Social Media University, Global (SMUG)
Suus Non Ut Difficile • Home of the SMUGgles
I’m in Boca Raton, Florida this morning for a presentation to the Founders group of the Leadership Institute, a group of top leaders from about 20 major hospital systems. I’m going to be speaking about my 35 Social Media Theses, and given the time allotted I’m going to get to directly address about 20 of them. Here are my slides:
Today I’m honored to be keynoting the 13th Annual Health Internet Conference at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. So, as Mark Ragan said a couple of weeks ago, now I can tell people, “I’ve played Caesars.” 😉
Here’s how I planned to start my presentation, though I’m not sure it will come out quite like this.
I frequently have people ask me about the frequency of my travel and how I can do it, as they follow my tweets or blog posts. This is the 55th external presentation or Webcast I’ve delivered so far this year, and in October I was in Sun Valley, Scottsdale, Milwaukee, Nijmegen and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, St. Louis, Green Bay, Madison, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia.
This month looks almost as busy. So how and why do I do it?
First, the Web and related tools like the iPhone help me stay connected with the office when I’m traveling. So I can help keep things moving along at home, even when I’m not physically present.
But in another sense, I’m keeping faith with the founders of Mayo Clinic, to whom I will be introducing you shortly. They believed it was essential for them to reach out and learn from others, but that it also was their obligation to share what they had discovered in their practice so that others may benefit.
Social media will be used in health care; the only question is whether it will be led by responsible organizations or by the purveyors of herbal, all-natural Viagra substitutes.
Despite the diffuse nature of the Web in general and social media in particular, I believe it is not only possible for us (and by that I mean all of us in healthcare, not just Mayo Clinic) to lead: I believe it’s a moral imperative. We can do well for our organizations by doing good things in social media. More importantly, patients will do better by becoming more empowered and engaged in their own health and health care. They can learn from credible experts and from each other, and apply those learnings to improve their lives.
I’ve previously said it’s not my goal to convince begrudging skeptics that they should using social media. They won’t do it well, mainly because they will see social media as an extension of the mass media era, and as a former boss used to say, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”
My goal is to encourage you, maybe even excite you. You’re most likely here because you sense the amazing potential of the Web and social media.
If you’ve been wanting to implement social media in your organization, I hope to provide you with some concrete examples of success and powerful arguments you can use to help launch your own programs. If our Mayo Clinic example helps you remove internal barriers or work up the nerve to just hurdle them, I will count this a success.
If you are using social media already, I hope to hear your story and what’s worked for you, so we can together help continue the momentum in growth of hospital social media that Ed Bennett has done so well in documenting.
I’ve also embedded the slides from the presentation, which are substantially different from anything you’ve seen from me before. It’s the first time I’ve discussed the 35 Social Media Theses in public. So I hope you will review them and share your thoughts, criticisms, suggested edits and additions.
As I have been asked to keynote some conferences on social media in healthcare I have found it necessary, or at least desirable, to take a broader view of the topic instead of just describing our Mayo Clinic experience.
Don’t get me wrong: I actually think our Mayo Clinic experience in social media, and the story behind it, is probably the most important contribution I can make to the discussion. After all, philosophy is cheap. Anyone can pontificate on what “should” be done, but having a concrete story to tell of how social media have actually been implemented is more valuable.
But sometimes it’s helpful to also be able to generalize from the specific, to help elucidate underlying principles that the specific examples illustrate.
As I was preparing for Healthcamp Minnesota and that keynote, I was drawn to develop some basic principles for healthcare social media. And being of a Reformed Christian background, I couldn’t help noting that we’re coming up on Reformation Day, October 31 (other folks call that day “Halloween”), which is the 492nd anniversary of the day Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenburg, Germany.
His “post” was entitled:
And it began as follows:
Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter.
Because of a technology that had been developed relatively recently, the Gutenberg printing press, Luther’s theses went “viral” and changed the course of history. They were translated from Latin into German and spread throughout Germany within two weeks, and throughout Europe within two months.
So although I have no delusions about the relative import of my thinking compared with Luther’s, tomorrow I’m going to post my own set of theses relating to social media, and will invite your feedback and participation, or even disputation.
There won’t be 95 of them (but there will be more than the five I outlined at Healthcamp MN), and I’m confident the publication of these theses won’t require me to go into hiding in a castle in Germany (although, come to think of it, that wouldn’t be the worst thing!)
Just as technology gave viral reach to timeless truths as recovered by Luther, today’s social technology will enable these social media theses to spread rapidly (if they’re any good). It’s a testament to the advance of technology that within two days of publication (based on what I see in my Google Analytics), these theses will likely have been read on six continents.
Luther’s theses had eternal significance for people’s immortal souls. Mine might just help you better understand the communications and marketing landscape, and thereby achieve some of your more temporal goals.
Luther wanted to start a discussion or an argument, even though he was fairly convinced he was right. I likewise hope to spark discussion with my social media theses, and some of that will take place starting Monday in Las Vegas at the Healthcare Internet Conference. But to paraphrase Luther’s request, if you are unable to be present and debate orally with us, I hope you will do so by Tweet, comment or blog post.
Check back here tomorrow for discussion and disputation.
If you follow the Tweetstream from Jacqueline Fackeldey (@FackeldeyFinds) you may not get a lot from it (unless you’re one of my new friends from the Netherlands) because she mostly tweets in Dutch. But when I attended ReShape09 in Nijmegen, I had a nice opportunity to chat (in English) with this advocate of what she calls “human to human marketing.” When she used the phrase that is the title for this post, I thought it would be great to have her talk about it on camera and share it with the SMUGgles:
I’ll be out on the road quite a bit in the next month, spreading the word about social media tools and their application in health care, and sharing our Mayo Clinic experience and perspective. If you’d like to participate in any of these conferences, I’m sure the organizers can get you details on how to join.
I look forward to getting to meet a lot of folks in real life after only having interacted via Twitter. If I’m going to be in your area, I hope we can Tweetup!