Social Media and the Future of Nursing

Nurses have an incredible knowledge base, but have historically not done well sharing their science with the general public. What might be possible if nurses were trained to use social media to share their expertise? How might that impact the state of public health and wellness?

I had the honor of speaking at the the 7th Annual Florida Magnet Nursing Research Conference about how Nurses can use social media strategically to spread the word about what they are passionate about – their area of research – and achieve new levels of success.  To accomplish this, I asked my audience to share some of their goals with me and then we used a 7-step methodology to brainstorm how they could use social media to achieve those goals.

Goal: help teen mothers battling depression

The first goal: Have adolescent mothers who exhibit symptoms of depression go for further evaluation and get help. Success would be teen adolescent mothers overcoming depression and being able to go to school, work & care for their children.  The challenge: How can Nurses get the word out to teen adolescent mothers battling depression that help is available and it’s okay to ask for it?

Goal: spread a message to every nurse in North Carolina

The second goal we worked on was very different: How could a nursing organization use social and digital media to spread the word about a call for nominations throughout the state of North Carolina for nursing awards?  Check out the process we went through and the great ideas we came up with in this video.

Goal: family vacations that don’t include a visit to the hospital

At lunch after my preso I heard about a life and death issue that plagues Emergency Rooms in Naples, Florida.  The problem: tourists visiting from parts of the world where beaches and pools are not part of the cultural landscape have never been educated about water safety and thus these parents and their children have an unusually high risk of drowning incidents.  It’s way too common for these families to spend their vacations in the hospital after a child has a water accident.  We started talking about ideas and partnerships to get the word out about water safety to tourists during the planning phase of their holiday and while they are on vacation.  Wouldn’t it be cool to see the Naples Healthcare System partner with their local tourism board and Visit Florida to produce content in multiple languages, pictures and videos illustrating water safety?  There is already water safety information on the Naples Healthcare System’s website that could easily be repurposed and published on multiple websites in ways that are engaging and easy for parents and kids to watch, learn and plan for a safe vacation.

By embracing new methods of knowledge dissemination, Nurses no longer have to rely solely on traditional journals or in-house letters to publish their research and methodologies.  Nurses can now reach and impact a new audience – e-patients – directly online where they are searching for health care information.

Why Ning’s Shut Down of Services is Like a High School Break-Up

Ning is changing their business model starting with firing 40% of staff and pulling the plug on millions of free networks to focus on “Premium” ones.  They need to make changes to make money. Fair enough.  But to not reach out to their customers about it?  Did I really have to find out about it on twitter? Come on!

No notice was sent to network creators. I know because as a Ning customer and Network Creator of BrandTampa.com, I receive a monthly bill from them in my inbox.  Where’s the love?  It’s out the window along with any sense of trust or loyalty that Ning customers might have felt for the company.

Let me back up a moment and say for the record, Ning has been good to me.  Their platform allowed me to pursue a vision and create a network that has over 1500 people who are share similar interests in my local community.  Heck, last summer I even went to NY to attend a Network Creators party because I felt such a connection with the brand.  But now things have changed.

I should have seen it coming last month when CEO Gina Bianchini left and was replaced by Jason Rosenthal.  Now he’s ending Ning’s relationship with about a million networks.  It’s like a high school break-up.  One morning you wake up and decide you don’t like your boyfriend or girlfriend any more.  So you get a friend to pass them a note from you saying, “it’s not you, it’s me” and then proceed to ignore one another in the hallways.  Except in this case it’s a leaked email which is now all over the internet which makes it harder to ignore than an old-fashioned note.

If Ning wants to salvage the relationship with their paying customers (outside of the 4 networks Rosenthal mentions in his leaked email)  it’s time to call PR and start cleaning up the mess.  Or not.  Maybe Ning is just moving on.  And a million Ning Network Creators will have to do the same.

Foursquare Day: Tampa Takes a Leadership Role in the Social Media Universe

This is a story about how a mild-mannered optometrist from Westchase (a suburb of Tampa) got an idea and rallied the entire world around it.  For the first time in history there is a top ten list upon which Tampa and Beijing are mentioned in the same breath.   It’s the list of top participating cities celebrating Foursquare Day.

It started when Dr. Nate Bonilla-Warford (just call him Dr. Nate) was thinking about new ways to promote his business, wrote a few blog posts about it, a few tweets and now there are parties organizing all over the world.  He was playing around with Foursquare, a social media application where users can “check-in” at stores, restaurants, bars, optometrists, etc. and comment about their experience.  (It’s another way people are sharing information about places they recommend.)  Then Dr. Nate started thinking about the math.  4-squared.  The 4th month, and the 4-squared day and thus the world is getting ready to celebrate Foursquare Day this Friday 4/16 and businesses all over the world can benefit and users and consumers can have fun with it.

“It doesn’t appeal to everyone, but there is enough geek pride on the internet it’s appealing,” says Dr. Nate.  And to reach those it does appeal to, business owners need to take notice.  If your business wants to participate, all you have to do is post your Foursquare Day Special on the website (just be sure to read the instructions first) and voila! – you’re in.  No financial investment required and you’ve got a free listing, advertising and PR.  Hopefully you will attract new customers.  Give them a great experience, something to talk about, and chances are they will comment about it on Foursquare, recommending your business to other users.  It’s all good for business.

