The ACD and Social Media: Beyond

Suzan Pitman ACD Operations Director

A page from our first website, launched by Dr. Stephen Ralls in 1997.

The College’s online presence was established by Dr. Stephen Ralls, former Executive Director and Past President, when he created our first website in 1997. Dr. Ralls started mocking up a website for the ACD before he began his official tenure in March of that year. His swift action was prescient in that he recognized early how essential electronic communication could become. Twenty-five years later, social media has taken digital communication further than even Dr. Ralls imagined and can be broadly defined as “creating and sharing user-generated content.”1

Over the years, the College added Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube accounts, and the capability of the website grew. By 2016, it was clear that technology had caught up with the original website, and Dr. Ralls and the staff began working on a transition to an updated site. The new site launched in 2018, followed by an updated learning management system at www. dentalethics.org. In mid-2020, a new membership platform was introduced with several communications functions that have been valuable for increasing the information flow to and from Fellows. The College is poised to update our sites once again, allowing for additional functionality and a cleaner, more intuitive design with the guidance of graphic artist, Matthew Sheriff.

The ACD’s first Instagram post in 2018 featured then-President Dick Stilwill, in the middle of an intense bocce game with SPEA Founder Mike Meru, and SPEA National Leaders Judy Naziri and Andrea Fenton.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a short delay in the launch of the new ACD membership platform, but the team was able to successfully stand up the new program from a staff member’s garage during quarantine in June of 2020. Collaborative technology gave the staff the tools required not just to maintain routine tasks, but to make progress on behalf of the Fellowship during a time of adversity.

Over the last 18 months, the College has been able to use its membership platform to send timely and relevant communications to the Fellowship.

Spring 2022 vol. 89 | no. 1

eJACD

The Official Journal of the American College of Dentists

Social Media and Dentistry

acd.org

Online meeting platforms helped keep us connected during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing Fellows and Friends of the College to learn, meet, laugh, and advance the mission together.

Recently, the Journal moved online and became the eJACD. Led by Editor Nanette Elster, this is a sustainable practice that comports with our mission and gives greater access to more people within the profession. The current issue, guest edited by SPEA National Co-director Erik Klintmalm, is a timely collection of articles on social media in dentistry. You can read it at https://tinyurl.com/acdpubs.

Using multiple social media accounts and online media platforms allows the College to meet a broader audience and moves the message of our mission outside the narrow lanes of membership and pre-electronic media. While there is no substitute for face-to-face human interaction, our time online can bring more of us together from farther away, encouraging organizational connections to grow and strengthen.

How do you interact with the ACD online?

Take the ACD social media and digital communication survey.

1. Aichner, Thomas et al. “Twenty-Five Years of Social Media: A Review of Social Media Applications and Definitions from 1994 to 2019.” Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking vol. 24,4 (2021): 215-222. doi:10.1089/ cyber.2020.0134