Lawrence & Memorial Pairs Facebook Page With Fundraising Effort

In some of its advertisements put out this month, jokes, “While most people are searching for love this month, we’re just happy to be liked.”

The effort is part of the hospital’s promotion for its Facebook page, which went live on Feb. 1. In the early stage, the hospital is putting those thumbs-up to good use. For every person who likes the page, the Lawrence & Memorial Benefactors Society will contribute $1 to support programs benefiting newborns and other children under the hospitals care. The group will match up to $1,500, and the effort was fast approaching that number; on Friday afternoon, the hospital had 1,173 fans on Facebook.

Michael O’Farrell, director of public relations at the hospital, said the Facebook page and a Twitter page (lmhospital) were launched as part of an effort to tap into social media networks. He said about 26 percent of fans are ages 35 to 44, followed by 21 percent ages 45 to 54 and 20 percent ages 25 to 34.

“The impetus was really to get into the social media world, and realizing that so many people are communicating and getting their information that way,” he said.

O’Farrell said the sites were promoted through an internal newsletter and spread by word of mouth afterward. He said the sites will be used to post news about the hospital and the medical update, as well as more lighthearted updates. He said a group photo of the labor and delivery staff drew about 20 comments.

“We got a lot of great engagement from a very simple post,” he said.

O’Farrell said he is posting one to two updates a day, and that the hospital may expand to the photo sharing network Flickr and video sharing site YouTube in the future.