What other communication venues should we be connected to?

[Clark]

  LDO! has existed as a web site for more than 16 years. Our Facebook group and page, and the LinkedIn group, have both existed for nearly 10 years. All require active curation, the former a lot more than the website or LinkedIn. Are there others we should join that would better serve our mission, education and support, and worldwide intended audience, living organ donors, prospective organ donors, their families, friends, transplantation professionals, the media, and the general public? What is your go to medium?


  Even I find myself going more frequently and regularly to our Facebook site, despite its relative shallowness to our website. Despite the extra time such expansion would take, are there groups or places we could serve better?

[Orchidlady]

I go to the Facebook page, but do prefer this medium rather than Facebook. I am not sure that another website or forum is the answer. Rather I wonder if there is active "advertising" of the site(s) with other organizations such as Gift of Hope, NKF etc. I believe it people are made aware the sites are out there, they will be more likely to visit to participate and to garner information.

[CK]

I prefer this site to the Facebook site as well - "shallowness" is a good term for the difference in the two sites.  Plus the Facebook site has a few very bitter and (in my opinion) misinformed people who make every attempt to frighten potential donors with less than accurate information, and I find myself frustrated with them.

I'm not sure where else would be better though, or how to get this site more active.

[Michael]

I've been thinking about your question and the only other popular social media sites that come to mind are things like Instagram and Snapchat. I figure we could post there periodically and the purpose would be to promote the web site and Facebook group. Neither Instagram nor Snapchat seem conducive to sharing information, but they could be used for promotional purposes.

As for promoting the site, that was something I did regularly in the early days - 15+ years ago when we just started. I'd post on other message boards and encourage people to visit. That worked at the time. It's a much different world now! Anyway, I'm interested in promoting the site more but haven't done it lately because we're still working through the challenges of transitioning the site to Wordpress so it's mobile friendly. (Not being mobile friendly has hurt us in Google rankings.) Maybe once we've ironed out the wrinkles here and can be prepared for an uptick in visitors (assuming we're successful), I see us promoting the site more, maybe even buying ads on Google.

Let me add that, even with the shift of most of the message traffic to the Facebook group, I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of visitors we still have to this message board. You can gauge that by looking at the number of views the posts have.

John, thanks for your efforts to keep us contemporary!

[Fr Pat]

     When I go to the "Transplant Games" every 2 years there are always a good number of medical professionals there (doctors, nurses, administrators, etc.) as well who work with living transplants. I have often been surprised that so many of them had no knowledge that LivingDonorsonLine even existed, so of course they could not suggest it to others. I was just wondering if some way could be found to get some little mention of our group in professional medical journals that specialists read, or at their conventions and meetings?