The Big Picture

Public Relations: Learning, Unlearning & Relearning in a Digital World

Thank you so much for having me at the Public Relations Association of Mississippi annual meeting. Download my presentation here.  

Below are the sources used during the presentation. If you have any questions or need more information, contact me at (601) 368-3237 or srossi@mhanet.org. 

• Jack Uldrich's Higher Unlearning
• PR & Marketing Pros: Unlearn Your Trade to Succeed or Get Out of the Way
• 2011 US Ad Spending vs Consumer Time Spent — Advertisers Aren’t Taking Advantage of Mobile
• Social media makes bad pitches go viral - and can save PR from itself
• Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody
• U.S. Consumers Demand Faster and More Attentive Customer Service Via Social Media
• 10 skills PR professionals must have in 2020 (The pop quiz!)

Health care community managers and the future of patient engagement

I recently spoke to Mississippi Healthcare Executives, the Mississippi chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives. The purpose of my short session was to convince them to use MHA Connect, my association's online community. I could have focused on the fact that they could win an iPad if they logged on by June and our Leadership Conference. I could have explained that they have complete access to our online database on our smartphone app. I could have bribed them to log in to see all of the presentations from their two-day meeting. (And, OK, I did that too.)

But I spent most of my time explaining that they should go log on and see what the online community is all about because I could see (in the not so distant future) most of them managing people that manned similar online communities for their own hospitals and health care organizations. "The full potential of consumer e-health is far from realized and may not even yet be fully understood," Office of Consumer eHealth Director Lygeia Ricciardi and other Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT write in February's Health Affairs edition, dedicated to the "new era of patient engagement."

Online patient portals are growing. Even some of my own physicians are using them. But mostly just to distribute test results, not for any active kind of communication or engagement. (There is a difference between a patient portal and a patient community.) Patients with chronic conditions are often creating their own communities online to get the engagement they want and need. (So if you don't build it, they will come too. Just somewhere else, not to your website.)

Through Stage 2 meaningful use incentives, the ONC is furthering the idea of online patient enagement. Starting in October for hospitals and next January for eligible physicians, providers must have secure email available to patients, as well as offer ways to view, download, or share the information.

In its January report, Engaging Health Care Users: A Framework for Health Individuals and Communities, the American Hospital Association outlines the future of health care engagement as  focusing on "current and emerging technologies that will facilitate patient, family and provider interactions; health education; treatments and overall engagement" and "social media and its role as a means to enhance communication and networking with individual and communities."

Sounds kind of just like an online community to me!

Happy Belated Community Manager Appreciation Day

Happy (belated) Community Manager Appreciation Day to my fellow community managers. My son decided to celebrate by coming down with the flu, so I celebrated from home (with my laptop and my community nearby).

I was probably a community manager (as one of my work duties) for many months before I figured out that's what I was. For almost two years now, MHA has been using Higher Logic's community software for our MHA Connect. Creating the groups, designing the website, and growing the engagement have been fun and challenging and full of (continued) learning experiences.

If you are a new community manager, there are now several online sites with good resources to help you get started. But they are relatively new and I did not find them until I already had our community set up. So, if you, like me, have "community manager" as only one of your many hats, I have created a daily e-newsletter, Community Managers Daily, that you can use to quickly skim headlines and tidbits from other community managers. (If you are a community manager on Twitter and would like to be added to the list, please let me know by commenting below or emailing srossi@mhanet.org.) 

 

Learning as You Go

In grade school, if a paper required an outline, I always had to write it AFTER the paper. I never knew where the paper was going to take me until I started writing. I'm guessing this is not a best practice of grade school teachers, but it worked for me.

And that's why I was happy to find this session by Aimee Roundtree online from SXSW, "Big Social Media Results at Small Organizations." So often, associations don't know where to start with social media. And even though it's against the grain, sometimes we just need to start. Take the first step. Even if we don't know where we're going.

Don't walk so far that you get lost. But don't just sit there either.

All of the social media tools I've ever used for work, I used personally first. This helped greatly in figuring out how I could use it in my work. But this session highlights some great examples of companies and associations who had no "social media plan" or strategy or "authenticity goal"... they just saw an opportunity to further their mission and grabbed it.

