Category: Twitter

Haiti Earthquake Relief Made Personal

Haiti Earthquake Relief Appeal

The news about the Haiti earthquake is overwhelming. The devastation is unfathomable.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In a disaster of this magnitude, we all want to help. But sometimes we can be come paralyzed, for a couple of basic reasons:

  1. We feel that with the greatness of the need, our contribution can’t make much of a difference, or
  2. We hear reports of Internet fundraising scams that use the disaster to defraud the generous.

While social media can be used to perpetrate the con jobs, their real power is to enable those who care to give meaningfully and with confidence.

You can give to charities endorsed by people you know, or by people the people you know, know.

I know that last sentence is really awkward, but take a minute to think about it. And while you’re thinking, here’s a story that will help drive it home.

I met Tom Vanderwell (@tvanderwell) last year via Twitter, as described here. Having met on Twitter on a Sunday night, we had coffee together in his home town, which is nearly 500 miles from mine, the following Wednesday. And when I returned to Grand Rapids, MI in August for my granddaughter Evelyn’s birthday, I went to Tom’s house to interview him via Flip video for this post on our Sharing Mayo Clinic blog.

While there, I met Tom’s youngest children, Abby and Isaac, whom he and his wife had adopted from Haiti. Cheryl and their older daughter were on a mission trip in Haiti at the time I visited him, which is why I needed to meet Tom at his home: he had to be there with his adopted kids. I also learned that Tom was involved as a member of the board of the Haitian orphanage, God’s Littlest Angels.

So when I got the message pasted at the top of this post from Tom yesterday via Facebook, I took notice. It brought the disaster one step closer to me, because I knew someone actively working to provide relief. And I knew that the projects he would be supporting would be well-run, economical and wouldn’t involve a lot of administrative overhead. In short, I knew that whatever I gave would be well spent.

As you’ll note, Tom also asked us to invite friends to help, whether it’s 10 people giving $100 or 100 giving $10.

That’s where you come in.

I’m not going to suggest what you should give. You need to decide that on your own.

But I do want to assure you that whatever you send for God’s Littlest Angels will be used well, to meet real needs.

This shows something of the power of social media, in that through Twitter Tom and I created a personal relationship that led to meeting in real life, and also to maintaining that relationship through Facebook. And you should check out this post Tom did on another blog, about how he has been using social media in the aftermath of the earthquake, and how through Twitter he got the director of the orphanage in touch with @AnnCurry of NBC, which led to the Today story embedded above.

So now I’m inviting you to join me in a “Six Degrees of Trust” experiment.

  1. I know and trust Tom
  2. You know me (if you’ve been reading my blog regularly) and hopefully trust my judgment.
  3. You have your own circle of friends on Facebook, and followers on Twitter, who know and trust you.
  4. Your friends likewise have friends and followers.
  5. …who have friends and followers…
  6. …who have friends and followers…

So whereas Tom had some suggested steps for us who are his friends, here’s what I’m asking you:

  1. Give what you can to help God’s Littlest Angels. I have embedded the contribution widget at the bottom of this post.
  2. Post the link of this post to your Facebook wall, or send it directly to selected friends on Facebook.
  3. Send a Tweet about this effort. Here’s some suggested text you could copy and paste: Six Degrees of Trust: People you know helping orphans in #haiti #godslittlestangels http://bit.ly/4Fmtq1

I talked with Tom briefly this evening via Skype. He said the orphanage is currently over capacity, with 160 kids. Given the deaths resulting from this earthquake, it’s likely there will be dozens more children needing housing and help. I hope you’ll take a few moments now to help provide that help.

RAQ: What platform do you recommend for Twitter chats?

This question comes from Chris Patota (@WestchesterPR), and is shared with permission:

I just came across your blog today, and I think it’s a great resource for people like me who are trying to leverage social media for business. I have a quick question for you…what is your preferred Twitter Chat technology? I would like to use a Twitter chat for one of my clients’ events, so I wanted to see if you had any recommendations.

Answer:

Thanks, Chris. As I describe in this post on “3 Steps to Joining or Leading a Twitter Chat,” I’ve mainly been recommending using the basic Twitter interface, because it requires less training than some other options.

