Tag: Shel Holtz

FIR Interview on Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media

I had an opportunity on Wednesday to record a conversation with Shel Holtz, co-host of For Immediate Release, for one of the podcast series he produces with Neville Hobson. This one, Lee Aase on Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media, is part of the FIR Interview series.

I believe I met Shel seven or eight years ago, and in the last four years we’ve gotten to know each other well through social media and in speaking together at conferences. In fact, he’s going to be one of the speakers at our Mayo Clinic/Ragan Communications Social Media Summit in Jacksonville in September.

In our FIR conversation we go into a lot of the detail about our new Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, so for those interested in more background on what we’re envisioning for its role, and how it came to be, I think it will be helpful.

Listen here.

Let me know what you think!

Guest-Hosting For Immediate Release

Tomorrow I’m honored to get the chance to be a guest co-host on For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report. Neville, the first half of the duo, has some conflicts and needed the week off, so Shel asked me to join him on the Thursday program. Steve Crescenzo filled in ably on Monday.

I’m looking forward to the experience; we’re recording at 11 a.m. CDT. Shel and I have exchanged topics for the discussion and I think it will be a good program. We’ll be talking some about social media in health care, but also some more general topics. Since it’s a podcast, you can’t listen live…but if you want to tweet questions or comments, use the #FIR tag. I will post the program when it’s done.

Update: Here’s the link to the FIR podcast post. Let me know what you think!

Welcome FIR Listeners!

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to do an interview with Shel Holtz for the For Immediate Release Interviews series.

You can hear the interview here.

I hope you’ll check out the Sharing Mayo Clinic blog, which we discussed in the interview. This earlier SMUG post has more background on all of our Mayo Clinic social media efforts, including Sharing Mayo Clinic.

If you are interested in becoming a SMUGgle, see the Enroll Now page.

Sharing Mayo Clinic on FIR

It was a week ago today that we launched our new Mayo Clinic blog, called Sharing Mayo Clinic. You can see some of the related news stories here, but I also wanted to post a link to the segment Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson included on their For Immediate Release podcast (Episode 416) last Thursday.

You can hear the portion specifically about Sharing Mayo Clinic below, but of course I recommend that you subscribe so you can get their “hefty and good” podcast delivered automatically to you twice a week.

Sharing Mayo Clinic on FIR

I’m scheduled to have a recorded conversation with Shel and Neville next week (not sure whether it will be an Interview or a Cut), so if you subscribe you’ll get that delivered as well.

I’ve known Shel for several years, and he has consulted with us a couple of times, providing an outside perspective on and validation of our plans. He and Andy Sernovitz have been really helpful to us in getting social media programs going at Mayo, so I’m looking forward to sharing our progress with the FIR community.

Help Me Help You Fight the FUD

In my presentation at Blogwell, at which I introduced our new Mayo Clinic blog for patients and employees, Sharing Mayo Clinic, I closed with a Jerry Maguire appeal:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-oHuogx6_Y]

Many of the questions I got after the presentation, and that I get in other contexts from people wanting to implement social media programs at work, began something like: “What about the concerns that …” or “What about the fears that ….”

One of my points in response is that it’s extremely helpful to have external consultants who can help reassure leadership that the social media advocates in the organization aren’t crazy, and that lots of other companies and similar groups are using blogs and social media successfully, and without major problems. Shel Holtz and Andy Sernovitz helped us.

It’s also great to be able to point to examples of success, like Nuts about Southwest.

I hope Sharing Mayo Clinic can be the kind of example you can show your leaders, and say “See! If an established organization like Mayo Clinic is using blogs and Facebook and YouTube, we can too.” I’d love it if our example can help you fight the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) barrier in your organization.

Of course, a big part of you being able to use our blog as an example of corporate blogging success is…well…for us to succeed.

You can help me with that in two ways: Suggesting Improvements and Spreading the Word.

Suggesting Improvements. In response to the post I did announcing the blog Thursday, SMUGgle Scott Meis (who I got to finally meet for the first time at BlogWell), left a good suggestion in the comments that I have implemented. It tripled the number of RSS and email subscribers we got in the second full day of the blog’s operation, as compared to the first. So, I hope you’ll check out Sharing Mayo Clinic, and I’d really appreciate any further suggestions you could offer on how we can improve.

Spreading the Word. Obviously building traffic to Sharing Mayo Clinic is our responsibility, and we’re communicating with our Mayo Clinic patients and employees about it. But if you would help spread the word by blogging or tweeting about it, or posting it on your Facebook profile or sending it to your friends, that would be fantastic, too.

And hopefully by helping me, I can help you fight the FUD.