How to keep #HospiceMonth alive all year long

National Hospice and Palliative Care month may be over, but the momentum generated from this year’s #HospiceMonth doesn’t have to end. All month long, the hospice and palliative care community has championed #HospiceAwareness embracing this year’s hospice month theme “It’s about how you live.” This celebration of hospice care was made “sharable” on several social media platforms and has created quite a ripple. This stream of information has encouraged people to learn more about the services provided by hospice and palliative care and for those who are unaware of the hospice philosophy to gain valuable understanding that may one day make an impact in their own lives.

Throughout the month of November, NHPCO shared posts intended to encourage everyone to learn more about the many benefits of hospice and palliative care fostering a deeper understanding of what it means to live despite facing a serious or life-limiting illness. We know many of you took part in this #HospiceMonth messaging and that you continue to spread awareness and understanding with your own creative content throughout the year. Your efforts make a difference and we thank you

I don’t know what Dame Cicely Saunders would have thought of Facebook, but for a woman who stopped at nothing to spread the philosophy of hospice and who found unprecedented means to open the first hospice, St. Christopher’s Hospice to the UK (celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year), I can only imagine Cicely Saunders would be delighted to see the pictures and information that has been shared on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, just to name a few. 

Social media has a reach in every city, state, and country in our world and we encourage you to keep the hashtags #Hospice, #PalliativeCare, #hpm in your posts. Here are a few tips that could also be  of help when creating shareable content for hospice and palliative care throughout the year:

• Concentrate on Increasing Daily Posts and Updates
  -  Ensuring that your posts and updates have a good chance to be seen by your target audience is an integral part of a content strategy.
• Share Content More Than Once
• Gain more traffic, reaching people in different time zones and sharing content with people who’ve followed you since your last post. 
• Keep an eye on NHPCO’s Caringinfo.org and MomentsOfLife.org for resources added throughout the year. 
• Create Google alerts for “hospice” and “palliative care.”
  -  Share news stories about the community that would be of interest to your followers.

We thank you for taking part in #HospiceMonth and for raising #HospiceAwareness. We hope you continue to add to the ‘wave’ you have created on social media!