60 |
Open community
Percent of
benchmark achieved
in last quarter 2014
Electronic health/medical records 1,418.6
History of Surgery 418.3
Rural Surgery 392.1
Colon and Rectal Surgery 342.2
West Virginia Chapter 134.1
Pediatric Surgery 119.9
General Surgery 106.8
Breast Surgery 94.2
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 64. 5
International Surgery 59. 7
*When benchmark of 60 posts per 1,000 members
per quarter is used to measure engagement
quotes and comments from
the presentations, particularly
about controversial and
stimulating topics. In terms
of year-round Twitter use, the
College’s social media team
receives more tweet requests
from staff than ever, as ACS
employees have increasingly
come to view Twitter as a way
to get their messages out more
quickly to the nearly 20,000
people and organizations
that follow the College.
The College also uses
YouTube, LinkedIn, and
Google+ with greater
frequency. On LinkedIn,
the College posts videos of
staff members on its careers
page to let job seekers know
firsthand what it’s like to
work at the College. In early
2015, the College began using
promoted posts on LinkedIn,
Facebook, and Twitter to
tout the many reasons why
becoming a member of the
ACS benefits a surgical career.
(See Figure 1, page 59.)
ACS Communities
ACS Communities, the
College’s state-of-the-art
online community platform,
launched in July 2014, when
its first community became
available to members. As of
February 2015, the platform
had grown to 92 communities
covering a variety of member
surgeon interest areas. Of these,
51 communities are open,
meaning that any member of
the College may join. (Closed
communities exist primarily
to provide online work forums
for ACS leadership groups,
such as the Board of Governors
and the Advisory Councils.)
ACS Governor Tyler Hughes,
MD, FACS, serves as the Medical
Editor of ACS Communities.
The number of surgeons
who use ACS Communities has
increased, as well. In terms of
website pages viewed, number
of items recommended by
visitors, and unique contributors,
January was the biggest month
yet for the platform. The site
has already received more than
560,000 pages views since the
first community launched.
The substantial number of
posts by busy practicing surgeons
and leaders of the College
indicates that members have
much to discuss with each other.
Topics vary from case discussions
to Maintenance of Certification
to electronic medical records to
issues regarding the everyday
practice of surgery. Recent hot
topics include physician burnout
(multiple communities), contract
negotiation (Young Fellows),
axillary dissection (Breast
Surgery), career detours (Women
Surgeons), centers of excellence
and redo for anastomotic stricture
(Colon and Rectal Surgery), and
when to operate for chronic
abdominal pain (Rural Surgery).
To search for information on
any topic, simply log in to ACS
Communities and use the search
box on the home page. Results
can be sorted alphabetically,
by date, or by relevance.
TABLE 3.
10 HIGHEST-POSTING OPEN COMMUNITIES*
TABLE 2.
10 HIGHEST-POSTING
OPEN COMMUNITIES TO DATE
Open community
Number
of posts
to date
Number
of
members
General Surgery 2,618 27,780
Colon and Rectal Surgery 724 1,539
Rural Surgery 595 1,381
Breast Surgery 468 4,554
Women Surgeons 329 7,650
International Surgery 223 4,519
History of Surgery 217 498
Minimally Invasive Surgery 180 9,706
RAS-ACS 139 9,639
Pediatric Surgery 136 964