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.

Public Affairs Council State-Local Government Relations Seminar

I’m doing a presentation this afternoon in Alexandria, Virginia at the Public Affairs Council State and Local Government Relations seminar.

I’ve embedded the slides below (sans video), so the participants don’t need to try to take notes on 110 slides flying by them at 33 seconds each.

I welcome any questions or comments here or on Twitter. You may tweet me using my @LeeAase username, or simply use the #PAC09 hashtag.

Public Affairs Council Social Media Presentation

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I hope this helps public affairs professionals get a glimpse of how they can use social media to involve members of their organizations.

Taking the Dutch Health 2.0 Challenge

I’m looking forward to my first trip to Europe in about 10 days, where I have been asked to speak at REshape 2009, the second Health 2.0 conference and the first international E-Mental Health summit.

The organizers of these conferences have set up an interesting contest, called the Dutch Open Health 2.0 Challenge, that will run during that week, from Oct. 12 to 15, with winners announced Oct. 16. They have a catchy video to introduce it:

This is one of those “need not be present to win” contests. I’m helping to organize a Mayo team, and looking forward to getting the full details on Oct. 12. Meanwhile, check out the challenge and consider entering a team of your own!

A Taste of the Tools that are Changing the World

This is my presentation today at the Rochester, Minn. Thursday Noon Rotary Club.

Social Media 101: A Taste of the Tools that are Changing the World

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I was asked to provide a 101 course in Social Media in 20 minutes. It’s a nice opportunity to develop an overview presentation that is a more concise version of what I typically do. And I’ve got a little surprise in store that doesn’t show up in the slides. I’ll update with that later.

My aim for the presentation is to help the participants see the power and potential of social media, but also to remove some of the mystery so they will be encouraged to try these tools personally.

How did I do?

Update: Here’s a photo someone sent me during the presentation (click photo to enlarge):

Rotary talk photo

And the little surprise was a live Skype video conference with my daughter, Rachel, and granddaughter, Evelyn. Instead of just talking about how Skype offers Jetsons-like functionality, I decided to demonstrate.

Mayo Clinic Social Media Update

I’m making a several presentations over the next week, and delivering variations of what you see embedded below. I prefer to not distribute the slides in advance as handouts, so that people aren’t distracted and reading ahead, and so we can all literally be on the same page as we have a conversation.

I also don’t want to have people thinking they need to feverishly take notes, so it’s helpful to be able to tell people just to sit back, relax and discuss, knowing that they can go back and refer to the slides online later.

My presentations vary somewhat by audience, depending on whether I need to introduce the social media tools (and how much time I have been allotted), so what you see below is the “full meal deal.”

Mayo Clinic Social Media Update

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Here are links to some of the Mayo Clinic social media sites I will be mentioning. I invite you to check them out:

I welcome any questions or comments from any of the presentations here, or feel free to tweet them to me (@LeeAase). The great thing about having that conversation in public is that it’s not just one-on-one; on a blog (or on the really small blog called Twitter) others can learn from the discussion, too. But even more importantly, they can contribute their thoughts…so we’re all richer for having brought in diverse experiences and perspectives.

This also is helpful so I can take a snapshot of where we are in our implementation of social media at Mayo Clinic as of September, 2009.

RAQ: Do You Need to Be Unique to Profit from Social Media?

At the FUEL social media meeting in Rochester, someone asked:

Don’t you really have to be special or unique to gain from social media? I mean, if there are 200,000 T-shirt vendors on Twitter, aren’t you going to waste a lot of time trying to get noticed? What if there is nothing that really sets you apart from others. Aren’t you going to be lost in the crowd, spending a lot of time for no gain?

Given that this presentation was in early July, I guess this question no longer fits the recency criterion for an RAQ, but I think it’s still a valid question to discuss. It also reminds me of something in the printed materials my son got when starting high school. It said something like, “You’re unique, just like everyone else,” which struck him as extremely funny.

It’s a reasonable question to ask, whether you have to be a major brand like Mayo Clinic or Dell to derive value from social media. And obviously an organization like Mayo Clinic has some significant advantages, such as passionate patients and employees and a history of making its reputation through word-of-mouth.

But as we heard from Tom Vanderwell yesterday, there’s plenty of opportunity for people to derive significant benefit from being engaged in social media, even if you’re selling something that is a commodity. After all, many people are just going to shop for the best interest rates online, and a loan is a loan is a loan. Through his blog, Tom has set himself apart from many of his local peers, and also has joined a network of national professionals involved in real estate and mortgages. Because others have come to know him through blogging, Facebook and Twitter, they trust him. And he’s getting business because of it.

So does that mean there is unlimited potential for all of the other mortgage lenders in western Michigan to profit similarly from social media? Nope. There will be some room for others, but they will need to establish “tweet cred.” And the community will pretty quickly sniff out those who are just into social media as a “quick buck” tactic. Social media make it free to communicate, but they also provide mechanisms for people to fight back against those who pollute the digital commons and don’t contribute meaningfully.

If you have a passion for a subject area (like Tom does with mortgages) and want to communicate about it in a way that helps others, you’ll probably do well with it. You don’t have to necessarily be unique; in fact, it helps to have at least a few others in your digital community so you can build off each other’s contributions.

And like Tom Vanderwell, you should think about how the advent of free and easy digital communications can help you conceive your business in a way that transcends geographic limitations.