We've decided to start a new weekly post on our blog about technology or social media that pertains to the work we do at the Canadian Red Cross. The Red Cross is often called on to speak at conferences and share knowledge about our social media efforts, and this will be one way for us to share that knowledge more widely. 
I thought I would kick things off with info about a special CPR class we held last week for Twitter users. Quite simply, we invited Twitter users to come and learn CPR as part of CPR awareness month. Classes were organized in several cities across the country, including London ON, Richmond Hill ON, Halifax, Saint John's, Edmonton and Toronto. We choose communities where we know people are active on Twitter and where we have been able to engage with communities.
To alert people of the event we created a ‘twtvite,’ or a Twitter invitation to share through our social media networks. In Ontario, we had other Twitter friends support our efforts by co-hosting the events. This helps us get the word out further and reach new people that might not otherwise be aware of the CPR classes.
Overall, we had more than 50 people attend these classes and learn life-saving skills. I've taken other first-aid classes and the energy of these classes is quite different. 
People are there because they choose to be there and they get to meet other Twitter users. We also encourage them to tweet during classes so that the important safety messages they are learning can be shared with their followers. And tweet they did! In fact, our social media monitoring, Sysomos, picked up more than 1,000 mentions of the hashtag #redcrossCPR. When people were at the class, they added the hashtag to their tweets so that others could follow along.
The more people who are aware of CPR and why knowing it is important, the more people are likely to be trained -- and that is the ultimate goal, to help more people.
Thank you to everyone who attended this year’s class. Now, let’s hope you never have to use those life-saving skills!
If you are on Twitter, please do follow us at @redcrosscanada
Check out these other blog posts on the CPR Tweet-ups: