Social Media for Personal Branding: Three Questions To Be Answered

A Globe of Social Media 

As I am a physician who decided to be a qualitician believing that treating healthcare systems is as important as treating individual patients, I am trying to build my personal brand as an expert, a consultant, a researcher and a lecturer in the field of healthcare quality management and to be more specific in the domains of quality improvement, patient safety and healthcare accreditation. This is very clear even for the title of my blog (The qualitician) Although the journey seems to be highly demanding but in the same time it is highly rewarding. The start is to answer three main questions which are what to use?Whom to address? and finally How to build an effective blog?

What to use?

I decided to use Twitter, LinkedIn and Google plus to build my personal brand as these social media enable me to have a strong professional network, to express freely my thoughts and ideas and to market my personal brand to the main audience I want to target. Also using those social media simultaneously will augment the impact and maximize the benefits as they address different groups and have different features like short updates in twitter, writing free texts in Google blogs or displaying fully detailed CV in LinkedIn.

Whom to address?

My main target is healthcare leaders which includes various groups like hospital managers, accreditation consultants, quality professionals, researchers and professors. I try to have good contacts with key organizations in healthcare quality like hospitals, research centers. universities, accreditation bodies and consultancy agencies.

How to build the blog?

My blog is using very simple design with warm colors like orange as a background and clear font with a black color to increase clarity. There is one column for posts to avoid any distraction of the readers. Minimal decorations are used so that readers can focus more on the contents published. All posts  will be published with relevant photos or videos to be more attractive or understandable. Regularly a video of high quality related to quality improvement, patient safety, health literacy and healthcare accreditation standards will be published in the blog. Relevant quotes related to quality, leadership, motivation, teamwork and other management concepts or affairs will be posted regularly.

I hope that by deciding what to use, determining whom to address and building an effective blog I will able to establish my personal brand by the end of 2015 as a qualitician and to have a strong professional and social networking.

The Qualitician: A Carefully Crafted Title

 As mentioned in the blog description, I am Mahmoud, an Egyptian physician who decided to be a qualitician believing that treating ill healthcare systems is as important as treating sick individual patients.

My journey with quality started in 2008 by my decision to take a higher diploma in TQM from the AUC after working as a practicing physician for 5 years and this was really a turn point in my life. I started to understand why all of us suffer with our healthcare systems, why all stakeholders are unsatisfied with the outcome and how we can change this. For all these question, the answer was clear and straightforward " The System". We spent too much time, effort and resources focusing on individual cases, individual care givers, individual healthcare settings without seeing the underlying systems which at the end have the final say because "Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets," as said by Deming one of the most influential quality gurus. 

I became fascinated by the quality realm and its amazing world full of everything I love opportunities, challenges, achievements, innovation and teamwork. I realized that I found the field where I can pursue my values and use all my competences, skills and capabilities to create a difference.
The journey started but has never ended as quality is an endless race and there is always a big room for improvement. I became a CPHQ after passing its exam in 2010 then I started in 2012 my MBA from Leicester University in UK with specialization in Quality Management and a dissertation about Lean Six Sigma in Healthcare expected to finish it by next year 2015. Working in Egypt with different organizations then moving to Saudi Arabia to join a highly reputable healthcare organization enriched my experience and made me more ambitious to go far in my career as a qualitician. 

I asked myself all the time why other professions have clear titles easily understood by everyone like pharmacist, accountant, dentist, teacher, writer, journalist ...etc and even among physicians we have internists, neurologists, pathologists, epidemiologists, pediatricians and orthopedists .....etc while quality professionals remain with no unique or specific title originating from their field still seen by many people as ill-defined territory. I still face the same comment or question raised by many colleagues, friends or relatives or at least appear in their eyes when I speak with them about my field. What do you do exactly? what you mean by quality specialist or professional?Is it a genuine scientific field? Now with more knowledge and experience and the most important with more passion for this charming field, it is very clear for me : I want to be a qualitician, I love this and I believe in it.
The Qualitician is a highly crafted title trying to mimic three words mainly politician, statistician and musician. I believe that any qualitician should be excellent as a politician not only to mange change, overcome resistance and resolve conflicts to achieve the objective but also to inspire people to make them motivated and committed to quality. Statistics and how to collect, validate, analyze and interpret data remains one of the most important skills mastered by any qualitician. I believe also that quality is an art like music and the qualitician needs a real passion to perform as the maestro orchestrating the team efforts to work in harmony. 

The Qualitician aims to build a strong networking in the field of healthcare quality attracting all existing or potential qualiticians to create their own realm and to craft their own profession. The Qualitician will highlight tips, give hints and discuss issues important for any qualitician. If you are or interested to be a qualitician, if you are concerned with healthcare quality and want to find a place to get support, to gain knowledge,  to raise concerns, to discuss dilemmas or to share your insights and experiences with other qualiticians, here is your right place as you are always welcome.