To begin…my friend Reed Smith does a great job of explaining the steps to get your organization going with Foursquare and Gowalla. Here is his step-by-step process for Foursquare (CLICK HERE) and for Gowalla (CLICK HERE).
Here are a few things we have found when setting up Foursquare and Gowalla at Greenville Hospital System (GHS) in Greenville, SC.
First of all, GHS is a large hospital system with multiple campuses serving the Upstate of South Carolina. When beginning to tackle this project, we noticed immediately it was necessary to engage using this social outlet. Why? Well, we found close to five different spots created for the main hospital each totaling close to 2000 check-ins. Each location had in-complete information about the hospital. This fragmented information was not best serving the hospital and the individuals using these outlets. None of the locations had a correct phone number, web address, and physical address. So we knew immediately we had to begin taking control of these check-in points, consolidate, and update with correct information.
The next thing we noticed is that a hospital might have multiple places for a person to check-in, including the hospital main entrance, emergency department, labor & delivery, rehabilitation services, and even nationally branded restaurants inside (Starbucks, Chic-Fil-A, etc.). While accessing these possible check-in points, we began to consolidate places for people to check-in. We wanted to only have destination points that supported the interests of GHS’s customers as they align with certain service lines. So we began with the main entrance, emergency room, and labor & delivery at the main hospital. This is still a working progress.
When consolidating locations at one campus, proximity of geographical check-in points was key. Foursquare and Gowalla only work in a two dimensional space…meaning if the labor & delivery was one floor above the main entrance…it might not make sense for both check-in points. We want the check-in process to be fun and social, not become a hindrance when trying to decide which point to select.
The key to beginning is to follow what Reed Smith describes in his posts, but it is important to create business Foursquare and Gowalla account separate from your personal account. When claiming these locations for your business, you want it tied to a single account that you can manage. You will be able to edit and manage each location from this user account. We also decided to start with Foursquare and Gowalla first, then we are slowly moving to Google Places, Facebook, and Yelp.
Patience is key when setting up and managing these location based outlets. You have to spend time working with Foursquare and Gowalla to remove and merge duplicates, keep information updated, and engage with the community. Each location has the possibility for individuals to not only check-in but also comment about their experience. This is a great way to engage in healthy conversations.
When we reach out to our social networks, are we using them to reach out to our friends on these networks OR are we using these networks to market and share our information?
Looking through a purest lens, social networks should be used to build relationships, have original conversations, build connections just as we would with those “friends” in person.
As I look through lens as a marketer/digital media professional, we find ourselves not only reaching out to these communities…but pushing our information to these groups of people. This digital divide creates physical moat between us and our virtual friends. It allows us to sometimes forget these people on the other end of these devices are the ones who receive our updates, tweets, and emails. They are human.
I was sitting in a meeting the other day listening to a friend describing social networks, specifically Twitter. He described this social outlet as medium to amplify our message. The marketing, digital media persona inside me agreed with this observation; but the purest, socially driven human was a bit disturbed by this characteristic.
So many of us are not afraid to use social aggregators like TweetDeck, Hootsuite, and many others to schedule Tweets, posts, and updates. We turn into our own traffic department, setting up message distributions for the week. It is a bit addicting, we track results using our analytics, chart success, create metrics, and before we know it…we have social media marketing panic attacks.
I am not advocating for the extreme use of either lens…but I am more thinking through the audience’s experiences. Is the conversation starting to die out? So why did Facebook loose 5 Million U.S. users last month? I am not sure? Makes you wonder…too much amplification?
So, how is your usage of social networks changing? Is it purely business, monetary gain, creating traffic, etc? Are you using it to connect, build relationships, find connections, or even reinforce in-person relationships. Or, are you using it as a combination of all the above? Regardless…has your view point of social networks changed?
I had the greatest opportunity to chat on the phone with Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson from Seattle Children’s Hospital…and it was a treat. First of all, she is a very busy woman, not only as a physician and a mother but also as a thought leader when it comes to physicians communicating through social outlets. Her message that I thought was very profound, and I am paraphrasing…”I have this IVY League education and I want to find every way possible to use it to empower and educate my patients and the people around me.”
She is obviously a smart lady that found something unique through her blog and twitter. She can tell stories and empower the people around her using her knowledge, her experiences, and her background so they can make better decisions as parents. She takes pride in her writing and is very passionate for the purpose behind the message. In the thirty minute phone conversation with Dr. Swanson…it was everything I could do to soak-up all her passion and knowledge.
