Committee on Communications Update

I will start out by saying that I share everyone’s disappointment in the annual meeting being (necessarily) converted to virtual yet again. Still, as the months drag on, we all become more adept at living in the “virtual meeting” era. The Communications Committee has experienced this first hand and has been hard at work spreading the many messages of SOCCA via these virtual avenues over the past two years from interactive webinars and educational content, to new initiatives and committees. I think it is safe to say that we have begun to collectively see the fruits of this labor in the metrics we follow from webinars joined, links clicked, and webpages visited. Just in terms of website traffic we have seen our unique visitors/sessions double year over year. I attribute this to all of the committees that are hard at work making sure that SOCCA produces a continual stream of quality content and opportunities for engagement from our membership.

On the social media front, we have further expanded our Twitter presence with frequent polls, critical care literature, and society announcements. This has all been overseen by our Social Media Subcommittee chaired by Dr. Madiha Syed. Under her leadership we have seen our account interactions go up ~60% in the past year and the addition of ~600 new followers at the time of this publication. Those followers in turn expose untold other accounts to our tweets and hopefully attract more attention to our initiatives. I am encouraged by the data from the Membership Committee showing continued growth in our number of active members, meaning that those individuals who do come in contact with our society want to join and become a part of what we are collectively doing for the specialty.

We are constantly looking for ways to reach out and engage with current members as well as attract new ones. With the recent call for volunteers we have added new committee members to our ranks and will continue to promote SOCCA and its many missions. With so many great initiatives coming down the pipeline, I look forward to this coming year and anticipate that it will be filled with continued growth and enthusiasm for our society!

Author

Brent Kidd, MD

Chair, SOCCA Communications Committee

University of Kansas Medical Center

Kansas City, Kansas