Social Media applied to an online diabetes community in Spanish

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Posted by Manny Hernandez  May 26, 2009

EsTuDiabetes.com

Social media adoption has been slower among Latinos, but it has been gradually happening in the course of the past few years. More and more US Hispanics and Spanish speakers overseas are familiar wih Facebook, MySpace and other social networking platforms.

At the Diabetes Hands Foundation, we run two social networks for people touched by diabetes: TuDiabetes.com (in English) and EsTuDiabetes.com (in Spanish). The growth of TuDiabetes has been fueled largely as a result of social media word of mouth: bloggers writing about us, people learning about the network through Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets.

The story with EsTuDiabetes has been slightly different. The community was formed in August 2007, at a time when there wasn't a well defined Spanish-speaking diabetes blogosphere, so to speak. So initial growth was driven from within the community, through the viral tools offered by the platform we adopted to develop the community.

We used Ning as a platform for both communities. In this presentation about Ning for nonprofits, you can learn about some of the reasons we had to choose Ning.

As for other social media, YouTube has also been a big help to reach out to people with diabetes in Spanish. We've published numerous educational diabetes videos in Spanish that have served a double purpose: inform patients about the disease and inform them about the community.

Last, we've been able to further develop the community through Facebook, since many Hispanics have now openly adopted this social network. We created an EsTuDiabetes Facebook group, through which many new members have learned about the community.

Other social media outlets have been less succesful for the purpose of helping grow EsTuDiabetes. For example, we've had a hard time making our EsTuDiabetes Twitter account grow: this is clearly a channel to be taken into account in the future, but it does not seem to be the best place to spend your time and energy if you are trying to reach out to US Hispanics.

Tags: diabetes, ning, social media
Topics: Community Health, Health Care, Non-profit, Public Health, Social networking



Comments

well,this is a great

Submitted by remo on October 30, 2009 - 2:32am.

well,this is a great article social media is a great network . i found so many things good in this media.. thanks for sharing a great info.

Making money from others

Submitted by membertudiabetes on July 4, 2009 - 11:27pm.

I would like clarification please. Manny has written that on Tudiabetes that the Board of Directors pays full time salaries two the two employees- he and his wife. He also said that from donations that this can be 75%

 

I think a lot of people who are donating to his social networks which are FOR profit (and who can begrudge him for making money from this) until they become non profit-- are disillusioned.

 

Set the record straight! How much money is your household pulling from donations. Full disclosure now please.

Thanks for your insights, Manny

Submitted by Catherine Stifter on May 26, 2009 - 7:31pm.

With so many of us on a steep technological learning curve, it's really refreshing to hear how Web 2.0 tools are actually serving to improve the health of the US Hispanic community. Thanks Manny, for taking the time to share about social networking at EsTuDiabetes.com.

Catherine Stifter Media & Technology Co-Director