Health Care and Social Media – Social Media Breakfast

Social Media Breakfast was very insightful again and brought together a panel representing interesting approaches to social media in health care.

@AlbertMaruggi posed a few questions and outlined a challenge of health care as an industry. As any industry health care can see a downside of transparency, but the upside is accountability, and ability to prevent negative events from happening. However, @AlbertMaruggi pointed to a gap that industry is facing: general public wants more and now, but evidence-based medicine does not consider this approach effective.

Larissa Rodriquez (HealthPartners and Regions Hospital)

HealthPartners sought differentiation and mascots became a very innovative and fun solution. Social media became a natural extension – mascots don’t talk… social media gave them a voice.

Mascots participated in over 200 events over last year; they allow consumers to experience the brand. Social media is not optional.  Important:

• minimize the risk
• maximize the value

The company is constantly evolving its approach and overcoming challenges:

• experimentation
• recognition of time commitment

Controlling your brand in social media is difficult, however,  Larissa is trying to avoid the first impulse to delete an uncomfortable comment and get the mascot to respond in a clever way.

What is next?  Figuring out how to connect social media to patient care (HIPAA sensitive issue).

How mascots help to promote company’s agenda? Mascots usually have marketing materials.

How the concept was sold internally? Leadership bought in from the beginning and employees were excited about a concept of making a specimen cup a mascot.

HealthPartners would like to be ahead of the other players in the industry and do spend time thinking about strategy.

Jesse Stremcha (Children’s Hospitals)

General recommendation on the social media policy – do not reinvent the wheel; adjust and adopt existing policies. Law lags behind the disruptive technologies.

Interesting example: patients’ communication with each other helps them to cope with the situation better using the experience of others. A physician can say that a child should not eat before the surgery and parents would not serve breakfast, but a tip of covering the food in the house would be very valuable for a parent. A two-year-old would not understand why he cannot eat.

One of the existing sites is Patients Like Me.

Online communication between a physician and a patient also complicated by the question where is doctor-patient relationship starts…

Cindy Fruitrail (Fairview)

@AlbertMaruggi started this part of the conversation by suggesting that “one way to implement social media is not to call it social media.”

All Fairview social media efforts are safely behind company’s firewall.  The problem was that “bright minds did not see each other.”  People were creating places “out there” to communicate, and company did not find it comfortable or productive. The “Facebook” at work was created behind firewall, where clinics could discuss real issues. The name of the tool is i-Connect. It was introduced in a soft launch to strategic areas, which would gain the most from collaboration. Fairview has 12,000 core staff, and 5,000 logged on to the system.

A question from the audience expressed a concern that most likely younger physicians use social networks. At that point the older gentlemen, a physician, who were on the panel, half-jokingly responded: “Look at me!”

Fairview i-Connect has limited tracking capabilities at this point and demographic data is not available.
Some clinics reduced their e-mail time.

Kent Bottles (ICSI) concentrated on disruptive technologies and recommended three books:

Here Comes Everybody – Suddenly everybody has access to professional technology allowing aggregation of people.  One of interesting example is Diabetes Mine – a blog of a person living with diabetes.

The Innovator’s Prescription – “Provocative staff” – what changes are needed and how everything in the industry is changing.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price - another good book to read for health care professionals.

Are doctors “don’t get it” or “get it and don’t like it”?

Kent gave another recommendation (what is common in the industry): don’t expect physicians to write a blog – interview them on camera and post. It could be simple and effective approach.

From another side, physicians do want to communicate online and use social networks; popularity of Sermo proved that physician networks can be very valuable.

Examples of disruptive technologies: a pediatrician eliminated her office an significant part of the overhead by moving her practice into her car. She visits patients in their homes and keeps records on her computer. Most of needed pediatric procedures can be done in patient’s home with minimal equipment.

This Social Media Breakfast was a treasure of interesting examples and also a fun event. Petey P. Cup himself stopped by…

Social Media and Journalism – Social Media Breakfast

Another excellent Social Media Breakfast  – the event  offered an insightful panel Facilitated by Julio Ojeda-Zapata ; the panel included Jason DeRusha, David Brauer, Gene Rebeck, Julia Schrenkler, and Dirk DeYoung.   

Twitter is a source of stories for journalists. Journalists are also using Twitter to form relationships with interesting people… what complicates criticizing these people in the future   However, the end result is still higher quality material.  

