Philippine Hospital Association to Present an On-Line Webinar on Social Media on July 18, 2011

An On-Line WEBINAR.

Title:	Social Media 101: Engaging and Connecting Healthcare
Date:	Monday, July 18, 2011
Time:	6:00 PM - 7:00 PM CST

Social Media is sweeping society by leaps and bounds.  It is going the way of how the mobile phones gained worldwide popularity.  Mobile phone subscribers, “ by the end of  1990 were just 11 million world-wide; eight years later that figure had jumped to 320 million and is now forecast to exceed 550million by the end of next year. “ 

In the “20+ Mind-blowing social media statistics: One year later”  posting made in 25 March 2011 by Jake Hird , he gave us some statistics as his attempt to picture the speed by which wireless communications is taking place and social media along with it.  With the readers’ indulgence and with proper attribution to Mr. Jake Hird, herewith are quotes of his statistics:


Then: Twitter has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis.


Now: Twitter now officially claims to have 175m registered users, although it's unclear what percentage regularly use the service. 


Then: LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. 


Now: Officially, Linkedin has grown 100%, now having over 100m professionals who use the platform worldwide. 


Then: Facebook has 350 million active users on global basis.


Now: Facebook officially hit the half-billion member mark last year. According to figures from Socialbakers, there are now some 640m Facebook users worldwide.


Then: 50% of active users log into Facebook each day. This means at least 175m users every 24 hours.


Now: Still citing the 50% active rate, using the official 500m figure, this means at least 250m users every 24 hours. This is more than a 40% increase in 12 months.


Then: Flickr hosts more than 4bn images.


Now: Flickr continues to grow at a steady rate, having increased by some 25% in the last twelve months. At the end of 2010, it was hosting more than 5bn images.


Then: Wikipedia has 14m articles and 85,000 contributors.


Now: Wikipedia now has more 17m articles. The site now has an army of 91,000 active contributors.


Then: 65m users access Facebook through mobile-based devices.


Now: It may well be the year of mobile... For Facebook. Users accessing the site through mobile devices now tops 200m - an enormous 200% increase in around a twelve-month period.


Then: There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.


Now: Clearly, Facebook is still growing: More than 30bn pieces of content is shared each month, which is an average of 7bn pieces a week.


Then: There are 11m LinkedIn users across Europe.


Now: Go Europe! There are now 20m+ EU Linkedin members.


Then: The average number of tweets per day was over 27m.


Now: Twitter now states that 95m tweets are written each day. This is a staggering 250% increase.


Then: The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m.


Now: At the new rate of growth, its calculated that there are nearly 4m tweets per hour.

In a way, it is creating a great divide between the learned and unlearned in the said cyber arena. The baby boomers (estimated to be 78 million) , born between 1946 to 1964 , though aging and most of them retired and about to retire,  possess great spending capacity and therefore remain good target for the marketing of product and services.  I ventured making a guess that over half of them are not yet into social media, not due to their choice, but simply due to lack of opportunity to be exposed to the basic ways of getting unto it.  Internet monitoring site comScore  however states :  “ Social networking stats: 16.5 million adults ages 55 and older engage”.

The same may very well be true in the case of the non baby boomers.  There are those who are within our midst who definitely have heard about Facebook (600 million users and USD2B in estimated revenues, Twitter (“the wine sucks”,  “sorry, walang pogi rito #Vietnam” and “eh di magreklamo ka sa lolo mong panot”) , blogs (food, travel, opinions, etc).  While they have entertained in their minds on hopping unto it they never got around to doing it.

The thing is that people need to adapt and adapt well to the changes and developments happening around us, for reason that are good for one’s self , the family and the community.

It is for this reason that as part of the Philippine Hospital Association’s advocacy, it has thought of sponsoring a   free on-line WEBINAR on SOCIAL MEDIA. Primary target will be its members and stakeholders but anybody interested is welcome to it, subject to the limit of 100 participants.  The PHA will be using the trial version of the “gotomeeting” software which has set the limit.  However, possibilities for follow through sessions are not to be discounted. The WEBINAR  will be made possible with the cooperation of the Digital Filipino.com and its founder and prime mover, the ever energetic power house of woman, Ms. Janette Toral.  She is a renowned master in the field of e-Commerce whose reputation precedes her. The Phil. Hospital Assn. (PHA) advocates L.E.A.P.! It means it Leads, Enables, Assists & Protects Hospitals. These advocacies for its hospital members are driven by the organization's ultimate desire for the Filipino people to obtain the best in quality health services.  Bringing the vehicle of Social Media within the reach & capabilities of the health institutions shall be a big boost in CONNECTING & ENGAGING all concerned.  Together through Social Media, i.e. the hospitals, the public, allied organizations and other stakeholders, and UNITED, they will WIELD a BIG VOICE, the better to be heard and influence policy & law makers to address the sentiments & needs of the people.  The mechanics for joining is very simple: 1.       PHA will send an email / FB / text messages blast invitation to all its members who are wirelessly “connected”. Members and their staff who are interested can register through the WEBINAR software. Registration will be confirmed and more details on checking in with the Webinar on the appointed date will be sent back promptly by PHA. 2.      Interested non-PHA member friends , are now welcome to register subject to availability of slots , first come first served. They will be sent emailed invitations and once they have registered, they will be confirmed and emailed back details on checking in with the Webinar on the appointed date.

For any further inquiries, you may reach PHA by email at executive.officer@pha.ph. or tweet us at @PHA1949.

Happy Webinar, everyone!


Thank you.