Early on when the blog started, she found a need. She found that she only had roughly 15 minutes in the room with her patients. With the demands of her job and the need of seeing as many people as possible, she could only provide so much information. She found herself writing her blog as an outlet to provide more information beyond the 15 minute consultation. From video blogs to analyzing the latest research, she takes time putting the patient first when speaking through her message.
She feels like this is the new way to get back to the days of small town physicians, where you can build a personal relationship with your patients. She uses her blog to share her love for children, passion as a physician, and willingness to educate people as much as possible. She can take those questions that might not get answered in an exam room setting, and articulate them via her blog. She can spend more time addressing research, trends, and answer questions through the discussion of each blog post. She wants to bring that small town reality back to the exam room, but do it in a way that meets the needs of the patients of this digital age.
She does not spend time looking at metrics, clicks, and hits (The Digital ROI)…she focuses on the questions and concerns of her patients. She also focuses on the trends and research plaguing families. I know as a parent-to-be that my wife and I are bombarded with new trends from SIDS to what to feed our newborn when she arrives. I think Dr. Swanson has found a way to reach people (like my wife and I) that few doctors have been willing to do…speak passionately online.
If I was in Seattle…I would want her to be my child’s pediatrician. I am fortunate I was able to spend 30 minutes on the phone with Seattle Mama Doc…I think her name matches her style!
You can find Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson (Seattle Mama Doc) in the following places:
It was not too long ago that I was in Chicago at SOBCON2011, listening to a great speaker…Tim Sanders. He really has me thinking lately and his book is the next on my list to read: Today We Are Rich.
Sitting in a room of close to 130 people at SOBCON, not knowing a sole, not evening knowing the background of most of the speakers…there were some passionate connections. Tim Sanders is one hell of a storyteller! His story began with a picture, one of his grandmother. His grandmother raised him and she is his inspiration today. He inspired me to think…to dig deep, and find my passion.
Here are the bullet points that I was jotting as he was speaking.
If you take the foot off the gas…you will go sideways.
Have to believe there is enough to go around.
You have a finite mind and use it accordingly.
You should be as judicious on what you put in your mind as you put into your mouth.
What do you park at the front door of your mind? Do you store lessons or successes?
Re-live a high-def experience where you succeeded.
Declare offline zones!
Get up and wait 30 minutes before getting online. In the first five minutes, spend time thinking of two people that you are grateful for from the day before.
Don’t believe your lucky.
Go create a ripple…integrate giving into what you do.
Tim’s Rules
1) Feed your mind good stuff
2) Take care of instrument
3) Exercise your gratitude muscle
4) Give to be rich
Lots of good stuff! Check out Tim’s Book by CLICKING HERE…I am looking forward to starting it!
Recently…I have become increasingly irritated with rubric’s and how-to’s that are consistently floating around the social space. It is driving me up a wall. Most of this is inside the world of blogging and the social space…that we must find a way to create a path for the perfect blog, that we must create the perfect social “strategy”, and there is a formula for social media messaging.
It is my humble opinion that those that are preaching these strategies, rubrics, and methods are in the business for their checkbooks. Each time I watch the tweets come down the timeline, “5 ways to do…”, “how to measure…”, the perfect blog must have…”, it is all about generating revenue for the person writing the posts.
Writing from the heart and creating great content is not “BS”. You cannot put a path to success when it comes to writing, connecting, and building an online community around a social outlet. There is no magic cookie cutter. Anyone that is selling this, pushing this, or tweeting this is selling it to generate their own income streams and not bringing value to this initial open source community.
If you do not have a passion for writing…then while the hell are you blogging? If you do not have a passion for exploring ideas, generating genuine creative thoughts, and connecting with others online…then why are you interacting in the social space.
I have read more and more tweets and blogs screaming to re-define the word marketing in this social space or 3.0. Many of which are searching to create a whole new space based on consumer trends and big company strategies. Why are they are re-defining this…well it is helping them land the next retainer deal, speaking engagement, big corporate marketing gig. But those same folks who surround themselves in chats an online discussions pushing what they deem is innovation…well they are actually trying to put this social space of user created content into a cookie cutter, placing a marketing dollar to each tweet, blog post, youtube video, and Facebook update.
These same “innovators” are actually stifling the social space right back into the same old marketing channels. Each of these spaces are becoming distribution points of corporate generated content specifically geared to track and generate a metric. Why, because the CEO’s and the VP’s of Finance who sign-off on these initiatives need a metric. We are right back where we started when the social space was beginning to appear.
Twitter is now the AP Newswire, Facebook is the new email chain, and YouTube is now our living television set. Just distribution points for those pesky marketers to generate a strategy for ads, product placement, and sponsorships. WTF…hashtags that are sponsored? Great…can’t wait. Sign me up.
