Tag: socialmedia

SMUG Campus in Summer

When SMUG was officially established (last January) as an on-line university providing hands-on help in learning about social media and how to practically apply these tools in businesses and other large organizations, I included some campus photos in our SMUG Facebook group.

The photos included interior shots of our turn-of-the-20th-century architecture as well as some exteriors. But let’s face, for most people Minnesota in January seems less appealing than it does with our lush spring and summer foliage, so here are a couple of videos that show our Ivy covered walls:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_9aS2e8f1g]

And our Oak-shrouded “Old Main” campus, including a preview of SMUG’s North Annex (a.k.a. Aase family garage), which is under construction and will include “classroom” space on the second level.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgI43vHL6wo]

By the way, if any philanthropists are interested in funding the SMUG campus expansion, your generosity may be appropriately recognized through the facility naming. 😉

Podcasting 107: Posting Your Podcast Episode

Here is a slidecast with audio showing and telling the steps involved in posting an audio file to a wordpress.com blog. Please check out the prerequisites in the Podcasting curriculum to prepare you for creating your first podcast episode.


Now that you’ve seen how it’s done, it’s time for you to join the fun.

Assignments:

  1. Create and prepare an audio file using Audacity and iTunes (See Podcasting 103 and 104 for instructions.)
  2. Get your own wordpress.com blog if you haven’t started one already, or at least get a username so I can add you as an author for the SMUG Podcast Blog.
  3. Ask to be added as an author, and tell me the title you would like to use for your podcast.
  4. Create a new post that includes your audio file.
  5. Post the link to your post in the comments below.
  6. Get ready for Podcasting 108, 109 and 110 which will tell you how to subscribe to your podcast, enhance your feeds and promote your podcast’s existence.

Updated: The file type Toby had sent me was a .m4a, which I could play in iTunes but which doesn’t appear to be a type recognized for podcasts. I will try to get this as an mp3 so we can move to the next stage.

Still Later: I converted Toby’s file to an mp3 using iTunes, and now it works. In Podcasting 108 I will show you how to subscribe to your podcast (or Toby’s), and where the information you put in the blog post appears in iTunes.

ALI Social Media Summit Highlights

Today I attended the Advanced Learning Institute’s Social Media Summit at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, and presented a case study on our social media efforts at Mayo Clinic.

Chairman Michael Rudnick gave a good overview, Andy Sernovitz of GasPedal did his usual great presentation, and we also heard from Patty Crowley of Johnson & Johnson on the new intranet portal J&J has launched for its IT employees, and from Jeremy Lasich, the Deputy Director for Communications Fairfax County, Virginia. I will have a follow-up post about Jeremy’s experience, since it will be highly relevant for the group for which I am presenting a workshop tomorrow.

I had lunch with a few of the ALI participants, and Jorge from HEB said my demonstration of the Flip video camera was his most important take-away so far:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kpZ8HWh3RY]

And just after he said that, one of our lunchmates shared her family’s Mayo Clinic story. I won’t use her name, since this story is about her Mom’s experience with Mayo Clinic (and she corrected herself afterward that the problem was carbon monoxide, not dioxide):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZEMRPrV28s]

This all just goes to show both the power of sharing personal stories and how quick and convenient the Flip video camera is. Editing the clips was really simple, and took just a couple of minutes.

As Andy Sernovitz says, in word of mouth marketing you first need to give people something to talk about, and then make it easy for them to share. Clearly the Flip camera and YouTube are tools that make sharing easier.

Podcasting 105: WordPress.com is My Podcast Server (and Yours)

Note: This post is part of the Podcasting curriculum for Social Media University, Global (SMUG). SMUG provides free, hands-on training in applied social media, so enroll today.

Once you have recorded your audio files using Audacity, and added ID3 Tags in iTunes, your next steps in becoming a podcaster are to find a server to which you can upload your files, and to create an RSS feed that you can post to the iTunes store and to other podcast directories.

Fortunately, you can do both of these things in wordpress.com for just $20 a year by purchasing the 5GB space upgrade for your wordpress.com blog. But for SMUG students I have developed a way that you can experiment with developing your own podcast, and create your own podcast feed, absolutely FREE.

I have set up a separate blog called the SMUG Podcast Blog and have paid the $20 fee that enables me to upload mp3 files. But I have more space now than I could possibly use, so for anyone who is enrolled as a SMUG student, I will add you as an author for that blog, and will create a category you can use for your podcast posts and to set up your RSS feed. The steps to get started are in your homework assignment for this course.

Homework Assignments:

  1. If you haven’t started your WordPress.com blog yet, do it now. You will need a WordPress.com account to be added as an author for the SMUG Podcasts blog.
  2. When you have your WordPress.com account, send me the e-mail address you used to create the account. I need that to find you on WordPress.com and add you as an author.
  3. Tell me what you would like as a name for your podcast. Mine is Chancellor Conversations. Whatever you decide, we’ll create a category on the SMUG podcast blog.

In Podcasting 106 and 107 I will show you how to set up your podcast feed and create a post.  And if anyone wants to volunteer to be the “guinea pig” for those courses, please send me a message and we can use your podcast for a class demonstration.

Managing for Excellence Presentation

Today I’m doing a presentation to the Managing for Excellence meeting at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. This is a meeting of all Jacksonville supervisors, and I get a chance to tell them about what Mayo is doing in social media.

On our internal blog I did a post with links to some of our projects (many of which I had previously highlighted here), but I’m closing my fast-paced presentation (I only get 15 minutes) with a little more “show” to go along with the “tell.”

I’m planning to show:

I will be updating this post during the meeting today, embedding a video, for instance.

 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m3vfIgfTVI]

If you’re interested in learning more and getting information on topics from Flickr to Twitter to RSS to Wikis, check out the Enroll Now page for your continuing education options.