Jun 13
Love0

Businesses: Backing into Blogging

By Communications

It’s funny how businesses have thrown themselves into Twitter and Facebook interaction without backing up and considering blogging. Many of them have blogs that were once established but now, sadly neglected. To what do they link on these other platforms, if not ever their own valuable content? While I endorse the use of social networks to engage with and build a community, doing so without a blog is very odd.

Businesses need blogs for several reasons.

  1. A blog will create organic search engine optimization. Nothing is more valuable to a business than a website with frequently updated content as a method of activating the search engines and attracting customers to your business’ content.
  2. Blog content demonstrates thought leadership — if you can say all you have to say 140 characters at a time, be my guest, but most of us need a bit more room to demonstrate our wealth of knowledge on a particular topic.
  3. A blog creates an archive of information that represents your business. It’s common for a visitor to your website to spend time on several pages of content — give them a reason to stick around.
  4. Blogging helps create relationships between the business and its customers. When visitors read content by individuals in the business, they come to know those people and relationships form over time. Allow this to happen; it’s powerful stuff.
  5. Blogging helps businesses figure out who they are. Due to two-way conversation, invited feedback and discussion and often the process of writing and working things out with words, sometimes businesses have watershed moments and redefine their mission. It’s very cool to watch.

If your business has jumped into Twitter and Facebook based on peer pressure, but has skipped blogging entirely let me know. Why? And do you agree that it’s time to start blogging?

Jun 08
Love0

Who Sees @ Replies on Twitter?

By Communications

What? Not work-appropriate?

I’ve been seeing lots of Twitter users making a common mistake. I’m on a mission to help change this.

Here’s the deal: an @ reply, such as the one below, is only visible to the mutual followers of the parties involved. So the following tweet only shows up in the tweet streams of my followers and of @kraftykmay’s. (I had tweeted that I thought I should acquire a fascinator for use in the home office.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/Marijean/status/78560816181411840″]

@kraftykmay and I have a lot of the same friends. They “get” us and would be following the (albeit silly) conversation.

Here’s another example of a tweet that’s a reply, but that would benefit a bigger audience that just the mutual followers.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/RelayFoods/status/78492572342943744″]

Later, I learned about a blog from a girl with cancer and thought that not only my friend Darah Bonham who runs @abolishcancer would be interested in reading more about, but that all of my followers would be interested as well. To make sure all of my followers could see the tweet,  I did something really simple:

I put a . in front of the @

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/Marijean/status/78564244085415936″]

It doesn’t have to be a period — that’s just the simplest solution. Anything put in front of the @ will do.

Now go Tweet and reply (judiciously, of course) so that everyone who follows you may see it.

You’re welcome. Now somebody buy me a fascinator and I promise to post a pic of me wearing it.

More valuable Twitter tips.

Jun 07
Love0

On Mistakes, and the Benefit of Learning from Them

By Public Relations

Mistakes.

If you can’t admit you’ve made them, you don’t belong here. I’ve made a lot of them; some of them real doozies.  I’ve come  to appreciate the benefit of mistakes; that for every one I’ve made, even the ones that harbor deep regret, I’ve learned, and become better for the experience.

A while ago I watched this video and became captivated by Kathryn Schultz’s topic: read Why Being Wrong is Good for You. I think this is the kind of lesson we all need now and again; and even if we already know it, is worth the regular reminder.

Communications — the industry in which I work — would not exist if it weren’t for mistakes — misunderstandings, missteps (intentional or not) by corporations necessitating public relations strategy, major snafus discovered and shared by media and social media that can make or break a brand’s reputation. I should be grateful for mistakes! Much of what I do centers on keeping clients from making them, or helping clean them up when they occur.

James Dyson, famed innovator and vacuum cleaner mogul shares his story of the 5,000 mistakes he made before creating the Dyson vacuum that took his name to the top of the industry.

If you’re brave enough, tell me in the comments about a mistake you’ve made, and learned from.

While you eat your lunch today, (come on, I know you’ll be at your desk munching on a sandwich), watch the following 10 minute video. Diana Laufenberg teaches us how we learn from mistakes, and why it’s important.

Jun 06
Love0

Scales, at Last, Tip Colleges and Universities into Social Media

By Social Media

This week, our youngest child graduates from eighth grade, goes on to high school and has nothing to do with us again till she’s thirty. As a graduation gift, she asked for a guide to colleges and universities so she can begin planning her future. You know; the future that’s still four years away. She’s a planner, that one. Since we have done this dance before with an older child, and due to the work I’ve done with universities providing public relations, marketing and social media support, I’ve kept close tabs on what online tools and communities are available for those beginning the search and navigating college admissions.

