Tweeting in a storm: How Lifespan handled Nemo

When the recent Nemo blizzard hit the East Coast, Lifespan turned the bad weather into a social media success, according to Nancy Cawley Jean, senior media relations officer for the Rhode Island health system. She compared the storm to the Blizzard of '78. Decades later, there's some major differences--better forecasts and social media, which helped her to communicate weather updates, safety tips and aftermath clean-up strategies on the system's six Twitter, six Facebook and two Pinterest accounts.

Jean created a Twitter list called "Emergency Agencies" to manage all the information coming from FEMA, local media, the Weather Channel, Governor's Office and local health department. "It worked perfectly for us, and is something we will continue to rely on in the future," she wrote on Hospital Impact this week. She also tweeted out information from Lifespan emergency physicians when they were giving live interviews. "Social media is changing the way hospitals can communicate with the public," she said. Blog Post