“Because hashtags are important, packing tweets with them defeats their purpose. It muddies communication – of all people, Comms peeps should know the vitality of clarity, and the cost of clutter and noise. Why so many Healthcare pros don’t understand such a simple concept is beyond me, but I digress.
I’ve thought to myself: you know, Twitter once had so much promise, and now it’s becoming all serious business and so-called marketing. What a shame. We’ll all lose in the end.”
Thanks Phil, I do not think we will all loose…but there is a big ole shift.
Several months ago, I was talking with a very smart lady, Robbin Phillips after she came and spoke to some students at Clemson. She says it so nicely…(i am paraphrasing): “there is just so much noise out there in this space.” I have to agree.
I blame us…us marketing people have gone out and screwed it up. We had to find a way to put in some sort of cookie cutter system so we can track it and metric the crap out of each profile and communication channel online. Hell, we are even spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars for companies like Radian6. We want to track those conversations. And we will pay top dollar to analyze the heck out of those conversations.
All of this stifles innovation. It stifles passionate writing. It stifles true connection. It prohibits individuals to use places like blogs, YouTube, and other creative outlets to become pioneers. We want each of them to think there is a rubric for using these channels then track the success. Why can’t success be simply creating content, writing passionately, making a cool video. What if the only person that you were communicating to was just one person. If that person read it, listened to it, connected with the message…then led to see life through the authors eyes…then success? Right?
I remember when I was working on my thesis for graduate school and some of the many academic articles that followed. Each person in the academy I spoke too told me that getting an academic thesis or academic article approved was like jumping through hoops. My mother calls it “Hoop Dreams.” Yes…it was almost like social construction of knowledge. My genuine ideas were shaped to meet the expectations of those academic gate keepers whose agenda’s were played out in each word that was written. Some argue this process is necessary to form true scholarship…to meet the expectations of the academic world. I see the value in this process, but I also see the value in allowing true innovative writing and thinking to shine.
The connection here is that regardless where we go, where we write, what we create….someone wants to fit it into a cookie cutter paradigm. The social space is starting to shape-up to be just that. We marketers and new media people are trying to force clients, organizations, and small businesses into a framework that meets the needs of our pocket books. Why not just teach the technology and how them to utilize this framework as a place to share our inner thoughts, a place to express our inner beings.
Content is King. Communities grow as content and ideas are created. In order to connect we must share our thoughts and communicate.
I think there is a true progression in the way people create innovative content and connect through their ideas.
Idea —> Content Creation –> Content Shared —> Ideas Consumed –> People Connect … then the cycle starts over again.
A blog is just a place to hold thoughts. A video is visual representation to share motion, action, sounds that represent our creativity. These are just technological theaters for others to engage with our ideas. If we are thinking, writing, sharing in a way that the people that are truly interested in reading, listening, watching, understanding…then their peripheral vision will disappear and become completely engaged in the passionate content we create!
The video above talks about my buddy Marty Boardman and how he is using his blog, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to build his real estate investment business. He has done this through writing great content, storytelling, and keeping a focus on his mission. Ultimately his passion shines through these social outlets.
About two years ago he had hit rock bottom with his real estate business, after generating millions in business. He and I are very close, he was best man in my wedding. So I taked with him about using a blog to start taking control of his message and use it as a focal point to educate the public about his business. Every two weeks on a conference call, we would chat about his successes. He started using his blog to write passionately about real estate investment, his business, and his goals. He started using Twitter to build relationships online and research other real estate investment news and opportunities. He started using Facebook to build a community of people with the same interests and used YouTube to show his properties and also as a video blog.
By writing and generating great content, writing passionately, connecting with others…he has leveraged these tools as a major business focus. Via these tools, he has built quality relationships that have led to over $250K in investment opportunities over the last year. He is a storyteller and he used his storytelling skills to engage his audience with passionate writing and focused content. Because of this content, the community found him and engaged with his passion.
I was working with a group the other day around topics for their blog and ways to tell passionate stories for the audiences. We were listing topic areas, stories, and putting a rough schedule together to build consistency in their writing. They were extremely focused on the schedule so much so that they were worried about breaking outside of that schedule of writing. I have a few points to make here that will yield to my thesis that writing passionately yields community writing.
I told them that this schedule was just merely a barometer, and when you find a compelling story to tell…sit and write. Share your story and share it often. I think about writing for my blog almost like the way I began dating my wife. When, I first met my wife in graduate school…I fell in love. I knew I was going to marry her. It just took me two years for her to agree. As we began dating, we would go out, talk on the phone, meet for coffee, and learn to get to know each other. I had the three day rule.