Especially for newbies, that seems to be the most straightforward, so users don’t need to install Tweetdeck or some other application. There is enough to learn without complicating the process with another application.

Tweetchat.com is OK too, and saves the need to enter the hashtag each time…but to me the Twitter interface has gotten good enough (with a saved search, as described in Twitter 116) to make that work well.

I personally like to use Tweetdeck, and just create a search pane for the hashtag. This is especially helpful for chats that recur from week to week, such as #hcsm, or otherwise have some ongoing activity. That enables me to check at a glance whether there is anything new, instead of having to remember to click the #hcsm link on my Twitter interface.

I also would advise you to have new Tweeps sign up for their accounts and do a few tweets in advance, because I’ve noted that sometimes new users’ tweets don’t show up reliably in Twitter search. So you might want to have them do a few tweets using your proposed hashtag.

If anyone has a way to ensure the inclusion of new users’ tweets in Twitter search, please share it in the comments on this post.

Tweet for Proposals (TFP) on WordPress MU Hosting

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My good friend Lucien Engelen (@zorg20) tells the story of how he used Twitter to find someone able to develop an iPhone application for him in an extremely short time. He says it would have taken him weeks to do an RFP or ask one of his analysts to identify options, and by using Twitter he had the whole project completed (and the app in the iTunes store) within just a couple of weeks or so.

I’m taking a lesson from him, but in a different application, and doing my first TFP, or “Tweet for Proposals.”

Here’s the background:

Our Mayo Clinic blogs, including our Health Policy Blog, News Blog, Podcast Blog and Sharing Mayo Clinic, among others, have been hosted on WordPress.com until this point.

We started with WordPress.com because it was easy, fast, reliable and didn’t require us to dedicate IT resources and servers, and because it would eventually enable us to move to a self-hosted solution without losing Google juice. The URLs would all remain the same, but would be pointed to a different server.

I believe the time for our migration has come, and I would like to move our blogs from WordPress.com to a WordPress MU installation to create an easier growth path and also to give us more flexibility in plug-ins, widget embedding, etc.

Here’s what I think we need:

  1. Help setting up the WordPress MU platform.
  2. Help in migration from our existing WordPress.com blogs to the new platform, including mapping each of the URLs to the MU platform.
  3. Hosting and support that is rock solid and available 24/7. WordPress.com has been excellent in meeting traffic surges and has enabled us to focus on content instead of technical issues.

In essence, I think our ideal provider would have experience in migrating blogs from WordPress.com to the WordPress MU platform, and would currently be hosting several blogs on a WordPress MU installation. We’re not looking for a provider to do anything with content or comment moderation, but solely hosting and technical assistance, managing plug-ins, and otherwise enabling us to gain extended functionality as well as flexibility and scalability.

We could consider hosting on our own servers, and if you would want to propose that kind of model, we would be open to discussing. I would like to see, though, if we could get the 24/7 support from someone who is in the server business instead of expecting it from our IT staff.

I would appreciate it if you would pass this TFP on to anyone you think would be qualified, and I welcome any recommendations you have for suitable providers. Please leave them in the comments below. If you want more information or to discuss this off-line, send me a note here: aase (dot) lee (at) mayo (dot) edu.

6 Reasons Your Organization Should Get a Twitter Account

Nancy asks:

I’m trying to convince my boss we need to start a twitter account and she’s not convinced. My main argument has been that it would increase our exposure on the web through our links on twitter. Can you help me make a better case?

I saw your slide presentation on slide share on Making the Case for Social Media but it didn’t get to exactly what I need (or I missed it).

And on the slight chance that we do get to start twitter, what can I do to build a following?

Here are my top six reasons why organizations should have a branded Twitter account:

Brand Protection. If you claim your organization’s name on Twitter, others can’t. One headache you don’t want is having someone impersonating your organization on Twitter. Claiming your Twitter handle is a good step, even from a purely defensive perspective.

