Social Media | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Tweetcamp III – Reserve Your Spot

On Monday, July 13 from 2-3 p.m. CDT I will be presenting Tweetcamp III (Twitter hashtag #tweetcamp3) as a training session for Mayo Clinic employees.

You are invited to join remotely. I’ll have details on that in a bit. But meanwhile, here is background on the agenda:

General principles of social media
1. The Dinner Party Rule vs. The Law of Large Numbers
2. How to avoid being “That Guy”
3. Be real and transparent
4. Give more than you take
5. Integrity
6. Mayo Clinic Employee Guidelines
Understanding Twitter
1. Why does it matter?
2. How is it different from Facebook, email, long-format blogs and other forms of electronic communication?
3. So what can you say in 140 characters anyway?
Case studies that show Twitter’s potential, or “A Series of Serendipitous Events”
1. Listening and connecting
2. Real-life meetings
3. How Twitter has contributed to Mayo Clinic’s reputation
4. Journalist interactions and media stories
5. Blogger interactions and resulting posts
How to Tweet Productively – it’s not an oxymoron
1. Understanding #hashtags
2. Twitter etiquette and building “Tweet cred”
3. Using Twitter with Yammer
4. The Twitter API
5. Twitter applications for desktop and mobile
6. Finding “Tweeps”
Assignments and Extra Credit

As we have done with previous Tweetcamps, #tweetcamp3 will be open to participation from outside of Mayo. If you would like to join via Webinar, please leave a comment with your name, city and location below. Here’s why:

Leaving your comment here helps to demonstrate the worldwide community connection potential of Twitter. Part of what we do in Tweetcamp is show how practical Twitter is for bringing a community of interest together on short notice. I will be asking people to introduce themselves at the beginning of #Tweetcamp3, but by leaving a blog comment it’s more of a permanent record to which we can refer.

By leaving your comment, you help show the reach of social media in general, and Twitter in particular…and in a forum to which you can refer later, to show your internal doubters what can happen in less than three days, over a weekend, via Twitter.

Check back here for details on how to participate, or follow the #Tweetcamp3 hashtag.

Update: Here’s the link for the Tweetcamp presentation and video Webcast. Go here at 3 p.m. EDT/2 p.m. CDT/Noon PDT to participate live, and join the discussion via Twitter at #tweetcamp3 or by entering the #tweetcamp3 room at Tweetchat.com.

Please do leave a comment below with your attendance plans, though, so we can have a record of the scope of participation.

FREE Ragan Webinar on Mayo Clinic Social Media

On Tuesday, August 4, I’m going to be presenting a free webinar, sponsored by Ragan Communications, on our Mayo Clinic social media experience.

The webinar was announced this morning, and Ragan CEO Mark Ragan tweeted this afternoon that the response has been strong:

I have no idea what kind of record is in the making, or what the old record might be, but if you’re interested I hope you will sign up to join us. Please pass this along to anyone you think might find it helpful.

8 Steps to Sustainable Blogging

Note: This is a piece I contributed to a social media guide published by the Texas Hospital Association. It’s really very well done (the overall guide, I mean. You’ll need to be the judge on this particular article.) If you’d like to get a copy of the complete guide, which includes contributions from @EdBennett, @ChrisBoyer, @Billfer, @DaphneLeigh and @JennTex, @reedsmith of the THA has them available for sale. You can order one or see the table of contents here. But meanwhile, here’s my contribution:

Many people are intimidated by the thought of starting a blog. Some of this angst results from misunderstandings: they think a blog is some mysterious creation, when in reality it is an easy-to-publish Web site that allows comments. But some of the trepidation results from a true understanding: starting a blog means you need to regularly update it to keep the content fresh.