The three day rule meant that after we would go out, I would not bother her for three days. I did not want to encroach on her space. I valued her friendship and I wanted to get to know her. But, I did not want to push her away…I wanted her to want to enjoy our time together. I was passionate about our relationship. Overtime we grew closer and the three day rule slowly disappeared.
Writing passionately is sort of the same concept. I try to build a relationship with the people that read my blog. I may not be the best, but I try. I try not to write too much to overload the “Internet” space and the people that receive my blog via email and Google reader. My wife is my barometer with this rule. She has been writing for close to five years on her blog. She writes about the following topics: life after her mother (who died of breast cancer), fighting infertility, against cause marketing, and her family. She writes about these topics and she writes passionately. She writes when she is inspired. Sometimes she writes everyday, and sometimes she writes after a month off.
She has built a pretty good community of readers. She has attracted successful authors and other bloggers like herself to share in her mission. But here is the thing, she is now writing with them. What do I mean by that? She will write about a topic, people will comment, she will respond, she will read their blog posts and respond, then she will write another post sometimes based on how her community is writing or responding to her. She has built a conversation around her blog, a community of people that have common interests and passions. She gets regular emails from her readers.
How does she do this? Well, she has a focus for her blog and she shares with her community. She writes straight from the heart…when she feels led to write. There is no set schedule, there is no checklist…just a passion for her topics and for the people that respond in her community. She regularly is reading her friends blog and genuinely responding to their posts. She is building a community and this community’s writing is influencing each other in a way that they are writing for each other.
So here is my point. Writing for a blog has three elements: Focused Content, Passionate Writing, Engaging with Your Community. This is a barometer that I think will lead to a community of people that share your same interests.
I am not sure what took me to Chicago last week? I signed up for the conference over a year ago. I did not know a soul in the attendee list. I had a few conversations online with some of the attendees, and even had one phone call with one of the organizers. So, what makes us choose to travel 1000 miles to attend a conference. Some say passion…let’s just say that I had a feeling something great was going to come from SOBCON 2011 in Chicago.
From the moment I walked in the door, the energy was high…but I was so nervous. Yes, I defaulted back to my shy days of high school. This collegiate lecturer felt like a fish out of water in a room of smart people. But it was that first day that I met one of the coolest people with the most interesting story. Greg Hartle is his name and 10 Dollars and a Laptop is his domain…literally: http://tendollarsandalaptop.com.
He was invited to join SOBCON2011 in Chicago because Chicago was the next stop on his trip. His mission is to visit all 50 states, starting in Seattle with $10 and a laptop. That is it! He cannot use any resources from his background and “previous life” as a financial man. He wants to create a new life, visit 50 states, and create a new business along the way to finance his trip. He has caught rides along the way, used cheap bus tickets, performed odd jobs…all for his mission. He is an entrepreneur with an entrepreneurial experience as his goal.
After the first day, we chatted over drinks. As I listened to his story and his passion, I thought…my students at Clemson need to hear his passion. So many stories to share, to connect the academics to real world. The word “entrepreneurship” is more than just an ideology that can be taught at the local university, the hopes of hitting it big. Here is a guy who is putting it to the test with only $10 and a laptop as seed money.
I can sit here and give you notes from educational experience inside the walls of “The Summit” during Chicago’s SOBCON 2011. I can draw some tremendous connections between great speakers like Tim Sanders, Chris Brogan, Steve Farber, Carol Roth, Liz Strauss, Terry St. Marie, Michael Port, and the list goes on and on. But…I was struck, struck by the passionate stories of change and entrepreneurship.
But…it was once again…that first day. That first day when someone from GMC took the stage to talk about their new Terrain. Yes, a simple in-person sales pitch coy’d the audience. It was a sales pitch of a different resolve. After a short video about this SUV, we were asked to go down 10 floors, back outside, all 130 of us to look at this vehicle. Some of us were skeptical of this sales pitch inside. Yes, GMC is a sponsor…but this seemed a bit much. Our willingness to please the presenters yielded something special. This is when I was able to hear the story of Mark Horvath. This is Mark below, to the left of the bald head. He has wavy, long hair with a blue blazer.
Mark Horvath of http://invisiblepeople.tv/blog tells stories. Yes, stories of homeless people across our great country. He was once homeless himself after a career as a television man. He found himself on the streets. After pulling himself together, he began telling the stories of homelessness in America. Here is a man that is traveling across the country, documenting the stories of homeless men and women. So this day, this GMC pitch turned into GMC giving Mark Horvath a new SUV. Yes, now he has a new ride equipped with WiFi to continue his passion. This was all made possible by Liz Strauss of SOBCON and Connie Burke of GMC…and I am sure many others. This to help a man continue his storytelling passion, raising awareness for the homeless situation right here in our own backyard.
