Southwest Airlines | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Help Me Help You Fight the FUD

In my presentation at Blogwell, at which I introduced our new Mayo Clinic blog for patients and employees, Sharing Mayo Clinic, I closed with a Jerry Maguire appeal:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-oHuogx6_Y]

Many of the questions I got after the presentation, and that I get in other contexts from people wanting to implement social media programs at work, began something like: “What about the concerns that …” or “What about the fears that ….”

One of my points in response is that it’s extremely helpful to have external consultants who can help reassure leadership that the social media advocates in the organization aren’t crazy, and that lots of other companies and similar groups are using blogs and social media successfully, and without major problems. Shel Holtz and Andy Sernovitz helped us.

It’s also great to be able to point to examples of success, like Nuts about Southwest.

I hope Sharing Mayo Clinic can be the kind of example you can show your leaders, and say “See! If an established organization like Mayo Clinic is using blogs and Facebook and YouTube, we can too.” I’d love it if our example can help you fight the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) barrier in your organization.

Of course, a big part of you being able to use our blog as an example of corporate blogging success is…well…for us to succeed.

You can help me with that in two ways: Suggesting Improvements and Spreading the Word.

Suggesting Improvements. In response to the post I did announcing the blog Thursday, SMUGgle Scott Meis (who I got to finally meet for the first time at BlogWell), left a good suggestion in the comments that I have implemented. It tripled the number of RSS and email subscribers we got in the second full day of the blog’s operation, as compared to the first. So, I hope you’ll check out Sharing Mayo Clinic, and I’d really appreciate any further suggestions you could offer on how we can improve.

Spreading the Word. Obviously building traffic to Sharing Mayo Clinic is our responsibility, and we’re communicating with our Mayo Clinic patients and employees about it. But if you would help spread the word by blogging or tweeting about it, or posting it on your Facebook profile or sending it to your friends, that would be fantastic, too.

And hopefully by helping me, I can help you fight the FUD.

ALI Social Media Summit Discounts

I will be presenting at the “Social Media Summit: How To Use Blogging, Podcasting & the Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Engage Your Employees, Reach Your Customers & Build Your Brand,” June 9-12, 2008 in Chicago, IL. My session topic will be: “Integrating New Media With Traditional Media To Multiply Results.”

This looks like it will be another strong event. I’m part of Day 1, just after Michael Rudnick’s address. Andy Sernovitz of GasPedal will deliver the afternoon keynote, and Duncan Wardle from Disney Parks will keynote Day 2 (here are some highlights of a presentation I heard him give earlier this month.) I know you’ll enjoy Chris Heuer from the Social Media Club, Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines and the Best Buy guys. The other case studies should be interesting, too.

Here are two ways you can save on registration:

If you register by May 1, you save $400.
Since I am one of the speakers, you can save another $200 by using the code “SPK” when registering.

Advanced Learning Institute is sponsoring the event. I’ve attended and presented (and blogged) at several of their previous conferences. Knowing or having heard several of the speakers, I’m confident you will find it worthwhile. I hope to see you there!

Tax Time and Weekend SMUG Class Readings

One of the nice simplifying factors about running a tuition-free online university is that you don’t need to fill out a request for 501(c)(3) status or other federal tax-related forms. With no revenue, the Internal Revenue Service isn’t interested in us. We can focus on our non-profit educational mission.

Alas, the IRS has not shown the same disinterest in my personal life, so in addition to attending some of my daughter’s basketball and volleyball games this weekend, I’ll also be doing this:

So while I’m meeting my obligations to the U.S. Treasury and the State of Minnesota, it’s a good opportunity for you to catch up on some SMUG homework and extra-credit readings:

First, here are the most recent SMUG class offerings, in the Podcasting track

Podcasting 101/Social Media 106: Introduction to Podcasting
Podcasting 102: Becoming a Podcaster
Podcasting 103: Creating Audio Files Takes Audacity
You also may want to check out the first episode of Chancellor Conversations, which will be one of the official SMUG podcasts.

During the past week your Chancellor was continuing his education (and hopefully helped some others with theirs) at the Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit 2008 in San Francisco. Here are some of those highlights, and while they don’t involve direct homework assignments, you will find them helpful for your capstone project:

A couple of posts I did using Utterz (Driving While Blogging and my story of attending the Giants game).
Secrets of increasing web site traffic
How to use blogs to directly engage your customers (a great panel with Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines and Mike Moran from IBM) …and Mike’s keynote
My presentation on Facebook in Media Relations (I didn’t get to live-blog my co-presenters because we were using my laptop to drive the presentations, but Chuck Hester had a good story about using LinkedIn.
Robert Scoble’s keynote was an eye-opener for many members of the audience. (I’m still hoping to get some video clips uploaded after I have met my obligations to the Internal Revenue Service.)
The Blogger Relations panel was good, and it was especially interesting meeting Craig Newmark from Craigslist, whose service and business model has contributed so significantly to the economic disruptions faced by newspapers. (By the way, here’s another post about CBS’ response to challenging times.)
Sally Falkow and Brian Solis led a great discussion of Social Media Strategy, and Dr. Georg Kolb and Frank Shaw’s presentations on PR in Today’s New Marketing Milieu also were helpful.
Katie Paine’s Social Media Measurement presentation was a whirlwind, and I want to go through her slides in more detail.
Duncan Wardle from Disney Parks gave the second keynote, which gave a glimpse of how a big brand is using social media, and the opening keynote from Charlie Rose was presented in an unusual interview-style format.

I’ll also maybe let you know how long TurboTax took. Of course no self-respecting do-it-yourself on-line Chancellor would do anything but electronic filing. I’ve used TurboTax before (though usually not this close to the deadline), and I like how it carries forward my information from year to year. Hopefully its servers won’t be slammed by fellow procrastinators.

Mike Moran, Paula Berg and Viral Marketing

I’m getting another dose of Mike Moran. Now he’s talking about different types of viral marketing:

Content-Based social media marketing. Focuses on the content to be posted and passed around (e.g. Blogger, WordPress.com,YouTube, del.icio.us,digg, StumbleUpon). Does your organization have content that might be passed along?

If you think YouTube isn’t for B2B, you’re wrong. YouTube lets potential IBM customers get a product demonstration in a low-stress environment. No pressure. Very cost effective. Here’s an example from IBM:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63qIq9t9Gqs]

Squidoo is another example. Some might find it helpful.

Don’t launch big new projects. For example, don’t say you now want all of your releases to be social media press releases. Try one. Then try another in a different way.

Personality-based social media marketing. For example, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace. It’s a way for people to find consultants directly.

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