aaron hughling online

My supervisor, Steve Widmann, and I had the pleasure recently to be interviewed for a For Immediate Release podcast interview with Shel Holtz.

The subject for the interview was the communication and social media efforts that went along with the recent Fort Hood tragedy.

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If you missed these when they came out, here are my most popular posts during 2009.

1. Getting Twitter Right - Detroit Medical Center
2. Blogging on Posterous - initial impressions
3. Transferring blog from WordPress to Posterous
4. Building Facebook pages for beginners
5. Google Voice Ins and Outs
6. Applying social media session summary
7. Meetup with Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic
8. Video Book Review: Groundswell
9. Social media presentation on Prezi
10. Before engaging in social media

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I was pleasantly surprised when For Immediate Release (one of the leading Public Relations and Communications podcasts) covered briefly how my department handled communications during the recent Fort Hood shooting tragedy back in the beginning of November.

Our mention is one of the first topics covered in this episode starting at about 6:45 into the podcast.

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There is no doubt that social media use is at an all-time high right now, but how long will this last?

In fact, Facebook just passed both the 350 million user mark and the highly coveted 100 million monthly unique visitors mark, and is now, the fourth most popular US web property. It's growth is amazing no doubt, but will this growth trend and the growth trend of all the social media properties continue or will they soon fade away?

I agree with Shel Holtz on this topic. The one-stop shop strategy for websites is going away. Your .com or .org site cannot be everything. You must immerse yourself out into where the conversations are happening and the activity is. Social media sites, like Facebook, are becoming so robust and integrated themselves, that many consumers don't even need to leave their social media site. Your information must get to these sites if you have plans of success, penetrating that barrier is a must.

No one knows in three years what the social media landscape will look like or what other tools will rise and fall by then. But the notion of the destination website as the solution isn't going to work any longer. You must find a way in.

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Have you seen the break up video? If you're in that painful place of trying to explain why social media can work for your company to your co-workers, it may aide in that discussion.

I'm sure countless others have already had their weigh-in with opinions on this video, but here goes mine.

The break up video is about the current evolution in the relationship between the advertiser and the consumer. It's not about social media directly, instead it gives of an insight as to how or why we're in this position as marketers. This position, which has paved the way for the success of companies of all scale and scope in social media, is bucking what we were all taught in school, what we pay lots of money for, and what has simply previously been believed to be success or at least standard operating procedure.

More often then not, it's younger versus older, it's your boss versus you, it's what you were taught versus what you believe, it's comfort versus change, it's packaged versus raw, it's about talking versus listening, it's about so many things. No wonder it takes companies so long to get there. It's a big can of worms getting into this new space opens.

But companies are doing it, how much longer can you wait? Don't you feel the clock ticking away?

First things first though, as with everything.

• Listen (aka..monitor) what's out there before diving in.
• Make a specific plan of attack for each platform you plan to pursue.
• Think through a strategy for the whole picture of what you want to accomplish with social media.
• Get your content in order prior to getting in.
• Have a vision and plan your path to get there. It won't happen overnight. Maintain that vision, but remain flexible with your path (it's not always a straight road).
• Do everything you can to earn and build trust with your employer. If they're writing your paycheck, then it's their rules, it will be pivotal though that they trust you in this new scary space.
• Don't make many decision alone, keep your team involved and aware (this builds trust) of what you're doing.
  

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It seems like it never fails anymore that when I go to a conference I scramble at the last minute to find some store that I can pick up a quick notebook to take notes. Even though I go through this process, I've also noticed how I don't use that notebook anymore. Everything I'm doing at these conferences, I don't need paper for.

So, I thought I'd share what I do.

It's really simple and easy.

First off, get an Evernote and Twitter account if you don't have these setup already. Evernote is a great tool to have, you can keep all kinds of notes and it stores it on one server that you can access in a variety of ways. There's the web version, desktop client and iPhone app you can keep.

So, here's what I do:

1. While the conference is happening I am taking notes in two places. Evernote and Twitter. I use the Twitter hashtag for the event to live-tweet great key notes from the speaker. I'm also doing this in my Evernote desktop client. I create a new note in there specific to this event so I can easily reference it later and keep it forever. I may use Evernote for longer notes that I write or important ideas from the speaker. And, it never fails, that hearing the speaker always makes me think of additional ideas I could be doing at work as well, I take all those notes in Evernote.
2. Usually, once I am then back from the conference, I write a blog post or two about the conference. Like I did for the last conference I was at, the Mayo-Ragan Healthcare conference. In order to write the blog posts, I then go back to both Evernote and Twitter, compile all the information, and violla, a new summarizing blog post that I'll of course then put on Twitter with the conference's hashtag to share.