Other channels were also mentioned, but Twitter was the most prominent during the discussion. My guess – the nature of journalism is “get the story first” and Twitter as “real time” news source and search possibility fills this need perfectly.  

People not connected with reporting start “committing acts of journalism” when they try to describe interesting events for others… because “people are curious.”  

Bridge collapse was the event often mentioned during the discussion – many journalists “discovered” power of social media at that point. Social media allowed journalists follow the “story” through the images and descriptions that were posted by non-journalists. 

What can be done with social media:

• engage
• crowd source (including listening, getting ideas, etc.)
• promote

Do journalists have to be involved into social media? Not necessarily. If a person has an established following, sources, and network (does not need to engage, crowd source, or promote) social media may not bring enough benefit. However, anybody new to a particular market (geographic or vertical) can benefit from the opportunity.  “Any new journalist should be there.”

One of the panelists mentioned that social media is changing the business model and forcing design, marketing, and business closer together. This development is very interesting to watch…

Question: “Is using Twitter as news source similar to using Wikipedia as a research tool?”  

Answer: yes, the information can not be totally trusted, but both sources are excellent in identifying topics for further investigation. “Is it really different from an old ‘tip line’?”

Typical approach: posting a question to social media resources… waiting for answers… writing the story about the topic using the answers. (I personally watched this scenarios evolved several times and participated in some of them trying to answer the question.)

Monetization… The panel did not quite believe that social media presented monetization opportunity… However, the presentation below (thanks to Mashable article ) gives wonderful overview of social media ROI for a business (though not a publication).

The question about the future:

The news business model is not clear now. However, “somebody would always need to ‘dig the news’ for those who will pay for them.”

Whatever happens… Social media works… if it works, it will evolve.  We can not predict the future and the question “where do you see yourself in 5 years?” no longer makes sense. Not many companies will survive long enough, everything is constantly changing – we need to embrace the change.

“If this question was asked five years ago, nobody would be able to predict that we would be at Social Media Breakfast now… “ 

Mobile SaaS and Promotion of Social Media – Social Media Breakfast 19

Social Media Breakfast #19  was as useful as usually. I noticed over last eight events that the audience is changing – it becomes more mainstream and corporate. Acceptance of social media is growing, so is the number of professionally dressed people in the audience…. This is good.

Lisa Foote  started her presentation with the reminder of growing use of mobile. Significant growth of Facebook, Pandora, and Twitter is now coming from Mobile. Socialnomics09  gives more impressive numbers on mobile use and social media in general (video below).

 

80% of mobile phones are not smart phones – this needs to be considered in marketing programs. “Smart” phone is the opposite of “feature phone” – an appropriate definition for “not smart enough” phone  To make applications useful for mobile devices, applications became “light,” most concentrated on content.  

Lisa introduced a new company MixMobi that provides mobile marketing opportunities (and instant analytics!!) on SaaS basis. Social Media Breakfast attendees could see creation of a mobile ad and posting it through Twitter. Attendees could access the ad from their mobile devices and instantly see the metrics on the MixMobi interface. The interface is easy to use, and when available, the service  should start from $19.95 per month…  There were conversations about a totally free version, but it does not seem to be available at this point.

MixMobi created the platform to answer most common requests from customers and provides a very extensive feature set.  The company also emphasized instant and correct analytics (yes, mobile analytics is a problem   ) and ability to promote campaigns quickly in different media. Anybody interested in private beta testing should send Lisa a note.

One of the customers was a company specializing in promotion of private colleges to prospective students – The Lawlor Group who used MixMobi’s technology very successfully. 

In the intermission, Zappos’ culture books were presented to two forward-looking people who run Social Media Breakfast.

Yes, Zappos culture is legendary, but I have not realized that it would be analyzed in a sizable volume…

 

The second part of the event was devoted to promotion of social media in the enterprise. At that point corporate presence in the audience was felt very strongly – in problems that social media enthusiasts had and in their solutions.

Some of the most interesting points:

Internal promotion: focus on a particular task, a business problem that needs to be solved, not the tool. Sometimes, the tool may not even need to be named. Instead of suggesting employees to use Yammer, what could be faced with “oh, one more ‘thing’ I need to learn…” we should tell the user what he/she can do and give username and password. Social media tools are just “new tools to solve business problems.”

