Using Social Media for Men's Health Week

To encourage people to your event & raise awareness of male health, generating publicity is vital. Social media can be a great tool in achieving this.

For advice about dealing with conventional media, see our Press page.

Social networks have become an essential media to leverage for promoting any event or initiative. Free and simple to use, they allow information to be shared quickly with a large number of people, with regular updates, posts and news.

Creating engaging content is essential for getting others to share and start talking about men's health issues and your event. Photos and videos are particularly useful – try to take as many as possible of your work and at the event. Ensuring regular updates is also key, maintaining a presence in the run-up to Men’s Health Week, reminding people of the key issues, and what you’ll be doing.

If your organisation has someone responsible for social media ask them to Like us on Facebook and Follow @MensHealthForum

Facebook

Facebook is particularly useful for accessing local networks. Try and connect with local groups and organisations, letting them know what you’re doing and why.

Creating an event on Facebook allows people to check information, and lets people RSVP. You can also message all those who have clicked ‘attending’, providing last - minute updates or important news.

You can also run polls or ask questions for people to comment on, allowing public interaction.

Twitter

‘Live-tweeting’ an event - posting regular updates, such as quotations from speakers or photos of what’s going on is particularly useful in generating coverage and raising awareness.

Twitter can also be used to invite questions and opinions from the public, or even holding a question and answer session. Inviting public discussion helps gets people thinking about men’s health, and widens the event’s outreach beyond those attending.

Be sure to use the hashtag #MHW15 throughout, which means your event will be linked to the national coverage. We will also be tweeting at @MensHealthForum - be sure to follow us for national updates and examples of actions across the country.

Follow @MensHealthForum

YouTube

Creating an account on YouTube can help to keep all the videos, promotional and from the event itself, in one easily accessible location. It is also possible to embed videos from YouTube on blog posts and websites.

Men’s Health Forum

Would you like to be part of our national coverage in the run-up to Men’s Health Week? If so, contact us and tell us a little about the activities that you are planning to run.

During and after Men’s Health Week, we’d love for you to send us your photos, updates and clippings either at mhw@menshealthforum.org.uk or on Twitter @MensHealthForum and use the hashtag #MHW15

Don't forget to check out our Press page for advice on dealing with newspapers and traditional media.

If you have any further questions feel free to contact our knowledgeable public relations staff here at the Men’s Health Forum. Our main contact is Colin Penning.

The Men’s Health Forum need your support

It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking.

In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to.

It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for.

We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing.

Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.