Tag: Health Care

Spreading the Word on Social Media

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ve got a full schedule of travel with conferences, panels, webinars, workshops and the like. I’ll be showing and telling about our work in social media at Mayo Clinic, and also implications and applications for others in health care and beyond. My schedule is below. Based on what I’ve seen from the registration (and speakers/panelists) at the events, I’m going to be highly stimulated by the experience. 

This week I’m going to Washington, DC on Wednesday and Thursday for the New Media Academic Summit at Georgetown University. It will be quite an experience for the Chancellor of a mythical university to interact with real-life Ph.D. professors. I’m on a Thursday afternoon panel.

Next week I’ll be in Phoenix on Monday and Tuesday at the Healthcare New Media Marketing Conference. On Wednesday afternoon I’m part of a panel sponsored by the Chicago Chapter of the American Hospital Association. On Thursday I’m participating in this free “Meet the Experts” Webinar (with @EdBennett, @JennTex and @BrianCharlonis) and then presenting to the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations’ annual meeting in St. Louis. And on Friday in St. Louis I’m doing the keynote (and a workshop) for HESCA’s 50th International Conference on Health & Science Communications.

In my spare time I plan to meet with some TV and radio station news and program directors to talk about our Mayo Clinic Medical Edge syndicated programs and news resources.

This is the most intense travel schedule I’ve had, but it just seemed to work out that these events were in reasonable proximity. And clearly we’re in a time in which the interest in social media is high, particularly in health care.

Of course I’ll be tweeting along the way, so you can follow (and participate in) the conversations. If you’re in any of these communities (or will be at any of these events) and would like to meet, drop me a note (or a Tweet).

Best Practices in Web Video: Case Study

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.

Web Video for Healthcare Leadership Forum  

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,

Social Media Connections in Iowa

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:

lee-iowa-tweet

To my surprise, a few minutes later a comment showed up from Roy Kenagy, who works with the public library system in central Iowa:

roy-only

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:

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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!)

roy-and-friends

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:

cowan-still

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:

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RAQ: Tips for Selling Hospital Leadership on Social Media?

This is another in the Recently Asked Questions series. I’m glad to answer these via email (and have answered directly in this case), but by de-identifying the person asking the question (to protect confidentiality) and also answering in public I hope to provide a resource for others who may have similar questions. More importantly, it opens the process so if other SMUGgles have tips to share, we all can learn from each other.

So here’s today’s question from “Pat” (not his or her real name):

Hi Lee — I am the Manager, E-Strategy, at ________. While admittedly late to the party, we are preparing to launch an official presence on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn. But first, I have the pleasant task of selling our CEO and other senior leaders on the concept and benefits of social media. Do you have any resources/advice about how best to gain leadership buy-in? I’m not anticipating that it’s going to be a tough sell, but if there are any proven methods/pitfalls to avoid, I’d love to learn.

Dear Pat:

My presentations last week (embedded here and here) offer some basic guidance. I’d invite you to check them out. In essence, start by using social media tools to improve the efficiency of what you’re already doing (e.g. shooting Flip video for news releases and posting that to your Facebook site and YouTube channel…or just using the video to record your interviews and thereby do a better job of writing your old-fashioned text-based news releases). Use low-cost or no-cost tools so the out-of-pocket cost is negligible. Then when you get success at almost no cost you can build on that to extend into further applications.

If word-of-mouth plays any role at all in patients’ decisions to use your facilities (and it surely does), then social media will be a powerful means of spreading that word. You will be able to tell stories and describe treatments and services in much more detail than you could through mainstream media. And if you are spending anything on paid advertising, you can pay for your social media programs by channeling a tiny fraction of that budget. 

At Mayo Clinic we have been able to use social media tools to help tell stories, which has led to significant news coverage in the mainstream media, such as this story in yesterday’s Des Moines Register. And sometimes, as in this story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, we’ve had news stories about our social media efforts.

I’d also recommend you refer to Ed Bennett’s listing of other hospitals using social media to show your leadership that many others have begun using social media tools.

Finally, I wouldn’t exactly say you’re “late to the party.” I think there are something like 5,000 hospitals in the U.S., and Ed’s list has 250 using social media. You will still be on the earlier side of the adoption curve, and should be able to move relatively quickly since there are some examples of others to emulate and build upon. 

How about the rest of you? What advice could you offer “Pat” in selling social media to hospital leadership?