Interesting problem solving: Albert  mentioned a situation when two groups worked together in different time and it was not easy to encourage them to communicate. People did not want to go to the same work portal during their time off. However, giving them opportunity to communicate through mobile interface was successful  – it was not considered “work” in the eyes of the employees.

Albert also mentioned Running a Hospital – a blog he believes important for anybody in the health care industry.

Importance of the organizational culture: companies need to have a receptive culture for the social media to be successful. “Culture first” – social media should not be considered as “other” – its use should start from a business gap and how to fill it…

Titles and generations:
The executives are often people who understand the benefits of new approaches to reach business objectives, but middle management can be a problem. Middle managers see employees’ involvement into social media as a distraction from the task of their individual departments. The problem is not to “find executive support,” but to “find us” – the enthusiasts in different parts of the organization.

Boomers – many eager to adopt the tools, but concentrate of the tools rather than their application.
Generation X – “Hooray – we found the tools that allow us to do [something] more efficiently!” X wants to be relevant and (many) happy to embrace the tools.
Generation Y – familiar with the tools, but has no idea how to use them for business, lacks work experience; can not get the content for the tools.

Generations need to cooperate… but the enthusiasts are found in each generation.

Security concern: Yammer has file-sharing capability… it is dangerous… Security concern is a “people” issue, not the technology issues… the same risk existed with typewriters, e-mail, phone, Facebook, Twitter, etc. However, the security needs to be addressed through rules of use and basic education of employees.

Popularity of social media: “internet trends” free class at the library changed to “intro to social media;” Science Museum classes on social media were overbooked since conception.

New tool to investigate: staction a project management (variation on a basecamp) tool that excited one of the attendees of Social Media Breakfast.

New Mobile Marketing group in town: Mobile MSP – seem to have a Twitter account only, but the first meeting is scheduled on September 28 – we will see what happens next…

Social Media Breakfast at the Fair

OK – I need to show up on the Social Media Breakfast with the device that allows participating in… social media   We had quite interesting quiz, and I was right a few times!  Unfortunately, I could not twit the correct answer   Next time… next time.

One of the sponsors of the event introduced BusinessCard2  – an online form of a business card. I absolutely had to create my card http://vanessabright.businesscard2.com/ , however, I am not sure how this new product would compete with LinkedIn, that already has most of the same information.

It is interesting to watch new web sites for creating business cards, online resumes, and online portfolios… My guess: LinkedIn smartly integrates other social networks (SlideShare, Blogs, documents, etc.) and can function as a “primary” resume/business card online. However, new, niche applications will probably continue to appear.

 Another interesting note: though most professional job seekers are online, there is a difference between the places where specific demographic tend to look for a job. Younger demographic is more likely to start from Facebook – a more familiar social network than LinkedIn.

Though this event was fun and very appropriate for the Fair, I hope to see more traditional presentations or panels in the future.

Nonprofits and Social Media

Quite interesting panel of social media practitioners working for non-profits (Social Media Breakfast 17) concluded that right now… “we are still learning.”

Points from the discussion:

• Some organizations reach the same audience through social media and use it as a different channel of communication. Others, however, are reaching different audience (usually younger or not local).
• No good practice yet on managing local/national brunches of the organization (one Twitter account, or one per location, or one per […]?)
• Fundraising: online is a good channel for low-level donations.
• Getting an organization’s leadership on-board with social media might be difficult. In a political office, giving a camera to the politician was successful. However, “over-analyzing” can lead to delays… for one organization, thinking too long about setting a page on MySpace resulted to a lost MySpace opportunity; while the decision was discussed Facebook replaced MySpace as the most attractive channel.
• Nonprofit organizations have the same concerns as for-profit organizations about social media. Nonprofits worry about message control and may not consider the new channel as anything more than a fleeting fad. However, the response is the same: the conversation is already happening… are we willing to join?
• Separating (or not separating?) personal and organizational brand is still in discussion. The brand is often merged… but the leadership of the organization should be supportive. From personal perspective: maybe better to have a personal account? “Do you want your own brand to be what your job is?” However, the blurring is happening in practice.
• Idea for promotions of non-profits in social media “20 things you may not know about [….your organization…]”
• An emphasis on making sure that channels/technologies need to be appropriate for the target audience (MySpace is used by African-American community, teenagers like texting).
• If the organization has different brunches, sharing successes in social media can be effective (the channel is changing quickly)
• Accessibility should be important for nonprofits: not everybody might have access to latest technology – the services might need to be duplicated via other channels.
• Twitern (twittering intern) position – do not give somebody temporary manage you social media strategy
• What is difference between nonprofit and for-profit organizations? Nonprofits are generally less controversial “everybody loves libraries!”  The motivation behind becoming  a fan of a nonprofit on Facebook might be different; a person might want to be seen by friends as a supported of a certain cause.
• Some non-profit social media successes: library created a social catalog allowing commenting on the books and creating a reader profile, surprising success from fundraising through causes Facebook page, giving congressman a flip camera (camera is used, content is interesting for the voters). 

