Winner: Baylor Scott & White Health - #HeartTXLive: First-ever Live Tweet of a Heart Transplant
Baylor Scott & White Health's corporate public relations and social team planned a live tweet of a heart transplant surgery, the first time a heart transplant would ever appear as it happens on social media channels, to bring attention to the transplant program at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas as well as share resources about organ donation with the large audience that would naturally follow an event like this live.
By leveraging real-time storytelling to depict a unique patient narrative from inside the operating room, the team expected to benefit from increased mentions on Twitter and convince members of the audience to volunteer to be organ donors. While other hospitals have performed live "Twitter surgeries," none had taken the risk of covering such a complicated procedure as a heart transplant—or an organ transplant from a deceased donor—live on social media.
During the surgery two social media team members and photographers stationed in the OR began posting photos, video, and tweets on Twitter to explain the events prior to the heart transplant surgery as well as what was happening live.
Additional social media team members stationed outside the OR acted as the command center hub for the event, engaging in real-time conversation, contacting healthcare influencers and media contacts, filtering questions and promoting supplemental resources about the heart transplant program. This team also cross-promoted the live tweets through Baylor Scott & White's Facebook, Google+ and Instagram accounts and had final say on what additional resources were shared that were previously gathered from the patient's family and from Baylor Scott & White's own online resources.
In total, 1.34 million people across the country saw the live tweets and watched the surgery unfold on Twitter during the five-day period surrounding the #HeartTXLive event. The @BaylorHealth Twitter account gained 252 new followers through the event. Following the #HeartTXLive event, there was a nearly 30% increase in organ donor registrations in the state of Texas, which was all attributed to the #HeartTXLive event.
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