Social Media University, Global (SMUG)
Suus Non Ut Difficile • Home of the SMUGgles
Here are the slides for the presentation I’m giving in Winona, Minnesota tonight, at an event sponsored by the local PRSSA chapter and the Winona State University Department of Communications.
I look forward to some good discussion and to interactions with students, professors and community members.
An interview featuring one of my Mayo Clinic colleagues was posted recently on Ragan.com. Linda Donlin was interviewed as part of the health care social media summit we hosted with Ragan in Arizona. Here’s the video:
I thought you’d enjoy hearing from one of my colleagues at Mayo whose job is different from mine, but who is actively embracing social media tools for communication with our employees.
Here’s a post I did at the time about the “In the Loop” publication, including an example.
This emphasizes that social media tools are powerful, and can be adapted to your communication needs. They also help you go beyond “audiences” to “communities” by enabling those you’re reaching to provide feedback to you and share with others.
Here’s a recently asked question from Sturle Monstad (@sturlemo), from Bergen, Norway:
Lee,
Thanks for collecting such a wealth of info on your SMUG site. I am using the resources in my work with health promotion for older adults. I have a contract with Lions Club in Norway on a programme they are setting up a web site for them. I am now trying to include social media for marketing and community building.
They are a bit skeptical, but well see how things work out. We see that seniors are getting more active on Facebook, and I think the interaction may be positive for many. Have you written anything about social media/seniors?
Answer:
First, thanks for helping to put the “Global” in SMUG!
As I say in Thesis 23, almost everybody uses social media today, whether they know it or not. You point out correctly that Facebook is growing rapidly among those over age 55, having increased by more than 900 percent in 2009.
I also can tell you that on our Mayo Clinic YouTube channel, almost 30 percent of video views are from people age 55 or older.
As these tools are becoming ever easier to use, the growth of social media will continue. I believe women over 55, for example, are the fastest-growing demographic in Facebook.
It all comes down to whether the content or subject matter is worthwhile and interesting.
My dad turns 79 on Saturday. He’s on Facebook, too, because it’s a way to see video and photos of his great-granddaughter.
Social platforms, from blogs to Facebook to YouTube, make it easier for anyone to share information that others will find interesting.
At a certain level, it’s important to think strategically about how your organization will use social media.
After all, if Thesis 4 is true, and if social media really are the defining communications trend of the third millennium, then using these powerful tools in a way that aligns with your overall strategy just makes good business sense.
Strategy is “a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.” Aimless use of social media is no better than aimless advertising or product development research. It’s never a good idea to devote your organization’s time and resources to an activity that doesn’t relate in some way to an overall strategy. Aimless is pointless.
As B.L. Ochman has chronicled, there’s no shortage of self-proclaimed gurus, experts, specialists and strategists — nearly 16,000 at her last count — on Twitter. She also has a good post on “The only two questions you need to ask your prospective social media agency.” The problem I see with many of the self-proclaimed “gurus” is that they lack experience in tying social media to organizational strategy, and as B.L. says, “they’ll be learning on your dime.”
It’s much better for YOU to learn on your dime. Or your time.
After all, you know the strategic initiatives in your organization. The outside consultants and agencies don’t. Instead of paying them to learn about your organization, why not take the time to learn about social media so you can see how these tools can support your goals?
There is certainly a place for agencies to help in this area, especially if you have more money than time. They may be able to help you refine your plans, and bring perspective from other similar organizations to help you sell management on your plans.
But instead of insisting that you have a grand, fully developed strategy before embarking in social media (and which is accompanied by a hefty planning and consulting price tag that will make the ROI harder to prove,) I would suggest there are some goals compatible with social media strategies that apply for most organizations.
So here are a few goals you might want to pursue in the new year, using social media:
Your social media strategy doesn’t have to be perfect right away. In fact, I believe it should continually evolve as you learn more about the tools and see new applications.
The other point I want to emphasize from the definition of strategy is that it is a “plan of action….” Action without a goal is likely unproductive, but planning without action is even worse. By acting rashly without full consideration you might possibly do the right thing: you could just get lucky. But analysis paralysis means you will consume resources with no hope of accomplishing anything.
To avoid this, identify one or two goals for your use of social media, either picking from the list above or something else you have in mind. Goal #5 can always be your personal entry point, if necessary.
Then execute against that plan, putting your strategy into action. General (and later President) Dwight Eisenhower famously said “plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” I believe his wisdom is best applied in an almost continuous planning process that is accompanied by continuous execution and modification.
Remember, it’s a lot easier to steer a moving car than it is to get it started from a dead stop. If you find yourself going off course, you can always steer back or even tap on the brake. And by choosing some small but well-defined (and likely successful) social media projects, you can build momentum.
In a future post, I’ll tell how we used a series of mini-plans at Mayo Clinic to grow into full-scale incorporation of social media. We’ve had some minor course corrections along the way, but through the process we’ve learned a lot and built momentum that will help carry us forward.
The growth of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter has been phenomenal, particularly in 2009. Facebook now boasts 350 million active users, while Twitter grew by more than 1,500 percent during 2008 – and then the growth really started to take off in 2009.
Thesis 4 would be reasonable, I think, based on these factors alone. Social media are the defining communications trend of this millennium, which is not to say they are the only important means of communication or that they have supplanted TV, radio and newspaper. (OK, well maybe newspaper.) But they embody the communications characteristic that defines our time: that anyone
But Thesis 23 says social media already are bigger than most people realize, because they don’t just include networking sites for which you need an account to participate, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and MySpace.
YouTube is in essence a social networking site for videos, and it is the world’s second-biggest search engine after Google. So everyone who watches a YouTube video is in essence participating in social media. Those videos may even be embedded on mainstream media Web sites. But the reason we even get a chance to see them is because there is a site like YouTube which is open for anyone to upload a video at no cost. This again is how social media are defining this era.
The other reason I say everyone uses social media comes from the nature of blogs. I heard Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet Project speak at a conference in October, and she said something that validated an opinion I’ve long held. She said she expected that her organization would soon retire one of its standard survey questions because it doesn’t provide reliable information. That question asks whether respondents read blogs or not, and the affirmative percentage has held steady at about 30 percent for the last few years.
But the reality is that a blog is just an easy-to-publish Web site that allows comments. So lots of people are reading blogs as they search and surf the Web, and in most cases there isn’t a flashing icon that alerts readers that they are on a blog. I believe that anyone who spends appreciable time on the Web spends at least some time on blogs. Especially given how search engines like Google favor blogs and YouTube videos, it’s almost inconceivable that someone could do 20 Google searches without ending up on at least one site with social media elements.
So between YouTube, the most popular video source on the Web, and blogs, which are the easiest way to publish a Web site, I believe the overwhelming majority of Web users participate in some way with social media, even if it’s only as a consumer of content.
In Thesis 23 as originally posted I said:
For the headline of this post, and in keeping with the provocative nature of social media, I just rounded up and said “Everyone.”
I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration. Everyone uses social media today, whether they know it or not. Even more than that, social media dramatically affect the types and amounts of content available to be consumed.
As social media grow, the proportion of time people spend on sites with social capabilities also will increase, as will the proportion of participants moving from strictly consuming content to at least commenting or rating. And many users will move from the ranks of consumers to producers, especially as the user interfaces continue to get easier.
The fact that you are reading this post means you are a social media user, at least at this moment.
Welcome to the revolution.