RAQ: Would you do a video about why PR and marketing pros need an iPhone?

At the #mayoragan09 conference earlier this week I participated in a “30 ideas in 30 minutes” panel, which was intended to provide rapid-fire, practical applications and next steps to take for people interested in incorporating social media into their health care work.

My first tip (after the obligatory “Get a Flip”), was:

Get an iPhone.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been, but I was somewhat surprised at the murmur that comment created. And in the Q&A session, I got this request:

“Could you upload a Flip video about why I should get an iPhone, so I can use it to make the case with my boss?”

My other tips, two of which require some expenditure and others that are free:

  • Get a Flip video camera (or something similar.) Cost is $150-$230 MSRP, but you can get them cheaper.
  • Join Audible.com, which is an audio “book of the month” club. Listen to any books you can find from Clayton Christensen, Malcolm Gladwell, or Patrick Lencioni. And of course get Chris Anderson’s book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, for free. Cost is about $15/month.
  • Get the “Bump” application for iPhone, which lets you exchange contact info with other iPhone users with a fist bump. Free.
  • Create a blog as a “dark site” for crisis communications. Use wordpress.com to create a private blog, which you can make public should a crisis arise. That could save you 15 minutes or so in setting up a way to communicate broadly via the Web, which in a crisis could be precious time savings. Free on WordPress.com.

If you do anything at all in continuing education for your professional growth, you may spend $1,000 or more for conference registrations, plus travel expenses.

How sad would it be to pay for a conference registration to learn about social media tools, and then to not spend the relatively smaller amount it takes to get hands-on experience?

And of course, do take advantage of the free tools as well, including enrolling in SMUG (join the Facebook group, follow the Chancellor on Twitter, and subscribe to the RSS feed).

See Aaron Hughling’s take-aways from the conference, as well as Holly Potter’s.

I hope this helps you make the case for your smartphone, whether that’s with your employer, your spouse or to help you convince yourself.

WHPRMS Presentation

I’m in Milwaukee this morning for the Wisconsin Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Society (WHPRMS) annual meeting. It’s exciting to be here presenting to a group to which I spoke three years ago, just when I had begun blogging.

When I was with the group at Green Lake in 2006, I wrote a few posts you can find here.

You also can follow the tweets from #WHPRMS and contribute to the discussion.

Here are my slides:

WHPRMS Presentation

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Twitter Health Care Case Study: Angie Anania

At our #MayoRagan09 health care social media summit yesterday, Angie Anania from HealthONE Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center in Denver told her story of using Twitter relating to a surgical procedure, and the collaboration she did with the local CBS affiliate. I asked if she would be willing to share her experience more broadly, so here it is, compliments of the Flip:

I think her point about collaborating with local media in a win-win application of social media tools makes lots of sense. What do you think? What other examples of this have you seen?

Getting “In the Loop” at Mayo Clinic

Picture 18

My colleagues from our employee communication group and media support services at Mayo Clinic presented this morning at the #MayoRagan09 social media summit in Scottsdale. They told about their most recent project, a completely opt-in email newsletter called “In the Loop.” See the screen shot above (click to enlarge) or download a sample below.

IN THE LOOP – Sept. 29 2009

Health Care Social Media Summit Keynote

Here are the slides for my presentation on Monday, Oct. 5 at the Health Care Social Media Summit we’re hosting at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Scottsdale, Arizona. It’s been a pleasure working with Ragan Communications to develop the program, and I’m looking forward to presenting and to hearing from the other speakers. I’m sure we will hear about lots of great health care social programs and that it will provide inspiration.

With more than 130 slides in my one-hour presentation, I hope to create sensory overload while at the same time inspiring participants to both see the possibilities inherent in social media and to believe that it’s something they can do. By having the slides posted here, it will illustrate the value of Slideshare.net and also will enable participants to fully engage in the discussion without feeling a need to take notes compulsively. They can tweet updates as they hear interesting tidbits (as I recommended here), but can know that everything they’re seeing will be available for review at a more leisurely pace.

Update: Here’s the presentation that I failed to insert originally. Thanks @PhilBaumann for pointing that out:

Health Care Social Media Summit Keynote

View more presentations from Lee Aase.