As we finished out the first semester of class I found myself feeling that other than the occasional sidebar conversation during a break or once around the room we gave about our careers when guests came to class, we haven’t had a great deal of time to share opinions, interests, and activities we’re engaged in outside of the class room.
So, I began this blog to allow all of us to post opinions, stories and experiences about topics we’re covering in class, initiatives taking place at your company that you’d like to share, commentary on news, recent events or regulatory issues that are affecting the healthcare industry, or to just plain shout-out something that’s on your mind.
Here’s how it works – You can subscribe to the blog feed in two ways. First, there is an email form in the upper right hand corner of the page that will prompt an email to whatever email address you elect each time a post is published. The email will only contain a snippet of the blog, you will then link out to the site for the full text. The email subscription service is managed by a company called FeedBurner. You will receive a confirmation email requiring you to link out to a FeedBruner page to complete your registration, please follow the link.
You can also subscribe via RSS feed. If you do not want to subscribe and receive emails or RSS feeds, you can still visit the site whenever you like at http://healthcareinnovation.blogspot.com. Every blog site must have a URL, I just made this one up.
Each of you also received an email inviting you to author posts to the blog. You can write anything you like at anytime. Remember, everything you post is visible not only to the class but to the entire Blogosphere. Our blog is public on blogger.com, so anyone searching for University of Miami, Healthcare, your name/email address other key words can find your posts. To author a new post, just come to the site and click 'create posting.' It will take you the post editor where you can type directly or paste in a post you drafted in MS Word. You can then save it as a draft to edit later, or click Publish for it to be posted on the site. You, and the general public, can also comment on other authors posts - you'll see this function at the bottom of the page where there's the link that says "comment."
Making your posts interactive – when you post content you can include pictures, links, etc. to give readers access to more information. This makes the post more interactive and heightens attention to our blog in the blogosphere. So, if you reference a news article, include the URL, if you talk about a company, hyperlink their name to their website. If you use new terms that people might not know - link to them as I did above with RSS and Blogosphere. These tactics allow the other users to read more information about topics easily and will attract more readers to your post and the class blog as a whole.
If you don’t have experience with blogs, the help section on this site is pretty lean, but that’s because it’s a free blog site. Just email me if you need help or search the help forums.
Thanks in advance for sharing your insights and thoughts, and enjoy!
John