Kay Roseland took a few wonderful pictures from the event   one of which I used. However, I need to learn to smile when I happen to be among those who are photographed  ;-)

Online Personal and Professional Hubs and Influence of Social Media on Advertising – Social Media Breakfast

As usually phenomenal event  sponsored by PartnerUp  and Deluxe.  Steve Borsch  (Connecting the Dots)  presentation pointed out still new ideas (and tools) on the topic that seemed to be discussed so much.

Steve described the shift of linear thinking to parallel and associative, and showed the most comprehensive “map” of social space I have seen so far.

Other interesting ideas from the presentation:

• Participation in social networking definitely accelerating; LinkedIn probably benefited from the economy the most
• 93% of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media; 85% of Americans believe a company should interact via social media.
• There is an expectation that a person should have one place – a hub of his or her social activities
• Think about yourself as a “curator”
• Blogs are not disappearing – they are becoming mainstream media

Today all media is social and all social is media

Steve Rubel, SVP Edelman and Associates

Digital lifestream aggregators – a new one – posterous

Tim Brunelle  presented a few ideas about influence of social media on advertising. The most surprising for me was a thought that social media is keeping the advertising alive… We often hear that the advertisement is dead (what makes sense), but Tim argued that companies still need to communicate with consumers and the combination of social media and advertisement could produce the best result. Interesting…

Social Media Breakfast – Online Reputation Management

Enlightening event with the presentation that could be considered a treasure of facts and numbers (Wow! 65 slides!)  I wish Greg Swan and Christopher Lower had the rest of the day to continue

The most curious points and links from the presentation:

Free reputation monitoring services:
http://www.google.com/alerts
http://technorati.com/
http://w.moreover.com/
http://alp-uckan.net/free/monitorthis/
http://www.blogpulse.com/
http://www.twittermeter.com/  (try Firefox; issues in IE)
http://www.tweetvolume.com/  (love it!)
http://backtweets.com/
http://monitter.com/
http://tweetbeep.com/ (free Tweeter alerts by e-mail)
http://blogsearch.google.com/ (Google Blog search)
http://www.backtype.com/ ( Comments monitoring)

Paid reputation monitoring services:
          Small business
http://www.trackur.com/ (starts from $18 a months, free trial)
          Enterprise
http://www.buzzlogic.com/
http://www.radian6.com/
http://www.factiva.com/ (seems to have free trial)

How to respond to online reputation issues:

• investigate complains
• respond at the same site / same platform
• respond as quickly as possible (after the comment was investigated)
• you may need legal assistance (make sure legal team has a specialist in the area)
• host the conversation (complaints on your own site are easier to control – make them possible)
• make sure your brand is reserved at various sites http://www.usernamecheck.com/

Why all of it is necessary?

60% of Americans use social media
85% of Americans say social media presence for a company is not enough; the company should interact with its customers

Social media can amplify poor service very quickly  – FTD’s Mother’s Day Mishap (by TechCrunch)  

70% of global executives fear for their corporate reputations as online risks grow

66% of global executives are either unaware or do not want to admit that employees are badmouthing their companies online

Domino’s case study
The infamous video taken a tall on Domino’s perception – it changed from 81% positive to 64% negative. Cost to Domino is estimated over $50,000,000. Interesting: Domino’s PR agency suggested initially ignoring the video (now Domino has a different PR agency   ).

Domino’s video response

Shevron case study

What did Chevron do when it learned that “60 Minutes” was preparing a potentially damaging report about oil company contamination of the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador?