And that's a strategy too!

[ via Smart Blogs on Social Media ]

The Gripman Cometh

My family and I just enjoyed a spring break vacation in San Francisco (or we enjoyed two days and then we endured the cold rain during the others anyways). My 12-year-old son is a train fanatic and one of his favorites from his first-time visit to the city was definitely the cable cars. We got a pass when we got there and would often spend evenings just riding the cable car. To anywhere and back. Just because we could.

Our first cable car driver was just awesome. My son had the best time. He made everyone laugh. He pretended it was a roller coaster going up hills and down hills. Cable cars were FUN! The only problem was that we kept trying to recreate that first FUN ride and just never could. 

We had one guy who said nothing. At all. There was one guy who repeatedly kept scolding everyone not to get anywhere near the grip or they would get their head chopped off. And it wouldn't be his fault. And no one listens. One man who screamed at a woman trying to get on with the stroller.

And, believe me, if I would have known he was so special, I would have gotten the first guy's name and made sure to call someone and point out how lucky they were to have him as an employee. 

All of these guys did their job. By the book. They got me from Fisherman's Wharf to Union Square. In one piece. But, thankfully, one made it FUN.

It definitely made me realize why hiring for personality is imporant in a customer-service based business. And it made me think of what kind of "gripman" I want to be at my own job. It will make me think twice in the future about whether I want to be pretending I'm on a rollercoaster on the downhills or screaming at people to be careful or they will get their heads chopped off! (Yes, I'm afraid I've been guilty myself from time to time.)

And it should make you think too... How many of your own member are trying and trying (to no avail) to repeat their first great experience with your association?

Integrating social media into the association communication mix

Curious about how other associations are integrating social media into their communications mix and what it takes to succeed?  One Orange Feather recently released a  free white paper with primary research, statistics, and case studies. Download a copy here.

The Forest and the Trees

"An 18-point checklist for proofreaders." Paste it to your wall. Follow these rules

That's what the e-newsletter link promised.

But when I clicked, I was just brought to the main page of a site, not the story itself.

A co-worker walked in when I was cracking up laughing over this, inquiring as to what could possibly be so funny. And I explained that it was just so much like life...this constant balancing between watching both the forest and the trees.

That newsletter did not have even ONE grammatical error, I'm sure. But it goes to show that in this day and age, you can, as a proofreader, watch (and catch) all of your p's and q's and still be flummoxed in the communication process by an incorrect link.

Be sure to check out this 18-point checklist for proofreaders before sending out your next e-newsletter to members. (But before pressing the "send" button, check all the links too!)

Study Reveals High Levels of Twitter Use at Conferences

 

How People are using Twitter during Conferences is a research report about the use of Twitter before, during and after a conference. It also covers uses from the conference organizers and attendees.

Nothing groundbreaking here, but it may help someone trying to convince conference organizers to promote hashtags and social media use during a conference.  

Continue the Conversation

 

BackType lets you “find, follow and share comments from across the web.” Whenever you fill out the URL in a blog’s comment form, BackType tracks it. You can use BackType to keep track of your own comments, follow the others of leaders in your industry, or keep track of what is being said about your association in blog comments.

[ via pr-squared.com ]

Lessons from innovation’s front lines: An interview with IDEO’s CEO

Many companies claim to be innovative, but few can claim innovation as their raison d’être. One such company though is IDEO—a designer of products, services, and experiences ranging from Apple’s first mass-market computer mouse to aspects of Prada’s store in New York City to the patient-care delivery model at SSM DePaul Health Center, in St. Louis, Missouri.

IDEO’s single-minded focus makes it a good case study for those seeking insights on innovation. Yet as CEO Tim Brown is quick to point out in McKinsley Quarterly, what works at IDEO won’t work everywhere.

Obama’s seven lessons for radical innovators

Regardless of your political persuasion, you must admit that Barack Obama is one of the most radical management innovators in the world today. His team built something world-changing: a new kind of political organization. Obama's presidential bid succeeded, in other words, through the power of new DNA: new rules for new kinds of institutions.

For the full story from Harvard Business Publishing, click here.