Author: Lee Aase

SMUG Changing Lives…

…or at least one life. After the presentation I did Thursday in Minneapolis for Aging Services of Minnesota, Kris Glaros Hanson came up to me and said that my presentation to the group last September had significantly changed her career plans. I asked if she’d be willing to tell about it on camera, so here is her story:

I look forward to seeing how Kris puts her SMUG training to work on the site she will be launching, theseniorconnections.com.

If you’d like to share your SMUG experience, either your thoughts about one of my presentations or the online curriculum, please do so in the comments below. If you’d like to write a recommendation for my on LinkedIn instead, that would be great too. Here is my public profile.

And of course I welcome your constructive suggestions for improvement, too.

Facebook Revolution with SMUG on KTTC

I had a fun opportunity to be interviewed earlier this week as part of this story that ran on KTTC TV in Rochester Thursday night:

I also kind of broke my general rule about not initiating friend requests with females under 30 because Lauren Hardie, the reporter, mentioned SMUG in the story, and that she had some additional video of the interview with me on her Facebook page. So if you want to see that snippet, go see Lauren’s videos.

University Communications in the Third Millennium

I have the delightful opportunity this morning to present on social media for the Marketing and Communications Conference for Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. I’m even going to get to meet a real-life Chancellor, James McCormick. I’m thinking I might ask what it would take for me to get SMUG accredited, but a more realistic goal would be to avoid have Chancellor McCormick (or one of his colleagues) tell me it’s OK to still use the title Chancellor for my office in this tongue-in-cheek university.

I think we’ll have a lot of fun with this, and hope to post some video later from the event.

Here are the slides:

University Communications in the Third Millennium

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Meanwhile, I think it’s pretty exciting that they have a Twitter hashtag established for the conference: #madmn. Please feel free to follow a long and chime in. I’ll be getting started about 9:15 a.m. CST, just after the real chancellor gets done with his greeting.

Sacred Social Media

Because of a storm that postponed another presentation I had scheduled for today, I am instead able to meet with a local church group at noon to introduce them to social media and to invite them to think about how to apply the tools in their mission. Here’s the slide deck:

Sacred Social Media

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This one should be fun; I always introduce my 35 Social Media Theses with reference to Martin Luther and his 95 Theses, so it will be nice being in a Lutheran church, where the analogy should be particularly meaningful.

Note: If the slideshow above doesn’t go all the way to the 72nd slide, you can view the rest here.

The 36th Thesis

Just as Martin Luther’s 95 Theses posted on October 31, 1517 on the church door at Wittenberg were not a comprehensive statement of his theology, the 35 Social Media Theses posted on the wall of SMUG 492 years later also were just a beginning of the discussion. So here for your reaction is the 36th thesis, which I’ve been trying out in some recent presentations:

If your organization can’t find a way to constructively use free tools that enable deep, two-way communication with anyone, anywhere, anytime, your real problem is lack of imagination.

If someone gave you free and unlimited long-distance calling, or the ability to send letters through the mail without paying postage, would you not find ways to take advantage of those opportunities?

Of course, with social media tools you don’t just get to send your messages for free: you also get to hear from key stakeholders, whether they be customers, prospects, employees or the community.

Maybe you’re doing fine without these tools, and you’re feeling really happy with how your organization is performing (although I doubt it, given the overall state of the economy.)

If you’re comfortable with the status quo, you can be confident of one thing: you’re too confident. If you don’t use these powerful communication tools, a competitor will. And it may not even be someone you consider a competitor today. After all, Blockbuster didn’t see Netflix coming.

So if you can’t think of a way to effectively use social media in your organization, or if the barriers to adoption seem too high, you need to think harder. Or, in the words of the famous Apple slogan:

Which is, after all, what the first 35 Social Media Theses were all about. You don’t need to be an Einstein. Just think like MacGyver.