Lourdes Health System

Thursday, November 30, 2006

The Blog About the Blog: chapter 1

For this first blog, we have a little catching up to do, so let me fill you in. Back in early November, Lou Antosh and Carol Ann Kell approached us here at Lourdes about becoming a "blog test kitchen," offering to help us launch a corporate blog that would be a way for us to explore new media.

I have to admit, my first thought was, "I'm a 45 year old woman with no kids who barely uses her cell phone, what do I know about blogs?"

But almost simultaneously two memories rushed into the same spot that was currently occupied by panic: 1) the moment in 1983, during my internship at the City Paper, when the editor asked my prediction about USA Today and I said, "who wants to read a national paper. " And 2) my cluelessness in 1993 when I remember thinking, "I¹ve got to find about this world wide web thing before somebody asks."

So I don't purport to be the Amazing Kreskin.

What I am attracted to, and why I have kept an eye on blogs (even occasionally reading some as I accident upon them while googling other things) is this: they are made of words.

That's right. It appears this is one place where the English majors have a leg up. After a decade of websites ruled by kids with substandard art school degrees, who've gotten to tell us adults what's "in and out" like some kind of web version of Heidi Klum, it actually becomes about thoughts and feelings and words. It isn't about the bling anymore. Once again, content rules.

So, to me, that is exciting.

Part of the excitement is that is just seems to right a major wrong. Most of my career has been spent working with graphic designers and dealing with the print world, where words and design live in harmony on the page--where sometimes one must yield to design or vice versa. When I started working on websites, this all changed. Writing had to change, and often webmasters had no concept as to how the page should best operate for the customer--which in our case involves people interested in literally life and death issues. They are a different animal than most consumer-oriented sites where people may be more tolerant of flash.

So the writing part seems like a new and interesting way for us to reach new people who may not know about Lourdes, but first, we need to make it happen.

And if we can make an impact on what people think about health care, about health policy, about community benefit, even better.

Immediately, my friends and colleagues expressed worry about whether anyone will read it. I was worried about getting people to write it. As someone who has taught college-level writing, I know the hard part is getting people to do their homework. I won't worry about the end result until later. These are the other things I'm worried about:

- We need to organize our goals, short and long term. (What do we want to achieve?)
- We need to figure out who would be good at this and approach them. Who would be a good writer? An entertaining one? Someone who can give a realistic view but be a good spokesperson. Let's be honest we want people who are champions but not polllyanna.
- What is our process? Who are our editors? Who will need to read this before it goes out into cyberspace?
- How will we train people? Lou can offer a sesson, but how can we get them together?
- Can we get this organized and up before January when we are presenting the results of our "test kitchen" experience? (See info on January 10 seminar: http://www.prwebfire.com/)

So it took about two weeks (actually a little less), but through a combination of discussion among marketing and PR and human resources, and an e-mail to select managers, we found our bloggers. We decided from the start to focus just on one of our campuses for simple logistics. Getting staff from both hospitals to one location is always difficult, given comittments and schedules, so we concentrated on Our Lady of Lourdes in Camden, and located a physican who is a member of our bioethics commitee, a social worker who does community outreach with the homeless in Camden, a massage therapist who is about to graduate from the Lourdes Institute of Wholistic Studies, our own writer/editor and me--blogging about the blog.

Blogging about the blog has some intrinsic and historic value, at least for marketing people. I was concerned about everybody else. Prior to the training, I was concerned we would lose at least one of our bloggers, who was concerned about our purpose in creating the blog. He (rightfully) did not want to be used as shill for the school and/or the hospital.

So we have five altogether. It would have been nice to have another clinical person, but it is just too much to ask people, especially this time of year.

And it is also the kind of off-hours project people don't even have time to ask about. You either know what a blog is or you don't, and if you don't, you don't have time to ask, and if you don't have time to ask, you don't have time to read them.

After the training, which included a discussion of developing ground rules, I did develop some. I'll share in a future post.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just Words
You make a good distinction between websites and weblogs. Granted pictures are what made the Web take off, but content has always been primary. God bless all the former English majors who've found real jobs.

Anonymous said...

LOL re: your powers to predict the newest trends. Since we are in the same business, I can fully appreciate what a new venture like this feels like. Probably something like bungie-jumping the first time and never feeling quite certain that the cord is fully attached. Bravo!