Category: Health Care

Global Conversations

A couple of interviews I’ve done relating to social media (and particularly in health care) have recently been published to the Web. The first was with Ryan Zuk of the Public Relations Society of America, for its PRSA Tactics monthly newspaper. I had seen the print version, but yesterday got a couple of tweets saying it was now on the PRSA Web site.

Here’s one of the questions with my answer…

What advice can you offer PR practitioners for maturing their social media strategies?

A key for social media success is not getting bogged down in analysis. This is an unprecedented time of opportunity. We have the ability to communicate directly with our target communities while balancing our work with mainstream media. So don’t think of social media as another thing to do, but instead as part of your balanced communications diet.

…you can read the rest here. (Studious SMUGgles will note the reference to the SMUG Social Media Pyramid in that last sentence.)

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to travel to the Netherlands for a couple of presentations and some workshops, and after I had extricated myself from the doghouse, Lucien Engelen (@Zorg20), who organized the events, interviewed me briefly with his Flip mino HD camera. He recently uploaded the interview to YouTube and embedded it on his blog. I’ve embedded it below:

The video has already led to some interesting commentary on Twitter, including @CiscoGIII saying “I think you look better on camera than in real life.” I guess that’s another reason to love the Flip!

What do you think? (I mean about the content of the interviews; no need to comment on my in-person vs. on-camera appearance.)

5 Theses on Social Media in Healthcare

I’m honored to be kicking off Healthcamp Minnesota this morning with a keynote at 8:10 a.m. CDT. Here are my slides, and while you’ll see some familiar information if you’ve been a SMUGgle for some time, there are also some significant new elements, including the section that gives this post its title. I expect to be amplifying on that in future posts, but for now, here’s the deck for reference:

5 Theses for Social Media in Healthcare

View more presentations from Lee Aase.

I hope to see lots of Twin Cities Tweeps at the event, but for those who can’t make it, please follow the live video stream (available from the HealthcampMN site) and the #hcmn hashtag, and join the discussion.

Speaking Engagements

I’ll be out on the road quite a bit in the next month, spreading the word about social media tools and their application in health care, and sharing our Mayo Clinic experience and perspective. If you’d like to participate in any of these conferences, I’m sure the organizers can get you details on how to join.

I look forward to getting to meet a lot of folks in real life after only having interacted via Twitter.  If I’m going to be in your area, I hope we can Tweetup!

Near the end of the road…

After an intense travel schedule in the last couple of weeks that took me from Minnesota to Sun Valley, Idaho to Salt Lake City to Phoenix/Scottsdale to Minnesota to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the Netherlands to London to Minneapolis to St. Louis and back to Minneapolis, I’m in Chicago’s O’Hare airport waiting for a flight to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Tomorrow I will be in Green Bay and Madison for breakfast and lunch presentations on social media.

I look forward to sharing some stories from the journey during the coming week. It’s an exciting time to be involved in social media, particularly in health care.

Putting the “Global” in SMUG

When I first named our august institution of social media higher education, calling it Social Media University, Global was a bit of overstatement. Yes, through the world-wide Web it did have the potential for global reach, and I did already have some visitors from other continents, but clearly our institutional naming (and my self-designation as “Chancellor”) was, as the English say, “cheeky.”

Over the ensuing months the “G” became more deserved, or at least less ridiculous, as we reached the point at which we had SMUGgles from every continent (except Antarctica). We have continued to grow, with now more than 700 people having joined the SMUG group in Facebook.

But it’s one thing to have a global reach via the Web; it’s another to personally visit other parts of the world. Starting tomorrow, SMUG will officially become a little more global in reality, as I am at the airport in Rochester right now traveling to the Netherlands for two presentations. I will be arriving in Amsterdam at 9 a.m. Sunday morning and taking a train to Nijmegen, where I will participate in a series of events led by Lucien Engelen, including Reshape09 and the Health 2.0 Challenge. On Thursday we will go back to Amsterdam, where I will be presenting at the first international E-Mental Health Summit, and then I’m spending the night in London, where I will be visiting British media on Friday morning before returning to Minneapolis.

I look forward to an interesting adventure, and will be regularly reporting on the events here and via Twitter if you follow me.

If any of you have tips for international travel, or about the places I’m visiting, I would appreciate any guidance.