Author: Lee Aase

Husband of one, father of six, grandfather of 15. Chancellor Emeritus, SMUG. Emeritus staff of Mayo Clinic. Founder of HELPcare and Administrator for HELPcare Clinic.

SMUG Extension Class in Green Bay

I’m on Packerland Drive in Green Bay at the corporate headquarters of Schneider National, a transportation firm with lots of orange trucks, for the monthly meeting of the NE Wisconsin chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

Here are the slides I used for my presentation, which was entitled Not Your Father’s Media (Yet).


Here are five immediate steps the PRSA members can take to dive into social media:

  1. Comment on the presentation in the post below, and ask any questions we didn’t get to cover.
  2. Join Facebook and “friend” me.
  3. Sign up for Twitter and “follow” me.
  4. Sign up for Google Reader, take the tour, and subscribe to some RSS feeds (including SMUG’s). If you want it by old-fashioned e-mail, get that here.
  5. Enroll in SMUG by joining the Facebook group.

This should all maybe take another 30 minutes or so to get started, but it hopefully will launch you on a lifetime of social media exploration.

Skype Videoconference Tutoring

I first experimented with Skype when I stayed at a hotel in central Wisconsin in which there was no cell phone reception. It was a great way to avoid the obscene per-minute charges for the hotel’s phone service.

I haven’t really needed it since then. Until today, when I wanted to set up a videoconference for tomorrow. We have a videoconferencing unit at work, and when I called an external collaborator to get the IP address for her videoconferencing service, she replied, “We just always use Skype.”

While we were still on the phone, I downloaded Skype on my (relatively) new MacBook Pro and signed in using my previously established account. Within a minute or so I got a message telling me that videoconferencing was enabled using my built-in iSight camera. A few seconds later we were talking face-to-face.

My main point in writing this post is to call your attention to Skype if you haven’t used it previously. I expect to be using it all day tomorrow for a videoconference (which will be free, like everything else you see here.) And when my daughter and her husband move to California next year with our first grandchild (who’s due in September), I’m sure we’ll be videoconferencing regularly.

But meanwhile, if you’re a SMUG student and would like to have a “Chat with the Chancellor” for some videoconference tutoring, send me an e-mail (leeaase at gmail.com) and we can arrange virtual office hours.

Welcome Frost & Sullivan eBulletin Readers

A few weeks ago I got a Facebook message from Caryn Brown from Frost & Sullivan, saying that she wanted to feature my blog as a “Recommended Read” in the eBulletin, a quarterly electronic publication for past participants in Sales and Marketing: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. (I guess they ordinarily feature a book in this section.) I asked Caryn to let me know when the eBulletin would be distributed, so I could welcome you properly and share links to some of the posts I’ve done about Frost & Sullivan events. She kindly obliged, so here’s a quick intro to Social Media University, Global — or SMUG.

SMUG is the University of Phoenix without the football stadium…or the tuition…or the accreditation. It’s a place for lifelong learners to get hands-on experience with social media tools, which are changing the way people communicate.

With well over 100 million blogs and upwards of 68 million active users of Facebook, I’ve said previously that for PR professionals, unfamiliarity with these tools borders on malpractice. The same is true for those involved in sales and marketing.

Especially when you can learn about them for free!

Continue reading “Welcome Frost & Sullivan eBulletin Readers”

Twitter 101: Intro to Twitter

I’ve written previously about some possible practical uses for Twitter (here and here), but if you you need some basics on the idea behind Twitter, there’s no one better than Lee LeFever to put it in plain English:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o]

Update: Check out Twitter 140 for a helpful further explanation.

Homework Assignments:

This is just the 101 class, so the homework is limited:

  1. Sign up for Twitter.
  2. Follow me (I’ll follow you back).

Business Blogging Capstone Project

Yesterday was a big day blogging for me…not with SMUG, but on a work-related blog.

brokawpicture.jpg

Tom Brokaw was the keynote speaker and moderator for the opening session of the Mayo Clinic National Symposium on Health Care Reform. I hope SMUG students will check out Mayo Clinic’s Health Policy Blog, which I’ve been using to capture the essence of the symposium proceedings and to help extend the conversation both geographically and temporally.

This is the equivalent of a capstone project, enabling me to apply for a business purpose the things I’ve been learning through my personal blogging. It’s been an interesting experience, and I’d appreciate any comments or suggestions here on ways I can improve what I’ve been doing there.