It’s immensely satisfying for me when SMUGgles take the plunge and start a blog or a podcast, or launch a Facebook page for their organizations. Makes it all worthwhile.
And when they decide to say nice things about SMUG in one of their first posts, it’s even better!
In My Social Media Communications Compendium, which she started on Saturday, Nancy Pricer says she’s “feeling SMUG,” and here’s an excerpt.
For years I have been an active participant in several listservs relating to my job. Last fall an e-mail sent out by Roger Johnson of Newswise mentioned Lee Aase, the manager for Syndications and Social Media at Mayo Clinic.
In the e-mail, he promoted a place for PR folks to learn the social media landscape. Lee had created his own university,
Social Media University, Global (SMUG)
, and named himself the chancellor. Students are called SMUGgles.
For months I had been trying to get a handle of the social media landscape, but was overwhelmed by various outlets, technologies, my full time job (and commute), two teenagers (they are really very good though), a loving husband, housework–you get the idea. I could not seem to take a chunk of time all at once and break the learning down piece by piece.
When I went to the SMUG Web site, I was impressed with the organization. Lee breaks it down in to categories like, Blogging 101, Blogging 102, Twitter 101, etc.
It was just what I needed to get going.
I’m not exactly fishing for compliments, but I certainly appreciate them. If you, like Nancy, would like to help spread the word about SMUG, you could:
- Write a blog post about your experience (and maybe even start a blog so you have a place to do it!)
- Pass along some of your favorite courses to your friends using the ShareThis button at the bottom of each post. You may, for instance, decide to send the SMUG Super Bowl ad to your friends or Tweet about it.
- Write a recommendation on LinkedIn.
- Tell your SMUG story in the comments on this post.
OK, so maybe I am fishing for compliments.
But I’ll at least rationalize it somewhat by pointing out that Nancy is happily blogging today and has established a Facebook fan page for the university where she works (a real-life one, not a virtual university like SMUG) because Roger Johnson took the time to recommend SMUG to those on his email listserv.
If you know people who might appreciate the opportunity to systematically learn about social media tools like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, podcasting, YouTube and whatever comes next, I hope you’ll do like Roger (and now Nancy) and turn them on to SMUG.
