the co-founder and president of OrganizedWisdom, an expert-driven digital media company focused on health and wellness. OrganizedWisdom is building the world’s first digital mapping of online health experts to help people easily discover and connect with credible health resources.

Is your doctor easily accessible online, or does he or she believe that the InternetInternet isn’t a resource for accessing health information?

If it’s the latter, it may be time to find another doctor. With nearly 90% of online Americans searching the Internet for health resources, it’s likely you and your friends and family already use the Internet to research health issues. It’s true that the web has a jumble of health information, and engaging online takes time, which most health experts don’t have. The good news, however, is that the increasing number of health professionals now embracing the Internet as an important and useful tool for health and wellness is beginning to change your options as a consumer.

Read on for some ways that social media can help doctors, health experts and everyday users.

An exciting new social media trend is emerging that disrupts the standard view of health care delivery and will have a profound impact on us all. Thousands of doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, and health advocates are publicly engaging with people online. In fact, nearly 40% of Americans turn to social media for health information.

Patients (and a few early adopter health pros) moved online years ago to share health guidance, give support and find answers. But until recently, many health professionals have avoided using the Internet and social media as a way to help patients. This reluctance is changing, as savvy physicians, nurses, dentists and other health pros are realizing that if their patients are online, then perhaps they should be too. Health practitioners who were once too busy, inexperienced or afraid to share their expertise online, now actively share links on TwitterTwitter and FacebookFacebook, blog, write for online medical journals, engage on Q&A sites, or contribute to online health sites and forums.

For too long, health and wellness has been a do-it-yourself proposition for patients online, and people have been left on their own to determine how to effectively utilize empty search boxes. People have great access to lots of information, but they must sort through the billions of articles to determine the credible from redundant health encyclopedias, marketing web sites or sites with potentially unknown sources. Then, the task of deciding the credibility of the sources and articles has fallen on the patient alone.

While the number of health experts interacting with patients online is relatively small, there is a clear trend taking shape. A recent Manhattan Research survey of U.S. physicians shows an increase of Internet usage for professional purposes up from 2.5 hours per week in 2002 to 8 hours per week in 2010. More strikingly, while more than 100,000 doctors are using closed social health networks like Sermo.com and publishing in peer-reviewed journals online, thousands of health professionals are now blogging, using Twitter, and connecting with patients on Facebook in very public ways. So much so that this November, for the first time, the American Medical Association released a set of guidelines to direct physicians communicating and engaging with patients via social media. And earlier this year, the CDC also published its own best practices toolkit for how health professionals should be using social media.

Given that so many people now go to the Internet before, during and after their visit to the doctor’s office, the lack of guidance from credible and trusted health experts online is a growing problem. In fact, Manhattan Research shows that 61% of people now use the Internet instead of visiting a doctor. Thankfully, the tide is turning as thousands of health practitioners move online to do much more than interact with friends, family and colleagues and are instead using the social web to dispense their particular health expertise.

We are standing at the precipice of a new online revolution in health care. As more and more health experts embrace the Internet and increase their social media activity, health information seekers will undoubtedly benefit in profound ways. Based on conversations and surveys conducted with experts and health information seekers, here are some of the benefits associated with a robust online community of active health experts:

Interaction With Experts: In the real world, people seeking answers to important health, financial or legal matters look for guidance from the best experts. With a growing community of health experts participating in online discussions, people have access to more expertise than ever before at their fingertips.

Credibility and Trust: With doctors and other health professionals contributing information online in increasing numbers, it is important for a trust filter to separate credible information and sources from information that is not credible. The community of health professionals that is forming online will act as a system of checks and balances to separate good information and sources from the bad.

Transparency: It’s been a watershed year for increased transparency as government, big business, the financial services industry and other sectors have been shining a light into their operations like never before. Healthcare is taking a major step forward in this regard at the grassroots level, with an expert community being formed online by doctors, nurses and other health professionals across the country. As more doctors view social media as an extension of their professional reputation, you can be sure that they will treat their online interactions with the same care as they do in the offline world.

While the increase in the online activity of health experts is a welcome development, searching for crucial health information online remains an overwhelming and intimidating process for many. In the offline world, people searching for health information seek out the best experts — and now with more health professionals moving online, people will finally be able to connect with credible experts they can trust.

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Image courtesy of iStockphotoiStockphoto, dcdr

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What to Do Before You Interview a <b>Social Media Marketing</b> Firm <b>...</b>

I’ve heard it at least a bazillion times … You’re starting to feel like your marketing strategy is falling behind the times. You know you should at least create a Facebook page and use Twitter, but you don’t really know how to use them. (Is it worth the time?) And, even more frustrating, you don’t know what you don’t know.

Can you learn how to do all this social media stuff, or should you find a social media marketing firm to launch you online? (Yikes, how much will THAT cost??) And, if you DO engage a firm, how do you find a good one? A good one could be defined as a team that ‘gets’ your business, with the objective of attracting new customers. 

Before you start the hunt for the right social media marketing firm, gather your management team together and focus on articulating your offline marketing and sales goals FIRST. The result of any social media marketing firm’s work is only as good as the goals they work toward, and those come from your company. No management strategy and/or targets – no bullseye.

Once you have the offline marketing and sales goals articulated and prioritized, you’re ready to define your social media business goals. The offline and online goals work together hand-in-hand. Each supports and supplements the other. Good social media goals should at least include:

Identifying your online target marketFinding the places that they congregate onlineEstablishing your brand in these online communities (social networks)Listening, listening, listeningAfter listening, easing into engagement with the target audienceGiving valueOffering solutions and converting the audience into customersMonitoring, measuring, and continual improvement

You might also spend some time searching online and reading blogs about how other businesses establish their social media campaigns. They may or may not apply to you, but you will learn an awful lot, and give you more confidence before approaching a social media marketing firm.

.. _____ ..

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

Ms. Chapman’s new book, How to Make Money Online With Social Media: A Step-by-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs will be available very soon. With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

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