Social Media | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

A Taste of the Tools that are Changing the World

This is my presentation today at the Rochester, Minn. Thursday Noon Rotary Club.

Social Media 101: A Taste of the Tools that are Changing the World

I was asked to provide a 101 course in Social Media in 20 minutes. It’s a nice opportunity to develop an overview presentation that is a more concise version of what I typically do. And I’ve got a little surprise in store that doesn’t show up in the slides. I’ll update with that later.

My aim for the presentation is to help the participants see the power and potential of social media, but also to remove some of the mystery so they will be encouraged to try these tools personally.

How did I do?

Update: Here’s a photo someone sent me during the presentation (click photo to enlarge):

And the little surprise was a live Skype video conference with my daughter, Rachel, and granddaughter, Evelyn. Instead of just talking about how Skype offers Jetsons-like functionality, I decided to demonstrate.

Mayo Clinic Social Media Update

I’m making a several presentations over the next week, and delivering variations of what you see embedded below. I prefer to not distribute the slides in advance as handouts, so that people aren’t distracted and reading ahead, and so we can all literally be on the same page as we have a conversation.

I also don’t want to have people thinking they need to feverishly take notes, so it’s helpful to be able to tell people just to sit back, relax and discuss, knowing that they can go back and refer to the slides online later.

My presentations vary somewhat by audience, depending on whether I need to introduce the social media tools (and how much time I have been allotted), so what you see below is the “full meal deal.”

Mayo Clinic Social Media Update

View more documents from Lee Aase.

Here are links to some of the Mayo Clinic social media sites I will be mentioning. I invite you to check them out:

I welcome any questions or comments from any of the presentations here, or feel free to tweet them to me (@LeeAase). The great thing about having that conversation in public is that it’s not just one-on-one; on a blog (or on the really small blog called Twitter) others can learn from the discussion, too. But even more importantly, they can contribute their thoughts…so we’re all richer for having brought in diverse experiences and perspectives.

This also is helpful so I can take a snapshot of where we are in our implementation of social media at Mayo Clinic as of September, 2009.

RAQ: Do You Need to Be Unique to Profit from Social Media?

At the FUEL social media meeting in Rochester, someone asked:

Don’t you really have to be special or unique to gain from social media? I mean, if there are 200,000 T-shirt vendors on Twitter, aren’t you going to waste a lot of time trying to get noticed? What if there is nothing that really sets you apart from others. Aren’t you going to be lost in the crowd, spending a lot of time for no gain?

Given that this presentation was in early July, I guess this question no longer fits the recency criterion for an RAQ, but I think it’s still a valid question to discuss. It also reminds me of something in the printed materials my son got when starting high school. It said something like, “You’re unique, just like everyone else,” which struck him as extremely funny.

It’s a reasonable question to ask, whether you have to be a major brand like Mayo Clinic or Dell to derive value from social media. And obviously an organization like Mayo Clinic has some significant advantages, such as passionate patients and employees and a history of making its reputation through word-of-mouth.

But as we heard from Tom Vanderwell yesterday, there’s plenty of opportunity for people to derive significant benefit from being engaged in social media, even if you’re selling something that is a commodity. After all, many people are just going to shop for the best interest rates online, and a loan is a loan is a loan. Through his blog, Tom has set himself apart from many of his local peers, and also has joined a network of national professionals involved in real estate and mortgages. Because others have come to know him through blogging, Facebook and Twitter, they trust him. And he’s getting business because of it.

So does that mean there is unlimited potential for all of the other mortgage lenders in western Michigan to profit similarly from social media? Nope. There will be some room for others, but they will need to establish “tweet cred.” And the community will pretty quickly sniff out those who are just into social media as a “quick buck” tactic. Social media make it free to communicate, but they also provide mechanisms for people to fight back against those who pollute the digital commons and don’t contribute meaningfully.

If you have a passion for a subject area (like Tom does with mortgages) and want to communicate about it in a way that helps others, you’ll probably do well with it. You don’t have to necessarily be unique; in fact, it helps to have at least a few others in your digital community so you can build off each other’s contributions.

And like Tom Vanderwell, you should think about how the advent of free and easy digital communications can help you conceive your business in a way that transcends geographic limitations.

Business Blogging ROI

“What’s the ROI?” is among the most common questions people in business have about social media (right after (Isn’t that risky?”) and as P.F. Anderson says, many of the benefits and costs are intangible.

I’ve previously written about my experience connecting with Tom Vanderwell and how I saw one of his tweets about being a Mayo Clinic patient, which led to me meeting him in Grand Rapids, MI a few days later. This post summarized some of the outgrowths from that first interaction. So I thought it would be helpful to share another video interview with Tom Vanderwell, who has used his Straight Talk about Mortgages and Real Estate blog (and Twitter) successfully in his mortgage lending career.

Tom doesn’t get into the exact dollar return he’s seen through blogging, but he gives examples of the business he’s gotten in states far beyond his western Michigan home base. I would venture that just one of those deals would pay his out-of-pocket costs for blogging for, to be conservative… 50 years.

Of course that doesn’t take his time into account. But in a business like his, where word-of-mouth matters, I’m also betting that some of the loans he has made have led to recommendations for others.

But most importantly, he’s finding a way to grow beyond his narrowly defined geographic base (and one where the economy is even worse than the rest of the country.) And he’s finding an outlet for his passion: he’s able to have a business that’s about helping people instead of always just pushing more loan volume. He can serve his customers and feel good about it.

I say that’s a great return.

SMUGgle Interview: Aaron Hughling

I had a chance to meet Tuesday with Aaron Hughling (@aaronhughling), all-around Web guy for Scott & White Healthcare, and his colleague Rhona Williams London, who is the head of PR for Scott & White. After about a year of investigation and preparation, their system (based in Temple, TX) is getting ready to launch into Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and a couple of blogs.

Aaron and I have been interacting through Twitter and email for several months, and I met Rhona at a conference in Phoenix in June. It was great that they were in Minnesota so we could sit down for a chat among SMUGgles.

Aaron also said he’s excited to be attending, along with one or two others from Scott & White, the social media summit for healthcare Mayo Clinic is hosting with Ragan Communications in October in Scottsdale, Arizona. I’m looking forward to it, too; if you attend I believe you’ll come away both inspired to bring social media to your organization and encouraged by the examples you’ll see and hear. There’s still time to register, so I hope you’ll join us.

After our conversation, I asked Aaron if he would be willing to share some of the things he’s learned through his social media journey. Here’s what he had to say. It’s some good advice:

What lessons from your journey into social media do you think would be most helpful to others looking to get started? If you had one thing you could go back and do differently, what would it be? Or if you haven’t taken the plunge, what questions do you have?