Social media

Community Pharmacy England’s Social media guides can help to weigh up the benefits with such usage as well as provide practical pointers as to how to start to use social media.

The main guide covers the benefits of using social media and guidance on creating internal policies for its use.

There are three related appendix documents providing practical pointers on how to use the most relevant social media platforms:
1. How to use Twitter, which gets key messages out to a lot of people very quickly;
2. How to use Facebook, which gets information directly to your followers in a social setting; and
3. How to use LinkedIn, which gets news to your network through a professional site (probably more beneficial for LPCs).

These appendices and the main guide can also be downloaded at the Community Pharmacy England Briefing webpage.

See also: Digital communications and public relations guidance docs (Community Pharmacy England)

Community Pharmacy England held a social media webinar previously; a recorded version of the webinar is available below.

During the webinar, social media experts Ben Stockman and David Angell offered guidance for community pharmacy teams on what social media to use and how to get the most from it. Community Pharmacy England’s Head of Communications and Public Affairs Zoe Smeaton and LPC Chief Officer Nick Hunter were also on hand to give their top tips on making social media fit in with day-to-day work.

Please note: to view this recording, you will need to register (or input the email address you registered with previously).

If your clinical system providers or other IT providers maintain a Twitter account, they may also post service-related notifications onto it in the event of outages. See: IT service status checkers.

Aside from Community Pharmacy England’s Social media guides referenced above, a few external case studies and pieces of guidance are set out below.

Additional guidance

• Focus on social media (GPhC)
• Maximize Your Pharmacy’s Social Media Efforts (Digital Pharmacist)

Case studies and journal coverage

• Pharmacists as Social Media Influencers (Pharmacy Times USA)
• Social media use by pharmacy to enhance patient outcomes (Dovepress)
• Use of social media in pharmacy practice and education (Academia 2014)
• USA use of social media to promote pharmacy

Other journal studies of pharmacy social media use

• Int Pharm Pract (2011)
• Journal of Medical Internet Research (Australia 2016)
• International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy (2017)