Scalability. You can have a Twitter account without putting a lot of human resources into it. It’s reasonable at first to use a service that converts the RSS feed of your news releases into tweets, without any additional human involvement. You do have RSS feeds, right? If not, see the Social Media 102 course, and also my third reason.

Serving stakeholders. A non-human Twitter account connected to an RSS feed isn’t ideal, but like RSS it does at least provide a way for people interested in your news to get it in a way that’s convenient for them. And as you become more familiar with Twitter, it can lead to a much better use, Listening and Engagement, which I list as my last reason.

Increased News Coverage. Journalists are increasingly involved in Twitter, and looking to it as a quick way to identify sources and story ideas. Here’s a portion of an email one of my colleagues got in late October from @KimPainter, a columnist with USA Today (click to enlarge):

KimonTwittersource

Kim had seen one of our @MayoClinic tweets connected to our #mayoradio program called Mayo Clinic Medical Edge Weekend. We got her in touch with Dr. Richard Hurt, who was the guest on that program, and here is Kim’s column in USA Today in which he was featured.

It’s Free. Nothing I have mentioned above involves any cash. Your Twitter account is free. Twitterfeed to convert your RSS feed to tweets also is free. But even if you have to manually send tweets about your news, and including a link to your news releases, the time investment can be minimal. It doesn’t involve incremental cash outlays. If you’re like most organizations, you probably pay EurekAlert or PR Newswire or BusinessWire to distribute your news releases. If you are paying for those services, why wouldn’t you take advantage of a free tool like Twitter?

Listening and Engagement. The preceding reasons provide more than enough justification for getting a corporate Twitter account, but engaging stakeholders and listening to them is the best use for Twitter. For that reason, whether your boss approves a corporately branded Twitter account or not, I strongly suggest that you get your own personal Twitter account. Just dive in and start making connections. As you are using Twitter personally, you will see applications that are relevant to your work.

If you have questions about how to get started with Twitter, we have a whole Twitter curriculum here on SMUG to take you through the process. To answer your last question about building a following, see Twitter 103: Following and Being Followed, and Twitter 104: Four Steps to Building Your Personal Twitter Network.

Hospital Twitter Chat List

[ratings]

Kelley O’Brien (@kelleyob) from North Carolina posed the following question via a tweet this afternoon:

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A. I’m not aware of anything like a comprehensive list of hospital Twitter chats. Ed Bennett’s Hospital Social Networking List is a great resource to tell us which hospitals have social media presence, and he even has some great hospital Twitter lists by state, but the list doesn’t include specific projects (such as surgical cases being “tweeted” that have been undertaken by hospitals or healthcare organizations.

But the great thing about social media is that you can build a list pretty quickly by crowdsourcing…via Twitter.

Or at least I think we can. Let’s see!

I’m listing below some of the Twitter chats/events I’ve been involved with through Mayo Clinic, along with some others I’m aware of that others have done.

It’s not even close to exhaustive. But that’s where you come in. If you know of hospitals that have done Twitter events, whether it was related to a surgical procedure, or a communications crisis, or promoting research findings, or whatever other ways you’ve used Twitter (or seen it used) in a hospital setting, please tell about it in the comments below.

Please include the name of the hospital, its Twitter handle, a relevant link to a post, news release or news story describing the effort, and any description you would like to add. Also please indicate which category (listed in bold below) is appropriate. And if you think I’m missing a category that should be added, please tell me that, too.

You also can share your examples via Twitter, using the #HospitalTweets tag. But by adding them in the comments below, they’ll be more permanent (since Twitter doesn’t archive tweets)…and of course, you’re not limited to 140 characters.

I will update this post based on your contributions to create a more comprehensive list.

Let’s see how quickly we can come up with a really good list!

Surgical Case Tweeting

Research Communications

Crisis Communications

Presentations and Training:

  • At @MayoClinic, we have held three Tweetcamps to provide training for staff. Here’s a post that describes Tweetcamp III.
  • When I do presentations, I regularly include a Twitter back-channel, such as this training seminar on social media I did yesterday with local advocacy chapters of American Heart Association. This is a good way for participants to get hands-on experience with Twitter.

Mainstream Media Collaboration

What other examples can you add?