Social Media Focus: A look at growth as the Social Media Subcommittee turns 5 years old

Five years ago, then-ASPS President David Song, MD, MBA, formed the Social Media Task Force, which quickly grew into a full-fledged subcommittee. Selected based on their social media activity, members today create content and use their own platforms to disperse ASPS blogs, videos and various news items relating to the specialty. Our secret weapon is ASPS staff liaison Kyle Diller. Kyle arrived at ASPS just a few months before the birth of the task force, having honed his skills running social media for the Fox Soccer Channel and working on projects for companies such as Microsoft.

Our mission is twofold: Educate the public about plastic surgery and patient safety, and educate ASPS members about effective and appropriate use of social media. In just five short years, it's impressive to look at what this group has already accomplished.

The stats

Social media gives ASPS a direct connection to the public. Measuring the effectiveness of public education is difficult, but a good proxy is to look at our web traffic growth. If we think of a social media post as a brochure, a website is a library. One of the central goals of the Society's social media efforts – in addition to informing the public and connecting with colleagues – is to drive traffic to plasticsurgery.org. From the landing page, web visitors can find out more about plastic surgery, see photos, videos – and even find a plastic surgeon.

Our star platform for growth is Instagram. As shown in the table to the right, over the past five years, the number of followers has increased more than 3,500 percent.

Every social media post that comes across a news feed is called an "impression." In the past five years, the number of yearly impressions jumped 128 percent. Nevertheless, although an impression means a post is out there – it does not mean it's necessarily being seen. Effective social media will drive the audience to the website, so one of the most significant outcome measures is to look at the number of website visits originating from social media. In five years, the yearly web traffic driven from our social media channels has jumped 126 percent, which is nearly equal to the growth in impressions. This news tells us that the public not only is looking at our impressions, but they're interested in what we are posting.

Means of communication

One of our most popular features to develop in the past few years is our Instagram takeover series. About twice every month, an ASPS member takes over the ASPS Instagram posting for the day, with subcommittee members serving as frequent participants. The focus is on education, feel-good shots and connecting with the public through the plastic surgeon's personality. The response is tremendous, as we can tell by the level of engagement – which typically quadruples on takeover days.

Any ASPS member can contribute blogs to Kyle Diller, but the subcommittee has been particularly active in writing content about plastic surgery for the public. Once a blog is published, the subcommittee members share the post far and wide, and those blogs often attract the most traffic to the website.

In 2018, the subcommittee introduced this PSN column, Social Media Focus. Its contributors, all subcommittee members, cover the breadth of the professional use of social media, from choosing a platform and practicing ethical posting to measuring your return on investment, posting clinical photos and using social media to launch a new practice.

In the July/August 2020 column, Ashley Amalfi, MD, and Smita Ramanadham, MD, wrote about starting your own Instagram TV show. Their words could apply to social media in general: "If you spend too much time determining the right moment to start something new, you might never start at all." They started out filming public-facing videos at Plastic Surgery The Meeting 2019 in San Diego, and that effort grew into a weekly IGTV show, "Lipo and Lipstick."

Social media gives us the power to promote our scientific articles, connect with colleagues, write blogs and articles, and create videos. It's a tool that allows us to use our creativity and be ourselves. Anyone interested in expanding their professional use of social media will enjoy reading our growing collection of articles at psnextra.org in the "Social Media Focus" category.

The future

Society at large has never before had such an effective way to magnify a single voice. In the future, today's popular platforms may remain popular, but their audiences will age as younger generations jump onto newer ones. Videos continue to draw-in the public, but with augmented reality, virtual reality and haptics, who knows what's around the corner? The Social Media Subcommittee will continue to guide members and promote an engaging face to the public.

If you haven't yet become active on social media, we hope you'll join us in the exciting years ahead.

Dr. Furnas is co-chair of the Social Media Subcommittee and is in private practice in Santa Rosa, Calif.