This is the final article from Beth’s series of guest posts. Beth maintains a fantastic blog at PixelRN.com where she writes about her experiences in nursing as well as social networking and website design/development.

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I recently was fortunate enough to attend Blog World Expo 2008, the world’s largest blogging and new media conference. Part of my agenda was to meet with other health care bloggers like Kim from Emergiblog, and Dr. Val Jones from GetBetterHealth, to discuss the possibility of putting together a track dedicated to health care bloggers at next year’s conference. We also met with Rob Halper, who oversees the Johnson & Johnson Youtube channel, and Shane Pike, of Health Care Today. Together we brainstormed ways that we could make this happen. The result? A health care blogger track is a sure thing for next year (September 2009), and it’s going to be the first event of its kind that will bring all types of health care bloggers together. Potential topics include: HIPAA issues, using blogging to affect change in health care policy, and using your blog to leverage your expertise in your field. If you’re interested, Emergiblog has a poll up where you can see the list of topics and vote on the best ones.

One of our goals for the health care blogger’s track is to include all types of bloggers in the health care arena. That includes nurses, doctors, students, EMTs, technicians, medical librarians, social workers, pharmacists, researchers, and patients. One of the great things about health care blogging is that it brings together people from all specialties, and the result is one of the largest (and liveliest) ongoing multidisciplinary discussions on the state of health care. If you are still new to this idea of people blogging about health care, I would urge you to check out Grand Rounds. It’s a weekly roundup of some of the best blog posts with a medical theme.

Blog World Expo is a worthwhile and energizing experience for any type of blogger. If you have a blog, whether it be about nursing, or any thing else, I would urge you to go. Presentations included topics such as how to make money from your blog, building readership on your blog, and how to analyze your blog statistics. One of the best things about Blog World Expo was getting to meet other bloggers face to face. I had known of Kim and Dr. Val through their blogs for a couple of years now, but this was the first time I had a chance to sit down and have a conversation with them. It was a very energizing experience.

If you’d like to learn more about Blog World Expo and the health care blogger’s track, stop by Emergiblog and leave a comment with your email. Kim, the author of Emergiblog, is putting together an email list and will be updating us through out the year on this event. Hope to see you there!

Here is Part 3 of Beth’s series on Social Networking for travel nurses. Beth maintains a fantastic blog at PixelRN.com where she writes about her experiences in nursing as well as social networking and website design/development.

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 Use Twitter to connect with other nurses.

Twitter is another social networking technology and it has often been referred to as “microblogging.” You make friends with people by following them, and if they are interested they will follow you back. When you update your Twitter page, it goes into a public timeline, and you can see what everyone else is “tweeting” about. People think of twitter as microblogging because you update your twitter page just as you would update a blog, but you are limited to 140 characters. Many people use it to share details about their day. Others use it to share links to promote their blogs or websites.

Lately Twitter has been jumping into the political arena. During the last presidential and vice-presidential debates, many participated on Twitter while watching the debate, which resulted in some very lively political discussion. Twitter also keeps track of trending topics so you can see what others are saying about each of the candidates.

There is an emerging community of nurses who use Twitter and you can find a list of them here. I can say first hand that the nurses who use Twitter are a welcoming and friendly community so I urge you to join in.

What is the benefit from using Twitter? For me it’s one more way of connecting to interesting people online. Nurses sometimes keep strange hours so it’s nice to be able to come home from night shift or evening shift and have people to chat with.

Use LinkedIn to maintain your resume and professional contacts.

LinkedIn is great site for maintaining your professional contacts. It also gives you a space to post your resume online, and it’s easy to keep it updated. One of my favorite things about LinkedIn is that you can automatically attach your resume as a PDF file when applying for jobs. You can also use LinkedIn to maintain professional relationships with people at other hospitals that you’ve worked for.

LinkedIn also provides a way to connect with former classmates. You can do a search of the school you attended, and then invite people to become your connections. (It’s funny how each social networking site has a different name for your contacts. Facebook has “friends,” Twitter has “followers,” and LinkedIn has “connections.”) They also feature professional groups you can join. Overall, it’s a great way to network with people in your chosen field.

