How Social Media Transformed a Nonprofit Medical Professional Society

The American Society of Nephrology (ASN), founded in 1966, is a well-established 13,000-member professional organization. It is highly regarded and has long provided the best education opportunities in the field of kidney medicine. However, ASN was reluctant to enter the world of social media, a world that includes Facebook and Twitter, but also encompasses the entire web-enabled culture of people sharing online content with people they know.

ASN hired me as an intern in May 2011, in part to help move the society toward a more dynamic social media presence. Social media had been part of my communications strategy while working for a campus society in college, and I had just finished my first year at Georgetown’s Communication, Culture, and Technology program, which grounded me in an understanding of how social media is revolutionizing the way we communicate. My challenge at ASN: (1) research how to improve ASN’s social media efforts, and (2) clearly demonstrate the benefits of social media for a nonprofit medical association.

Why Are Some Organizations Reluctant to Use Social Media?

Using social media represents a big change in communication style and method for many organizations. Instead of a unidirectional (top-down in most cases, including ASN’s), highly controlled media and communications approach, social media focuses on sharing, conversational engagement, and less centralized control. Before the Internet age, ASN’s audience consisted of physicians and scientists studying the kidney, legislators interested in kidney disease, and the media. As electronic communication and the use of social media exploded, these “traditional” society audiences and others, including ASN members, began looking for information about the society via the Internet and on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

As a medical professional society, ASN had another, more specific set of concerns. Medical professionals view patient confidentiality as paramount and inviolable. There are many aspects of work done in the care of patients that cannot be transmitted publicly. But social media encourages unfiltered speech. And while the use of social media by a medical professional organization presents few chances to breach patient privacy, in any health-care-focused environment, legitimate concerns exist regarding social media. To incorporate social media into a medical association’s communications, it is essential to answer those concerns and show that social media can constructively benefit an organization’s mission.
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