The purpose of this article is to provide tips for developing a sustainable blog, not in the ecological sense (though the so-called “carbon footprint” of a blog is toddler-sized), but from the “How can I start small and give the blog a strong path to growth?” perspective. Here are a few tips:

Start with a hosted blogging platform. I used http://wordpress.com and highly recommend it. You can get started for free, and for less than $80 a year you can have a blog with the same look as your main Web site that can host a podcast and that is mapped to a subdomain of your main site. But that’s the next step.
Choose your URL and map to it. I mapped my personal blog to https://www.social-media-university-global.org/ and with my work we have blogs at http://sharing.mayoclinic.org/ and http://newsblog.mayoclinic.org/ and http://podcasts.mayoclinic.org/, for instance. By doing this, instead of the default yourname.wordpress.com URL, you preserve your blog’s ability to grow and move later to a self-hosted WordPress installation without having your incoming links break. That preserves your precious Google juice.
Use video. I use and like the Flip video camera, which costs about $150 for standard definition and $230 or so for HD. Other cameras are available at similar prices. Particularly if you have busy subject experts you want to include in the blog, you’ll have much more success if you can embed video instead of asking them to write. And if they ask you to write for them, that will make your blog inauthentic. Being able to upload video quickly via a built-in USB connector makes it easier for everyone.
Use lots of “tags.” Tags are labels you apply to your posts, which are your way of telling search engines what the post is about. This makes it easier for people looking for your information to find it.
Use descriptive titles or headlines. In WordPress, your headline becomes part of the URL, which has search engine implications. So a cute, human-oriented headline may be less helpful from an SEO perspective. A way around this is to edit the URL for search, but still have the clever play on words in the title.
Schedule posts in advance. You can take a vacation from blogging by using this feature in WordPress, which enables you to set a day and time when you want the post to be published. So you can work ahead and then take off on vacation, knowing that the content will stay fresh even while you personally refresh.
Decide whether comment moderation is necessary. Akismet does a great job in WordPress of weeding out spam comments. If you don’t require comment moderation, your readers will have more immediate gratification for sharing their thoughts, and it will be less work for you.
Use multiple contributors. WordPress and some other blog publishing platforms offer hierarchies and workflows, so you can share the publishing load among many users. Contributors can write, but posts must be edited and approved by, well…an editor. Authors can write and publish on their own. Administrators can add other users. Multiple contributors also helps with that vacation we talked about in #6.

Guy Kawasaki Social Media Interview

I was honored a few weeks ago when someone I greatly admire, Guy Kawasaki, did a blog post highlighting one of my presentations about Mayo Clinic’s use of social media on the American Express Open Forum. Apparently he had seen it on Slideshare.net and thought it was worth passing along.

I’ve been a fan of Guy’s ever since I read Selling the Dream in the early 90s. He was the original Macintosh software evangelist, who led the effort to get developers to write software for a computer that didn’t yet exist, and that was going against the IBM juggernaut. As a Mac guy, you might even say he was a hero to me.

So I was pretty jazzed when he included my presentation in his blog post, and even more excited when he said he wanted to do something more in-depth to fill in the gaps that you don’t necessarily get looking at a series of slides. He posted that interview (which we did by email) today on the American Express site, and linked to it from How to Change the World, his personal blog.

I’ve learned a lot from Guy over the years, both from his books and his blog. I especially appreciate his tips on doing good pitches and speeches, and how to be a good panelist (although he puts it less delicately). I try to incorporate his lessons into everything I do in public speaking and forums.

So while he hasn’t actually heard me speak, I’m honored that he liked my slides, and it’s been great getting a chance to interact with him by email. I hope you find our conversation useful.

HeSCA Social Media Presentation

Last Friday I had the opportunity to give a two-part presentation to HeSCA, and its 50th International Conference on Health & Science Communications. The first part was an overview entitled, “Why Social Media are Essential to the Future of Health and Science Communication” and the second was a hands-on workshop on Twitter and 10 steps to getting started with social media, first as an individual and then as an organization. Here, as I promised the group, are the slides:

HeSCA Social Media Presentation

View more presentations from Lee Aase.

I appreciated the opportunity to share with HeSCA, and look forward to feedback and to answering any questions here.