It hired a former journalist to produce a mirror image of the report, from the corporation’s point of view.

The number of views was much smaller, but – it was an attempt by the company to create its own media.

There are many industry–specific sites featuring reviews

SEO can be a temporary fix to promote positive online reports and push back negative results. But…as soon as the complainer refreshes his or her post – it will move straight to the top. The problem needs to be addressed.

Bacon was sponsored by Concordia University MBA program.  :-)

Social Media Breakfast – Personal Branding

Mykl Roventine  gave a wonderful overview of personal branding.  Oh, yes, I will be busy after this presentation… defining and correcting my personal brand online. Now I have an excellent ever-changing “instruction,” but – what is more important – an understanding of the “big picture…” Social Media Breakfast is “must attend” event from my perspective.

Personal brand is important:

• You want to stand out of the crowd
• Is your digital footprint exactly what you want to portray?
• Now is the window of opportunity
• Yes, you are a brand!

Examples to check:

• Chris Brogan
• Rick Mahn

So, what should you do to build your personal brand?

1. Identify your personal brand

“You are not defined by your job title, and you are not confined by your job description.”  Brand is authentic – what makes you different

• Goals?
• Audience?
• Value of you to others? (if not clear – ask others)

Create a brand statement.

2. How are you branded?  Chose the name (better real name; be consistent)

3. Change all your accounts to the name

4. Change your photos  to one consistent image (that hopefully recognizable)  – get Gravatar

5. Create your brand story

Create a story, which would be easy to add to different accounts and social networks

• super short
• short
• long (a few paragraphs)

Might make sense to ask for proofreading help. Then go back to social media sites and fill out all information (it should be consistent).

6. Create a destination

• Decide on a destination. Most logical “About” page on your blog.
• Point everything to this page.
• Long version of your story should include links to your other networks
• Make sure that you have simple contact information
• Fill out your Google profile 

7. Tie is all together – link everything to your destination. Be consistent.

8. Share.

Comment using you first and last name, link to your destination. Thank commenters on your blog.

9. Monitor your brand

• Google alerts 
• Social too

Your personal brand is always evolving.

The video from the event was posted on ning.

Social Media Breakfast – Community Managers

Great conversation! Valuable ideas!

Connie Bensen clarified basic misconceptions (at least in my understanding) and answered questions from the audience.

Notes from the event:

• What does the community manager do? The community manager helps the community to exist… encourages participation of those who would not do it otherwise…
• Communities are coming into b-to-b
  • At the top of the sales funnel – education about the field
  • Middle of the sales funnel – specifying product/solution type
  • Client support
• What a community can do for b-to-b: feedback for product development, QA, PR
• Social media can also play an internal role of connecting departments and breaking the silos
• Community manager might be effective in inviting everybody interested in the company and teaching them how to use social tools… key idea – everybody interested, not everybody required…
• Where is the community belong in the organization?  It depends on the business goals: if the goal is customer care, the call center might be a good place…
• The dilemma of the time: a community manager might develop strong personal brand while working for a company and then… leave the company. In this case, the company will loose the “brand equity” that the individual has built. Should people develop “company brands” rather than “personal brands’?  From another side – personal brands help companies….
• Tools (new for me):
  • http://www.retweetradar.com/
  • https://cotweet.com/
  • http://www.connecttweet.com/
• Social media is not a fad… we are shifting toward knowledge economy and social media is necessary.

Social Media Breakfast – Irresistibly Delicious

I finally was able to attend Social Media Breakfast – loved it – and immediately registered for the Ning. Great group (part of which I knew already) and exciting topic. This was an anniversary meeting for Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis, and all I was thinking… what took me so long? 

At the time when even BusinessWeek writes “For companies, resistance to social media is futile…”  keeping in touch with the industry becoming more and more important. Even if I don’t completely agree with every point of the article, I am so happy to see it online.

Two little notes from the event:

• WordPress blogs might be better indexed if they are hosted by WordPress comparing to other blogs… It verifies my preference for blogs hosted in a “proper” blogging neighborhood…  because the purpose of the blog is to be found first, and look/feel/familiar CMS second…
• People who twit too often may loose their followers… I must admit that I “un-followed” some particularly fruitful twitters in my network too, but have never thought about the issue…