Month: June 2008

Mayo Clinic YouTube Channel in the News

The Rochester (Minn.) Post-Bulletin has an article in today’s paper about Mayo Clinic’s new YouTube channel.

Here’s a snippet in which I’m quoted:

“A recently published study indicated that about 37 percent of all videos viewed online are seen through YouTube,” Aase said. “We need to put Mayo Clinic video where people can find it instead of just expecting them to come to our Web sites. But the YouTube channel does have a link to mayoclinic.org, and through that to other Mayo sites, so sharing in this way should lead to more traffic.”

The story also includes links to our Mayo Clinic “fan” page in Facebook and our podcast blog, which is a new and better way of organizing and delivering the podcasts we’ve been producing. And here’s a finishing quote that sums up the reasons behind our social media efforts:

“We think we will build awareness of Mayo by ‘word of mouse’ in the 21st century, much as word of mouth was chiefly responsible for building Mayo’s reputation in the 20th century,” he said.

I believe the article will disappear behind the Post-Bulletin‘s pay wall in a week, so if you want to read it, click here before 6/24/08.

Facebook Friend Rules

I suppose I have brought this on myself (or maybe that’s just a blame-the-victim mentality), but some recent developments have led me to establish some new rules for accepting Facebook friend requests.

I have previously encouraged any SMUG students or even casual readers to add me as a Facebook friend. I still hope you will. The fact that you’re here suggests that Google thought you might find this content interesting and relevant, and that you took Google’s recommendation. We should be friends, even if we haven’t yet met.

But in the last month or two I’ve had an alarming increase in friend requests from people who seem to think Facebook is the next Amway, and who want to use it mainly as a tool for multi-level marketing.

Getting away from spam (the electronic kind, not the trademarked kind that is made in my home town, and which saved Western civilization during World War II) is a major part of Facebook’s appeal. I don’t want to be bombarded with get-rich-quick schemes.

Lately, I’ve had too many scenarios like this, which started last night:

11:09 p.m. on 6/14/08 – I accept a friend request from Jan Cheung

Within a few hours I had received this (click to enlarge):

And very shortly after that I received these two group invitations:

Jan’s not the only one who’s done this, but this was the proverbial straw.

So he’s not my friend any more. Not in Facebook, and after this post, likely not elsewhere either.

And I’ve developed some new rules for Facebook friend requests. I’ve had other people whom I have accepted as friends send friend requests to my kids, who thought they should add people because I did.

So here are my new rules, which are less strict than Facebook would suggest, but yet leave room open for connecting with people who have a common interest in learning about social media, not just using people as leverage points.

  1. Send me a message with your friend request. Give me some sense that you’ve read one or more of my blog posts, and that you added me in Facebook from here instead of from someone else’s list of friends. If you say something about SMUG, I’ll know you weren’t just cruising people’s friend lists and adding people in alphabetical order.
  2. Don’t spam me. If you send me a message inviting me to join a group within 24 hours of becoming my friend, or make me one of 8-10 recipients of one of your messages, I will “unfriend” and block (and perhaps report) you.

If you’re reading this post, you’re exactly the kind of person with whom I want to be friends. But for those who add me because I’m first in alphabetical order in all my friends’ lists as you cruise Facebook, they’ll be ignored.

Are you having a problem with friend spam, or is this just among the cons (there are many pros) of having a surname like Aase?

Blog Council Dinner in Chicago

Last night I made it back from Galena, IL, where I spoke to the ILCMA group about blogs and social media (and also played my first 9 holes of golf in a couple of years and achieved a par on the second hole, as verified by this video.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbzaLk9eM8o]

Continue reading “Blog Council Dinner in Chicago”

Blogs in City and County Government

At the ALI Social Media Summit, we heard from Jeremy Lasich, the Deputy Director for Communications for Fairfax County, VA.

This was especially timely for me, since I am presenting Wednesday at the Illinois City/County Management Association’s Summer conference, at a pre-conference workshop entitled: “Everything Local Government Officials Need to Know about Blogs and Social Media.”

One of the stories Jeremy shared was about the wife of a Fairfax County school administrator ranted at a student who had called her husband at home complaining about his decision not to call a “snow day.” That story got widespread attention in the blogs, and also significant news media attention, including from ABC News on its World News webcast and from Good Morning America, along with the Washington Post.

Fairfax County has a Facebook group, a MySpace page and a YouTube channel.

I asked Jeremy to share some thoughts for the ICLMA group, and here’s what he had to say:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIr8V0Y4Lxw]

Two issues they have so far:

  • Their IT department won’t let most county employees access these sites from their work computers.
  • Their legal department has not allowed public comments on these sites because of First Amendment issues, that if these are “official” government sites they could get in trouble if they censor or delete any comments. This doesn’t seem to be a permanent policy, but the County Attorney is at least concerned enough about it that they haven’t turned on the commenting features on these official social media sites.

At the ALI conference on Wednesday they also will be hearing from Mayor Bill Gentes of Round Lake, IL. Bill’s blog is another one the ILCMA will find interesting. I heard Bill speak just over a year ago at another ALI conference, and he was quite enthusiastic about the benefits that had come from his blogging. His blog and the story behind it is among those featured in this American City & County article.

Here is a blog from the Rockford, Mich. City Manager, and here’s an article from the Boston Globe about city government blogs. That article points out some mayoral blogs that have gone to seed, with no posts in several months. One key point to remember if you’re planning to start a blog is that most of them that fail don’t do so because of some controversy that caused them to be pulled down, but rather from slowly withering away from neglect.

I think combining a YouTube channel with a blog is a great way to make blogs both easier to maintain and more authentic. When you see someone talking on a video blog, and you can see that he or she clearly isn’t reading but is instead talking from the heart, it’s a great way to avoid being flogged for running a ghost-written flog.

I will update this post later to include my slides.

Meanwhile, if anyone has questions about local government and social media, please add them in the comments, and we will discuss them during the presentation and beyond.

This is a post I did as part of a SMUG Extension Class.

Update: Here are the slides from yesterday’s presentation.


ALI Social Media Summit Highlights

Today I attended the Advanced Learning Institute’s Social Media Summit at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, and presented a case study on our social media efforts at Mayo Clinic.

Chairman Michael Rudnick gave a good overview, Andy Sernovitz of GasPedal did his usual great presentation, and we also heard from Patty Crowley of Johnson & Johnson on the new intranet portal J&J has launched for its IT employees, and from Jeremy Lasich, the Deputy Director for Communications Fairfax County, Virginia. I will have a follow-up post about Jeremy’s experience, since it will be highly relevant for the group for which I am presenting a workshop tomorrow.

I had lunch with a few of the ALI participants, and Jorge from HEB said my demonstration of the Flip video camera was his most important take-away so far:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kpZ8HWh3RY]

And just after he said that, one of our lunchmates shared her family’s Mayo Clinic story. I won’t use her name, since this story is about her Mom’s experience with Mayo Clinic (and she corrected herself afterward that the problem was carbon monoxide, not dioxide):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZEMRPrV28s]

This all just goes to show both the power of sharing personal stories and how quick and convenient the Flip video camera is. Editing the clips was really simple, and took just a couple of minutes.

As Andy Sernovitz says, in word of mouth marketing you first need to give people something to talk about, and then make it easy for them to share. Clearly the Flip camera and YouTube are tools that make sharing easier.