SMUG Social Media University Global

Using YouTube, Facebook to Promote Organ Donation

In my last post, I told about Bob Aronson’s dedication to spread the word about organ donation through social media, after having had a heart transplant in August.

One of the things Bob’s done is start a Facebook group, where he’s inviting everyone affected by transplant to tell their stories. So whether you’re

a transplant recipient or caregiver
a living donor (e.g. kidney, liver, bone marrow)
a family member of someone who made the decision to donate and helped as many as 60 other people
a friend of any of the above, or
someone who has indicated a desire to be a donor via your driver’s license

I hope (and so does Bob) you will join this group and participate, and help promote it to your friends. Besides encouraging people to think about donation, he hopes it can bring support and encouragement to everyone involved in organ and tissue transplantation as people share their stories.

Some may write on the Wall, others may upload photos or engage in the discussion board, and still others may want to upload videos directly into the Facebook group, as Bob did. He also started a blog, Bob’s NewHeart, to help spread the word about the Facebook support group beyond the Facebook “walled garden.” And besides uploading his video to Facebook, Bob put it on YouTube, too. Check it out!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exk8lSHI3Dw]

Through my previous post I also met Scott Meis, who has been using social media, particularly Facebook, on behalf of Donate Life Illinois. He also maintains a blog for the campaign, which has a goal of signing up 3.5 million Illinois residents for the state’s donor consent registry by next April. It’s got some great transplant-related stories.

Part of the power (and fun) of social media, that I could have an interesting conversation today with someone I hadn’t met as of yesterday. And we’re Facebook friends now, to boot!

Technorati: YouTube, Facebook, organ donation, transplant, heart transplant, Bob Aronson, social media

Facebook Organ Transplant Group

Working in news media relations for Mayo Clinic, I’ve gotten to know Bob Aronson fairly well over the last seven years. He’s been a consultant for us, helping us work with physicians and scientists to make their points more effectively in news media interviews.

With decades of experience in journalism, politics and consulting, Bob says the process for news media communication is the reverse of a presentation at a scientific meeting. Whereas medical researchers are accustomed to laying a foundation and then logically progressing to a conclusion, in a media interview it’s important to get to the point first, and then provide the supporting data.

Besides Mayo Clinic, another of Bob’s clients has been LifeSource, the organ procurement organization for the Upper Midwest. He also worked with the national organization, UNOS. Bob worked through the news media for years to help tell the transplant story and t0 encourage organ donation. His interest in the topic wasn’t that of a detached consultant, though. Because he had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, he knew there was a possibility that he might one day need a transplant.

Over the last few years, Bob grew steadily weaker. He moved to Florida last year and became a patient at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, where he received a heart transplant on Aug. 22, 2007.

I’ve been exploring blogging and social media for a little over a year. A colleague and I had discussed Facebook‘s ability to connect people, and we thought a support and advocacy group for transplant patients and their family and friends would be a natural. Mayo Clinic has a reunion in Rochester every summer for transplant patients and their supporters. Wouldn’t it be great if this reunion could be more than just one day a year? And if it included patients from many different transplant centers, as well as their friends and family members, that could provide mutual support and encouragement and also increase awareness of the need for organ donors.

Given Bob’s passion for the subject and his “old media” background, I suspected he might like the chance to learn how some of these “new media” could support the organ transplant cause. So for the last month or so, Bob has been learning about blogging (using wordpress.com) and Facebook. After years of learning from Bob about news media, I was glad to have a chance to help Bob with his social media education.

And in addition to his daily treadmill physical rehab, I think this has been good therapy for Bob. Go here to check out his aptly-named blog:

Bob’s NewHeart

And here’s the link to the Facebook group Bob created:

Organ Transplant Patients, Friends and You

I hope you’ll join this Facebook group and invite your friends to do likewise, especially if you know someone who has been affected by transplant. Getting people to share their transplant-related stories will hopefully help create more awareness of the need for organs and the difference donation can make.

Bob has said he wants to dedicate the rest of his life to promoting organ donation. Social media will play an important role in his efforts.

Technorati: Facebook, Transplant, organ donation, heart transplant, liver transplant, kidney transplant, social networking, social media, new media, wordpress.com, wordpress

10 Ways Facebook Groups Beat Blogs for Sports Booster Clubs

Last year I was asked to be part of a booster club for my hometown high school’s boys basketball team. Having just started blogging a few months earlier, I thought it would be a neat idea to develop a team blog. With buy-in from the club’s leadership, I created the Packer Fast Break Club blog on wordpress.com and did a training session so the parents who would be able to attend the games could take over as administrators. (I had a daughter on the Packer girls’ team, so I set up the Austin Girls Basketball Blog, too.)

For the boys’ blog, the parent group took charge and added some photos, while on the girls’ blog I embedded a few videos from YouTube and Blip.tv. Like this one from last Friday night’s Austin win over New Prague:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=ESTnj_sPnK4]

Since last year, though, I’ve joined Facebook. I think a Facebook group can be a much better way to build this kind of community around a high school or youth sports team.

Why?

The only real advantage for a blog for a high school sports booster club site is that it can be open to anyone on the internet. You don’t have to be a Facebook member to see it. Disadvantages of a blog are that visitors can only comment on posts done by the blog authors, editors or administrators. They can’t start a new topic or upload photos or videos unless they go through the process of signing up for a wordpress.com account (or whatever hosting service you’re using) and get authorized.

