My BlogWell Presentation on Mayo Clinic Social Media

The Blog Council today posted video, audio and slides from my January 22 presentation at BlogWell. I’ve embedded the video and slides below.

One interesting point that’s changed since my presentation is that the Facebook pages have again been redesigned, and I think they have become much more useful. We had 4,300 fans of our Mayo Clinic Facebook page in late January, and now we’re at 6,100.

Here’s the link to our Sharing Mayo Clinic blog, mentioned in the presentation, and here is the prototype patient post I mentioned.

I hope to be at BlogWell in New York later this month, listening to and learning from organizations like Coca-Cola, GE, Turner broadcasting and Microsoft. I hope you can join us.

Sharing Mayo Clinic on FIR

It was a week ago today that we launched our new Mayo Clinic blog, called Sharing Mayo Clinic. You can see some of the related news stories here, but I also wanted to post a link to the segment Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson included on their For Immediate Release podcast (Episode 416) last Thursday.

You can hear the portion specifically about Sharing Mayo Clinic below, but of course I recommend that you subscribe so you can get their “hefty and good” podcast delivered automatically to you twice a week.

Sharing Mayo Clinic on FIR

I’m scheduled to have a recorded conversation with Shel and Neville next week (not sure whether it will be an Interview or a Cut), so if you subscribe you’ll get that delivered as well.

I’ve known Shel for several years, and he has consulted with us a couple of times, providing an outside perspective on and validation of our plans. He and Andy Sernovitz have been really helpful to us in getting social media programs going at Mayo, so I’m looking forward to sharing our progress with the FIR community.

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.

Sharing Mayo Clinic

Sharing Mayo Clinic
Sharing Mayo Clinic

Today we take a significant step for Mayo Clinic, launching our “culture” blog for patients and staff, called Sharing Mayo Clinic. I’ll be showing it as part of my presentation at BlogWell.

Sharing Mayo Clinic (at sharing.mayoclinic.org) is in many ways the culmination of a process we’ve had in the works for the last few years, starting with our first podcasts in Sept. 2005. As you can see in the post announcing Sharing Mayo Clinic my colleague Elizabeth Rice published this morning on our Mayo Clinic News Blog, we’ve had some other significant milestones that have helped bring us to this point, such as establishing a Facebook page and a YouTube channel. (You’ll also see some video of me talking about the project.)

But in another sense, Sharing Mayo Clinic is less recent and more timeless; it’s a logical extension of what Mayo Clinic patients have been doing for more than a century. Word of mouth from patients is the number one reason people give as their source of information about Mayo Clinic. Like our Facebook page, this blog is just a new way for patients to share their stories.

Sharing Mayo Clinic also will be a way to feature the work and stories of Mayo employees in various roles throughout the organization, who all contribute to creating the Mayo Clinic experience for patients and their families.

The blog is a work in progress, and we look forward to seeing it grow into a hub for Mayo Clinic’s various social media platforms. We have some ideas for new features and functionality once we’re past the launch stage, but I’d really like to know what you think of it so far, and how you think it could be improved.

Please check it out and give me your feedback! And I’d really appreciate it if you’d take the time to pass this along to your friends using the “ShareThis” icon below.