Tag: Social Media

Lee Odden Interview

I was honored last week to have a chance to be interviewed by Lee Odden, a fellow Minnesotan with a cool first name who also has one of the top PR, marketing and SEO blogs. Here is one of his 10 questions, along with my answer, published this morning in his post, “Social Media Interview: Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic”:

Do you test specific social media tactics or do you go full on with a social media strategy for each initiative? Knowing what you know now, what approach would you recommend that companies take when they’re starting out?

I recommend what I call the “MacGyver Mindset,” named after the TV character played by Minnesota native Richard Dean Anderson. Look at the tools and resources you have available and how you can adapt them to meet your communication and marketing goals, and empower staff to explore.

Focus first on the free platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, mainly because that’s where you will find communities already gathered. This also enables you to prove your concepts before deciding whether to launch a community of your own.

Strategic thinking can be an excuse for inaction, and just as it’s easier to alter the direction of a moving car than it is to get one started from a dead stop, I believe it’s best to build social media momentum through low-cost experimentation and iteration.

Read the full interview here on Lee’s TopRank blog.

Healthcare Social Media Events This Week

I’m taking three days off for travel this week, and look forward to a big virtual event on Tuesday and interacting in real life on Wednesday and Thursday at some interesting healthcare social media events.

  • On Tuesday, I’m going to be in Chicago for some meetings and then to present a Webinar for Ragan Communications based on our social media experience at Mayo Clinic. Registration is FREE and open until noon CDT on Tuesday, August 4, so there is still time to sign up if you’d like to join. The Webcast runs from 2-3 p.m. on Tuesday. I will be tweeting using the #mayoragan hashtag.
  • On Wednesday, I will be in Indianapolis for the Eli Lilly Web 2.0 Summit. I understand there will be about 20 outside presenters for this event, which is for Lilly employees, so I look forward to an opportunity to meet some folks face-to-face with whom I’ve previously only conversed via Twitter. Not sure what the Twitter hashtag will be, but if you follow me on Twitter (always a good idea!) you’ll discover it soon enough.
  • On Thursday, I’m in Omaha for a breakfast with the American Marketing Association’s healthcare interest group. Contact Megan O’Dea if you want more info.

The interest in social media among healthcare communicators, marketers and medical staff is extremely high right now, as this story from Forbes.com indicates. For example, I understand that more than 1,500 people have signed up for the Ragan Webinar. They aren’t all necessarily involved in healthcare; some may be from other industries. So, I’m looking forward to that “broadcast” opportunity to reach a large and widely dispersed group, but the in-person meetings will also be great, allowing more in-depth discussions.

And speaking of in-person discussions, if you’re involved in health care and interested in social media, I hope you’ll consider attending the social media summit Mayo Clinic is hosting and co-sponsoring with Ragan in October. It will be on our Mayo Clinic Scottsdale campus. I’m excited about the faculty we’ve assembled and I’m confident it’s going to be a great couple of days in which we can all learn from each other.

Minnesota Social Media Innovators List

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In the last 10 days or so, Arik Hanson took nominations for a list he called “Top 20 Minnesota Social Media Innovators.” It was a neat project, and looking through the nominees introduced me to a lot of interesting people I haven’t yet had a chance to meet, since I live about 100 south of the Twin Cities. And I’m glad he opened the list beyond the Twin Cities area, so that we who live in what used to be called “Greater Minnesota” could be considered.

Yesterday he announced the list, and I think the best thing about it is he sorted it alphabetically. 😉

As Arik says, one strong message from this project is how vibrant the Twin Cities/Minnesota social media community is. I haven’t been able to attend the MSP Social Media Breakfast yet, but I understand the attendance has been in the hundreds, and look forward to getting there sometime soon. And earlier this month we had about 120 people attend a social media seminar sponsored by the Rochester (Minn.) Chamber of Commerce.

This is also something of the power of social media; you don’t have to live in a huge media market like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or San Francisco to use social media tools creatively and effectively.

Thanks to Arik for undertaking this project and introducing me to some people doing really interesting work, and I’m honored to be included.

Two Kinds of Viral Videos

I got a request from Jason DeRusha of WCCO TV to shoot and upload a video talking about some of our videos at Mayo Clinic that have “gone viral.” So here’s a little discussion of the two basic kinds of viral videos we’ve had:

Here’s the blog post on Sharing Mayo Clinic where we embedded the video of the Cowans. You can see other highly viewed videos on our Mayo Clinic YouTube channel.

I will update this post later with some more details, but mainly want to get the video available for Jason.

Update: Here’s the story Jason ran. My video submission was mentioned briefly at the end.