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Below is the presentation I’m scheduled to deliver on Friday, May 29, at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, as part of the Innovations in Election Technology conference:
Below is my presentation to be delivered at New York University Wednesday morning, May 27, as part of the Web Video for Healthcare Leadership Forum.
It’s always fun for the SMUG Chancellor to visit a real university for which students pay tuition. But they’re not going to give me an honorary doctorate or anything. Hopefully they’ll at least politely applaud.
Here are some of the videos featured during the presentation, including one of our professionally produced Mayo Clinic Medical Edge segments:
Here is one of the physician interviews captured with a Flip video camera:
Here is a patient story,
Yesterday was another of those days that seem to be getting more frequent, in which I met face-to-face someone with whom I had only interacted via social media.
I started the morning with a Tweet (which I also posted to my Facebook status via Tweetdeck), about my travel plans for the day:
To my surprise, a few minutes later a comment showed up from Roy Kenagy, who works with the public library system in central Iowa:
In fact, after a stop in Algona to interview one pair of patients, I was planning to be in Ankeny. So I replied via iPhone and he got me the address:
Which led to us getting to meet for about 15 minutes just before 2, and so I took a picture of Roy and his colleagues (Roy is the one in the middle!)
Another demonstration of the power of social media, particularly Facebook, to make virtual connections real.
I was in Ankeny to meet Marlow and Frances Cowan, the delightful couple whose piano duet at Mayo Clinic has become a YouTube sensation:
You’ll be seeing more of the Cowans in coming days, at which time I’ll be posting some more video and telling the story of how their duet has gone from 1,000 views to more than 1.6 million in a little over a month.
Later last night I got to have a good conversation with some health system communicators in Davenport. I’m uploading those photos to the SMUG Facebook group.
All in all, I have to agree with this assessment from Matt Feyen:
Much of what I blog about is related to social media, and many of the people with whom I’m engaging online are other social media evangelists or people in health care who are interested in using tools like blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. And I think the examples we’ve been able to show through our Mayo Clinic work definitely show not only the potential of social media, but also the actual, real-world benefits, for large organizations.
But what about individuals, or smaller organizations? Can they use social media profitably?
That was a question I addressed a couple of weeks ago with a young professionals group in Niles, Ill. So when I tweeted from the airport about my travels for the week and got a response from Tom Vanderwell, a mortgage lender from Grand Rapids, Mich. whom I had met previously through Twitter, I immediately asked him to share his experience.
When we talked by phone that night I asked him, “Do you get real business from your blog?” His response: “Well, today alone I got two emails from potential clients. One is in a state where I can’t do business, but I can connect the person to someone I’ve met through social media who has previously referred business to me. The other one I can do. So yes, I’ve definitely gotten business from my blog.”
I asked Tom to follow up with an email with some of the details about his blogging experience, and I’ve reproduced an edited version below.
Tom works for a large bank, so in that sense he’s not really a “small business” example, but on the other hand as someone whose compensation is based on business generated, he’s the ultimate entrepreneur. Many people like him invest in advertising to get people’s attention. I don’t know whether Tom advertises or not. But it seems his blog is a great way for people to get to know him and how he thinks, building trust in his perspective.
Here’s some straight talk from Tom about how he uses social media, particularly his blog, in his business, and the benefits he’s seen:
Continue reading “Social Media for Small Business”
Yesterday was my birthday, and it was one of my more memorable ones.
The highlight was watching two of my daughters, Rebekah and Ruth, graduate with High Distinction from Riverland Community College, receiving their AA degrees. They are the third and fourth of our children to take advantage of Minnesota’s Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program, which enables industrious high school juniors and seniors to take college classes for simultaneous high school credit. Like Rachel and Jake before them, these two graduated from the community college before they graduated from high school (Rebekah’s Austin High graduation is in a couple of weeks.) Here’s a picture of our recent graduates with their proud parents:
I also was extremely pleased to receive birthday greetings from my granddaughter in Grand Rapids, MI, via her parents’ blog:
I got a nice call from my son Jake, too. He lives in La Crosse, WI.
From a work perspective, it was a milestone day, as well. The video embedded below, which will be the subject of a future case study, cracked the 1 million mark in total views on YouTube. When I embedded it on our Sharing Mayo Clinic blog on April 7, it had been viewed 1,005 times over the preceding six months. As of this writing it’s at 1,108,201 views (and also was featured on the front page of msn.com yesterday, where it has been seen more than 133,000 times.)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI-l0tK8Ok0]
It’s an interesting story that will, as I said, become a future case study…but I have a feeling it’s not done yet. But meanwhile you can get a bit of the back story through this great post on Sharing Mayo Clinic by Jodi Hume, who uploaded the video of the Cowans after her mother, Sharon Turner, a Mayo Clinic patient, shot it. I’ve never been associate with a “viral” video before, so it’s been fun watching the traffic for this one continue to grow.
We also have been delighted to have company for the last three days, as Rick and April Kelley and their children Christian, Gabe, Jake, Elijah, Grace, Ryle and Micah visited us from Louisville. Ruthie and Christian are “exclusive friends,” which is the motivation for the 700+ mile trip, but our families have become close, too.
The many Happy Birthday wishes I received on Facebook and Twitter were touching, too. It’s amazing how these social platforms can bring people together.
Lisa and I are so thankful to God for our many blessings. And if I’ve had a better birthday, I don’t remember it. This is one I won’t be forgetting.