A blog is much better for one person or a small group to start or lead a discussion in which others just comment. But for building community in a sports booster club, a Facebook group has several advantages.

Joining is easy. Facebook has 57 million active users, with an average of 250,000 new users joining each day. Once you join Facebook, adding another group takes just a few seconds. And if it’s an open group, you don’t need permission to join or to invite others. You can join and start participating right away. Immediate gratification.
Anyone can contribute on an equal basis. Instead of just the blog authors being able to start new discussions, or upload videos or photos, you can adjust Facebook group settings so any group member can do these things.
Uploading videos and photos is easier for everyone. To embed the video above on this blog I had to upload to YouTube and then put in a special embedding code in this blog post. In the Austin Packers Girls Basketball Facebook group, it was a matter of simply selecting the file and uploading. The rest was automatic. The same is true for photos. This means Facebook groups will have many more videos and photos than a blog would have.
You can tag photos and videos that include your Facebook friends. This automatically alerts those friends (through their mini-feed), so they can check back on the group page. On a blog, by contrast, the users either need to have an RSS reader and subscribe to the feed (two steps that increase the complexity of notification and therefore drastically reduce the number who will get automatic notices) or you need to send them an email to tell them to check it out. That’s more work.
It’s easy to post links to web stories. For the Austin Packers Girls Basketball group, I posted links to the web version of game recaps from both of the local newspapers.
Players, parents, coaches and other fans can all be members. Many if not most high school students are already in Facebook. Their parents’ age group (45-54) is Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic.
No anonymous comments. Anyone who adds comments on a Facebook group wall or discussion board has his or her name attached. This helps to ensure that comments will be positive and constructive if people have to stand behind them.
It can build camaraderie among parents that is similar to what develops among team members. Even attending games together, you don’t always get to know all the other parents. Facebook can help strengthen personal connections among people with a common interest.

So what about concerns that by parents joining Facebook it will lose its appeal for high school and college students? Here are two reasons why it won’t.

Facebook is going to be just another way everyone communicates. See #1 and #6 above, and #2 below. Just because everyone is in Facebook doesn’t mean everyone has access to everyone else’s private information.
You don’t have to be “friends” to be part of the same group. I’m blessed that my kids are all my Facebook friends, too, but I understand that for some families the kids might want a more private place (and perhaps parents wouldn’t want their kids to see what their fellow flower children from the 60s are writing on their wall.) Facebook groups can be a common meeting place for people with a common interest to interact, without becoming Facebook friends.

I just started the Austin Packers Girls Basketball group yesterday, and I think it will be really helpful. And as always, it’s good to think about how the pattern of this sports booster Facebook group could be applied for other community groups in which you belong. I wrote previously about how Facebook groups could be a replacement for printed church directories.

I would be interested to hear of groups you may form for a similar purpose. What other ideas do you have?

Technorati: Facebook, booster clubs, basketball, youth, high school, sports, hockey, football, baseball, blogs

Target Misses on Facebook Page

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported yesterday on another big-brand misstep in social media, as a firm hired by Target to manage its Facebook page and its “Rounders” program asked its compensated advocates to conceal their identity when interacting on Target’s Facebook group. As Jackie Crosby wrote:

The hubbub began in early October after Siman received a Rounders newsletter as Target was launching a new Facebook page. Like many companies now setting up sites on Facebook and MySpace, Target hoped to get people talking about new products, get feedback and continue to find ways to promote its hip image.

“Your Mission: Try not to let on in the Facebook group that you are a Rounder,” the newsletter read.

“We love your enthusiasm for the Rounders, and I know it can be hard not to want to sing it from the mountaintops [and in the shower, and on the bus]. However, we want to get other members of the Facebook group excited about Target, too! And we don’t want the Rounders program to steal the show from the real star here: Target and Target’s rockin’ Facebook group. So keep it like a secret!”

Target’s vendor, a New York firm called Drillteam, obviously botched this on several levels. It’s bad enough to fail to remind people who are receiving inducements that they should be transparent about it. But to actively encourage your compensated advocates to “keep it like a secret!” and then, as Crosby reports, to wipe incriminating comments off your Facebook page, is extremely bad form.

Target is a generally highly regarded corporate citizen. They ran into a serious problem, though, when their marketers (or at least the vendor they hired) didn’t trust in the good will they had already built.

Social media can be a great way to show the good will you’ve developed, and to grow that good will when you have people who think highly of you sharing their opinions in public. It’s a good idea to provide a place, as Target did through its Facebook group, where that sharing can happen.

Offering inducements for positive comments was a big mistake. As is often the case, the coverup was worse than the original crime. Organizations getting involved in social media need to be absolutely transparent about it. Their first priority should be creating a great customer experience. Then if they create a social media outpost, whether through Facebook or a blog, they should trust that the good work they do serving customers on a daily basis will be reflected in the conversation that ensues.

Attempts at manipulation, and especially aims to disguise that chicanery, will almost always backfire. If Target knew what drillTEAM was doing on this project, then Michael Rubin is right when he says “this is much worse than a faux pas.” And it is an interesting double standard when compared with Wal-Mart.

Andy Sernovitz has further guidance on how marketers can stay out of this trouble, and Kaye Sweetser has the full story; it was her student that broke the story.

In this case it was about six weeks from the time this appeared in on Professor Sweetser’s blog until it made the Star Tribune, but this is another example of how badly done social media eventually will have mass media repercussions.

Technorati: Target, Facebook, drillTEAM, flog, social media, Rounders, marketing