A tool I like a lot and our daughter spent hours playing with yesterday, is the college search query from College Board. Quiz-style, the user selects parameters important to them, e.g. public, private or no preference; distance from home; academic programs and more. The more strict you are with parameters, the narrower the results (our daughter had to loosen up her demands to get a few more search results).

We’re obviously a few years away from it, but I’ve been delighted to watch schools progress in their use of social media for admissions information. I did a very thorough review of college admissions blogs for a client at one time; the practice of engaging online has been widely adopted since then, to the benefit of students, parents and the universities themselves. Check out the Top 50 College Administration and Admission Blogs to get a sample of what’s being done.

My only hope is that, as our daughter begins to really focus on a smaller handful of schools, those she’s most interested in will have easily accessible information, clean websites and strong managers of social communities, available to engage with us and provide the answers we seek. I’m certain if that’s not the case, my frustration will influence her choice of colleges.

Cav Dog at UVa Photo Credit: Jeannine Lalonde

No post on this topic would be complete without a mention of Notes from Peabody: The UVa Admission Blog created, maintained and updated with humor, style and consistently helpful information by my friend Dean J and her trusty sidekick Cav Dog. Notes from Peabody has existed since 2005 — long before most universities recognized that blogging was a valid way to communicate with prospective students. I applaud Dean J. for getting out there ahead of the pack and for keeping up with an excellent blog for longer than it takes a student to earn a degree.

 

Jun 02
Love0

Where Social Engagement Meets Medical Needs: 7 Ways Health Systems Can Help

By Social Media

The last two weeks of my life were shanghaiied by a medical issue that resulted in two unsuccessful procedures followed by full-on surgery. I’m recovering. A week post-op I am back to work a few hours a day — a full day if I’m feeling up to it — but definitely sidelined for awhile. I considered it a big accomplishment when I moved from the bed to the couch as my station for the day.

I’ve been grateful for my social network keeping me linked to the outside world and have been able to keep up reading, if not my writing. (There’s something about painkillers that makes it tough to string two coherent thoughts together into sentences and I have found myself stopping in the middle of a thought and completely losing the train . . . )

I found, as I was struggling with symptoms and the very quick looming prospect of surgery that I relied on a variety of online resources. Tools and platforms offered by hospitals, a strong social network, message boards created by those who had undergone the same surgery and even an online tool developed to allow friends to coordinate meals for my family for the next few weeks were all extremely valuable.

It was work to find these resources though — work I didn’t always have the patience for in my uncomfortable state. It got me to thinking about social strategy for health care, something I’ve done often and at a higher level, advising corporate leadership that yes, social media is important. (It’s amazing to me, but maybe not to you, that health care has had a hard time adopting social media while the patients of health care have gone ahead and created platforms to use on their own. It just goes to show you; when patients have needs, they’re going to get those needs met, whether they’re endorsed by health care professionals or not.)

A few thoughts on how hospitals and health systems can best help patients (like me! and you!) online:

  1. Make your site as easy to navigate as possible. And please don’t use Flash — those of us stuck in bed with an iPad will thank you.
  2. Make sure your search function works. This may mean getting rid of a lot of older PDF documents on your site that may not be searchable content.
  3. Include links to resources. I’m not sure you need to create all of the extra, beneficial platforms I found so useful, but linking to them in an easy to find place to benefit patients and their families would be oh, so kind and generous. These include . . .
  4. Links to or internally created blogs, message boards, Twitter chats and other two-way communication options for people with same symptoms or diagnoses to connect with one another for support.
  5. Provide a resource like http://www.takethemameal.com or just link to Take Them a Meal so patients have it as a resource. It’s become a common trend to coordinate meals for moms with new babies, but there are a host of other procedures that leave parents off their feet and struggling to maintain regular meals for their families.
  6. Make it easy for patients to activate their support networks with suggestions — maybe a checklist to help them quickly figure out the kind of help they might need, especially if they’re suddenly and unexpectedly taken out of commission (as I was).
  7. For people without a support network, (poor you!) links to resources for volunteer organizations that offer support and resources for the patient’s particular needs.

Since we’ve all been patients at one time or another, what have you looked for and found, or not found online from your health care provider? Is there anything you found elsewhere that you wished you could have found within your health system?