I think it would be boring to give you my notes of what I learned as a business owner, as a online business person, and a social media advocate. I could make great connections between wonderful points made from each presentation…I think I would just create more noise. But what I really learned…to chase your passion and use these tools to facilitate the resolve!
I think there is a reason I was supposed to show up in Chicago for SOBCON2011. I found that there were so many other attendees more passionate about their mission, yet coming together to build language and facilitate tomorrow’s opportunity. Thank you Liz Strauss and Terry St. Marie. YOU ROCK! I will be back for SOBCOB2012.
There are some real cool things out there companies are doing to cross the bridge between Facebook and traditional media like television. Lately I have been noticing more and more television ads creating innovative campaigns to drive traffic to their Facebook pages. This one is cool and thought, so I thought would share. I “Like” the WCNC News Channel 36 Facebook Page. Why? I used to work there many years ago and have many close friends who still do. I enjoy seeing the statuses come across from the different weather updates and on-air talent giving me news of the day.
This Facebook post came across and I just thought it was smart. Featuring one of the Facebook Fans as “Friend of the Day.” Each day they pick a new person that has clicked the “Like” button on their Facebook page as the “Friend of the Day.” This is also featured on their newscast during the morning shows, showcasing this “Friend of the Day” online and on television. Good stuff, what a cool and easy way to engage your fans to watch your newscast. Thumbs up you guys/gals up there at WCNC News Channel 36. They are also on Twitter (@WCNC). I am also good friends with Bobby Sisk (@BobbySiskWCNC) and their Chief Meteorologist Brad Panovich (@WXBRAD). Good peeps doing some good stuff on the social outlets.
Hootsuite being down this week proved something to me once again…we are just a bunch of freaking marketers. We are…and we want our coveted little Hootsuite to continue to be our traffic department. Yes…we freaked out when we could not schedule some tweets.
Where the heck is this thing going? First of all, I quit using Hootsuite about a year ago especially when they began the process of charging a monthly premium for there online services. Yes, they wanted me us to pay a monthly fee if you wanted to manage multiple accounts. I have always been a TweetDeck fan, but Hootsuite was a great solution, especially in the corporate world. WIth all the company owned laptops and desktops, IT departments have been restricting company users to download and install programs like TweetDeck. Hootsuite was perfect since everything was web based.
Now…I will admit that I did train people to understand how to use the scheduling option. I even schedule Tweets to go out on TweetDeck. But where have we gone…this social outlet is turning into a traffic outlet. For the past few weeks, I have reached out to people on Twitter and they normally respond. It took them a few days to say hello and some did not even reply. Why, they are freaking scheduling all of their tweets. The corporate marketing demon has possessed our souls.
We have succumb to this inner possession and the group think of this social web. We are scheduling our social-ness. No, I do not mean we have pulled out the calendar to schedule what party to show up to…we have scheduled what we say in the social space. We have become drones to our marketing outlets, sending out tweets, status updates, etc…
It is similar to going to a party, having a conversation, then stopping mid sentence until our brain can release the next sentence based on the schedule we set that morning. Can you imagine that. Remember Star Wars during the Battle for Naboo (Episode 1), all the sudden all the clones stopped fighting because someone pulled the plug. Well that is what happened when Amazon had trouble with their cloud computing services, causing Hootsuite to shut down. The clones quit tweeting. Yes…
Who am I to blame…it is a brave new world and the audience lie in social outlets. Corporate marketers have moved lots of their dollars into the social ranks, investing in promoted tweets and hashtags and other places to spread the branded message. But…oh; but…it is no longer social media. This same model holds true in reality television. You mean to tell me that Big Brother and the Bachelor is true reality television. It is not capturing reality, it is creating the reality “it” wants audiences to perceive. The same holds true in the social space…it is no longer the social space, pushing the line away from center.
I have noticed that many of the conversations I used to have on Twitter are now migrating to other spaces. I am seeing a shift away from spaces like Twitter for real engaged conversation. I have really locked down my Facebook page, only allowing certain people in that space. I am finding more and more conversations happening there. If I post a link that interests me…many of my online buddies are using those links as places to expand conversation into rich, thought provoking debate. This paradigm is allowing a conversation to flourish beyond the 140 characters.
Twitter has become the mass media beast with lots of noise to sift through. It has become the new age outlet for our PR & Marketing Engines to share our branded messages. Their is a shift beginning and it will be interesting to see where those, who are truly socialites, will co-exist and engage in social, online discourse.
