Our organization has been in an unusual position since Hurricane Ike slammed us a week and some change ago. Houston is just now reverting to normalcy... though a complete recovery is months away, if at all possible. The Blood Center shut down its operations for four days in response to Ike and began collecting again last Tuesday, calling for the public to give blood and replenish the supply.

In times like this a fair amount of public education always is necessary. We're not calling for additional blood donations because the need has increased tremendously due to injuries and such. Our medical director - who has been a fantastic spokesperson to various media outlets this past week - perhaps said it best: "People don't stop getting sick because there's a hurricane." In other words, the need is as great as it always is; only difference is, we now have four days of missed collections to make up.

As I've written here before, we are social media newbies. We've begun using Twitter (@commitforlife) a bit more frequently, and we've shared photos on our flickr page with a few reporters thus far. So what better time than the days after Ike to begin exploring these tools further and seeing how far our network reaches?

I wish I could say our social media efforts yielded a tremendous response from blood donors. True, we did have outstanding collections in the days after we reopened, but that's due more to the traditional media coverage we received and people's general desire to help out in times of crisis. We did begin to make a mark using social media, however.

Houstonist, a Web site in the Gothamist family, published photos from our flickr page (which I had submitted to their group pool) along with information on our blood needs after Ike, then followed up the next day with a second story.

I personally connected with some potential blood donors via my own network, whom I recruited to follow The Blood Center on Twitter and on our newly created facebook page. One of them is even bringing his mom to donate next week.

Twitter (which I love, in case you can't tell) also granted us access to a couple of traditional media outlets that are using the tool, both of which retweeted our information and blogged about our needs in their hurricane coverage.

 What I have gleaned from our social media efforts this past week is the major emphasis on the "social" part. Those donors on Twitter had questions about blood donations that they might not have asked had they not had immediate access to someone who could help answer them, and therefore might not be as likely to donate.

There are more good things coming down the pipeline, including a blood drive tweetup in just a little over two weeks. I know it's hard to brag about an event that hasn't actually happened yet, but the fact that it is happening at all is enough for me at this early stage.