Of course, I'd still recommend bringing a notepad for backup. Sometimes you can't get close enough to a plug to keep your laptop charged or something of that nature.

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In the first post of this series I explained how I recently went to the Mayo-Ragan Healthcare and Social Media Conference in Scottsdale, AZ. In continuing on, here are some of my other takeaways from that conference:

1. Blogs: Wonder how Mayo finds out from their patients all those great experiences that they blog about on their Sharing blog? They use a great technique which is to actual give patients that visit physicians for appointments a special card that invites them to visit the blog and contact them to share their story.
2. Blogs: Another great tip from Mayo. Setup a blog that is set to private. Keep it ready to go live in case an emergency happens.
   
3. Social Media: Do you find yourself working for a company (like so many of us) that blocks social media sites from its employees? Visit StopBlocking.org to learn more about this and start getting the ammo you need to combat your company's restrictive policies.
4. Resources: Two more tools out there for you to share documents with others....Slideshare.net for powerpoints and Scribd.com for documents.
5. Resources: Try using Audible.com for audiobooks. There's lots out there to learn and listening instead of reading really helps with time management.
6. Resources: Use DropBox for free online storage of your video or audio files. Under 2 GB is free on this site.
   
7. Podcasts: For iPhone users only...try using Audioboo and iTalk. Audioboo is free and iTalk has a free and fee version. The speaker on the iPhone is great and so easy to use with these apps.
8. YouTube: Check out the When I Grow Up video from Kaiser Permanente. Great video, this had the room cheering.
9. Social Networks: Kaiser Permanente showed off their amazing internal social network that has been very well received. They used Jive Software to create this.
   

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I just attended the Mayo-Ragan Communications conference at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ. A great conference with great information. Over 100 folks were in attendance and all in similar situations with their respective healthcare systems. Mostly all Marketing, Public Relations or web healthcare people there.

Some key notes I took vary in range from specific social media tools, ideas for those tools or notes in general:

1. YouTube: With keeping regular updates to your YouTube channel usually being a challenge, how about start getting physicians to talk about whatever the theme of the month is for healthcare. Example...this month is Breast Cancer Awareness month, get a doctor to explain some things about breast cancer and mention the services you have available.
2. YouTube: Ensure all your videos you place on YouTube have branding information placed on the video itself. Since someone can use YouTube to embed your video anywhere, it may not always be in context, this at least ensures your brand is staying with the video.
3. YouTube: Check out Henry Ford's YouTube channel, a great one to model yours after.
4. Monitoring: Check out Glassdoor. See what employees are saying about your company.
5. Monitoring: Sites like Vitals do exist, where patients can rate your doctors on their experience with them. These types of sites will only gain in popularity.
6. Podcasts: Check and use iTunes University. MD Anderson has done alot with this.
7. Podcasts: They are not dead as some have claimed, in fact, there are more than 3x the number of podcasts hosted by iTunes then the number of radio stations out there (over 100K).
8. Podcasts: Having podcasts without the blog or way of establishing community is not social media.
   
9. Blogs: There are other lifeforms for this other then the WordPress blogging platform, even though it dominates the market. MD Anderson uses Moveable Type for their internal blogs.
10. For physicians: Promote social media internally to your doctors. One way for them to see the benefit if they are unfamiliar with the tools out there is Sermo, an online community espcially built for physicians.
11. Flickr: For any site that you use to share images, be sure and use the Creative Commons licensing, images you are trying to share should not have "All Rights Reserved".

See also the second post in this series.

                   

Click here to download:

Some_takeaways_from_Mayo_-_Rag.zip (818 KB)

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A few weeks ago I gave a presentation where I work about our beginning steps into the social media space. A piece I was intentionally trying to stress was for everyone to start learning how to integrate social media into what they are already doing or what they will do in the future.

You can view the presentation from this link: http://prezi.com/xltx7y9yflfy/

*Note this presentation and written post have changed since originally authored.

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Last week I had the opportunity to meet with Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic. He was gracious enough to see me at the last minute and it was great to finally meet him.

I've been following and conversing with Lee for some time now via email and Twitter. Lee heads up social media efforts for the Mayo Clinic and also manages a great blog called Social Media University, Global on which he educates on proper usage for many different social media tools.

     

Click here to download:

Meetup_with_Lee_Aase_of_Mayo_C.zip (2242 KB)

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