A final word on social networking for nurses: Don’t be afraid to get your feet wet. Start out small if you wish. Leave a comment on a blog, or search Flickr for some subjects you might be interested. I’ve come to find that there are many interesting people online and the only way to find this out is to start participating.

Here is Part 2 of Beth’s series on Social Networking for travel nurses. Beth maintains a fantastic blog at PixelRN.com where she writes about her experiences in nursing as well as social networking and website design/development.

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In this post, we’ll take a look at Facebook, Blogger, and WordPress.

Facebook is kind of a grab-bag for all of your social networking activity. You can create a profile, upload photos, write notes, and post links, and find people that you may know from high school, college, or previous places of employment (among other things.) If you are a traveling nurse and still aren’t using facebook, I suggest you sign up. It’s a very convenient and fun way of staying in touch with people.

There are also social sites dedicated strictly to nurses and people who are interested in nursing. Nursinglink is one of them. It contains many of the same features that you see on Facebook but centers around nursing.

If you are really ambitious about social networking you can start your own blog. What is a blog, exactly? The original word comes from web + log, and the first blogs were kind of like personal journals. They date back to earlier in this decade. These days a blog can be about anything you want it to be. It can be a personal diary, a way to update your friends and family on where you are traveling, or it can even be a collection of articles that you have written on a chosen subject. Travel nursing and blogging go hand in hand, and there is a great community of nurses who blog out there. Setting up a blog is really very easy to do, and free as well. You can start a free blog at wordpress.com or blogger.com. Each of these sites have templates that you can choose from and fairly easy to use interfaces.

There’s a large community of nurses who blog. You can find a partial list of them at OrientedX3.com. There’s also a biweekly roundup of some of the best nursing blog posts called Change of Shift. You can see the latest edition of Change of Shift at crzegrl.net.

In part three we’ll take a look at Twitter, a micro-blogging tool, and LinkedIn, a social site for professionals.

We’re delighted to have Beth join us for Part 1 of her series on Social Networking for travel nurses. Beth maintains a fantastic blog at PixelRN.com where she writes about her experiences in nursing as well as social networking and website design/development.

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First of all, what is social networking, and why would a travel nurse be interested in it? A social networking service is basically any type of website that provides a way for people to connect and socialize online. More and more nurses these days are using social networking services to connect with friends, family, and other nurses. Travel nurses, especially, can benefit from these new technologies. They travel from job to job, making new friends along the way and trying to keep in touch with old friends, not to mention the people they leave behind at their home base.  Online communities, blogs, and photo-sharing sites can help them stay connected to everyone. But there are many different sites out there and figuring out which ones to use can sometimes be overwhelming. I’d like to share with you my top 5 favorite social networking sites, and explain how they can benefit the travel nurse.

Let’s start with one of my favorite social networking sites, Flickr

Flickr is a site that lets you store and share your photos. Two things make flickr especially useful, the ability to “tag” your photos and organize them according to subject, and the ability to search other people’s photos by subject matter. Also, you can create a profile and “friend” other flickr users. Flickr and traveling go hand in hand. Say you are about to accept a travel assignment in Baltimore, MD. You’ve never been there before and you are anxious to get a feel for the city. Perhaps you’d like to figure out what neighborhood to live in, or what sites you’d like to see. Flickr allows you to search all of the photos tagged, Baltimore. From here you might search other neighborhoods in Baltimore, like Canton or Charles Village. I recommend searching by “tags only” and by “most interesting” as opposed to “most recent.” That way, Flickr will pick out the most relevant photos for you. You can also search by clicking on “Explore” and choosing “Places.” Then, type in the place you would like to see and Flickr will show you photos that have been geo-tagged with that place, and also show you some photo groups that revolve around that location

Flickr is also a social site, and so you can create a list of contacts. Flickr, like many other social networking sites, allows you to find people you already know by searching your email contacts on gmail, hotmail, and yahoo mail. When you become friends with someone, it will be easier to view one another’s photos.

Finally, when you start uploading your own photos, you can also “tag” them. Tagging simply refers to designating a keyword to your photo, making it easier to search for at a later date. You can basically choose any tags you want, and organize your photos according to subject matter, location, or when you took them.

In part two I’ll take a look at Facebook, and also talk about starting your own blog.