To get the full story on Foursquare Day, I interviewed Dr. Nate, the mastermind who came up with idea of a global social media holiday that could benefit local businesses…

Me: Who can participate in Foursquare Day?
Dr. Nate: Everyone is invited – all Foursquare users, businesses and anyone else who is just curious and wants to learn more.  It’s a day for people who don’t know what social media is but these swarms (events) are a free casual, low intensity way to interact with business owners who use it to benefit their lives.  This kind of social, educational events aren’t available wide-scale.  Anyone can come.  Non-social media users can come.  They might become a user.  It’s beyond Foursquare.

Me: How can businesses use it to develop customer loyalty?
Dr. Nate: Thank your customers.  They come back enough and demonstrate loyalty you give them discounts and stuff. They appreciate it so you become a special place in their life.  You are more on their radar if you didn’t have that level of involvement.  As a consumer, you feel a bond with that place!

Me: Why are consumers and businesses using Foursquare?
Dr. Nate: It’s fun to check in as a consumer.  But the reason I got on board and so have the others who are helping put this together is from business point of view…  We see an opportunity to promote ourselves and develop stronger relationships with patients and customers at no cost.

From a business owner’s perspective – there is only so many ways you can market yourselves.  Pour $$ into ads and get almost no return.  It’s so frustrating.  But this is so simple.  It’s the simplicity of foursquare that is it’s strength.

Me: So, Tell me everything.
Dr. Nate: I didn’t expect this to happen.  Every single day since the beginning there would be a little step as more people became interested and involved.  And now it’s getting really amazing.   Mumbai.  Jakarta.  Seoul.  Beijing.  Today I even heard from foursquare and they were all excited – “this list has a 100 different cities on it!”

Me: So, What does this mean for Tampa?
Dr. Nate: The fact we started it is good for Tampa.  It’s a positive story getting global attention and all eyes are on Tampa.  People aren’t going to move here because we started it, but it gives people something to rally around.  Tampa takes a leadership role in the social media universe.  We are not the underdog in this realm!

Mayor Iorio has even formally proclaimed it Foursquare day!!! That’s interesting in and of itself.

Me:  What trends do you notice in the businesses and cities who are participating?
Dr. Nate: Manchester, NH and North Andover, MA have huge #s of businesses signed up on it.
It’s very interesting that mid-sized communities have embraced this more than anything else.  Towns of 2-3k people nope.  Big cities nope.  Not a single event in San Diego. There’s one in L.A. and one in NY which is the people from foursquare themselves.  But in smaller cities there are multiple swarms (events).

Coming out of recession and all businesses are looking for any angle to promote without any money to burn – that’s one angle why it’s so successful.  It takes no financial investment on the part of the business owner – they just say they are going to do it, and then the town gets excited.

I don’t know why – but thinking about it … it has to do with the face those mid-sized communities are where people have balance between their real-life and social networks.   There’s a feeling like, “it’s my city and I’m going to go to the extra effort for this to happen here.”  Whereas in Chicago, not so much.  Mid-size cities people can just jump in and take ownership of it

Foursquare Day has gone from non-existent to cool event in less than a month.  Larger corporations aren’t involved because they can’t react that fast.  Even if they know about it, want to make a decision they can’t because to react would take too much effort.  Big corporations want to sponsor some of the events, but their hands are tied becaue they can’t respond with agility – their structure is such there are too many steps along the way.

Smaller biz who make up mid-sized comm. Can take advantage of it . I call my wife, ask her what she thinks about me putting on a sale.  Then I walk across the street and tell my neighbor he should do the same thing.  Small businesses have the ability to take advantage of this whereas huge corporations can’t.  That reality plays a role in why certain communities have been able to get on board.

Me:  What’s it been like putting Foursquare Day together?
Dr. Nate: This whole experience has been wild.  An outrageous amount of work.  On another level it’s so fast and so unknown.  I’ve gone from being someone who’s enjoyed and appreciated social media to forging new ground – it’s a totally different place to be.  I haven’t had the time to try to read books on what to do when you are starting a global movement and how to deal with various situations, so we’re just making it up as we go along.

The reality is this is the most bare-bones skelton crew I’ve ever been a part of.  There are other events and projects I’ve been involved in where people who volunteer it’s just a little part of their lives.  But with Foursquare Day we know there is a deadline and we’ve all thrown ourselves into it.

Me: Why are other people so dedicated to making Foursquare Day happen?
Dr. Nate: Lots of different reasons.

1. The sheer novelty of idea even when it was really small with no attention.  For the people who got on early it was a new thought.  It’s not that often where people really are part of something completely new.
2. Foursqaure being hot is part of attraction.
3. The concept of it being a math-based holiday has a geek quality that’s attractive.  It doesn’t appeal to everyone, but there is enough geek pride on the internet it’s appealing!

Me: What can businesses learn from this?
Dr. Nate: Businesses can learn that you are not going to garner attention appealing to everyone.  Get niche!!!

When I first started mulling over the idea of Foursquare Day, I wondered how many people could this realistically reach…

• 500,000 people use foursquare
• Maybe 10% are passionate enough to care about the idea of a Foursquare Day.  That’s 50,000.
• Of that 50,000, maybe 50% are engaged and the other 50% are not paying attention so maybe 25,000 that will be interested.
• Even 10% of those people is 2500 people it’s a sizable chunk.  And that’s what we almost are on our fb page now!

Me: Would you want to stop being an eye dr. and just do social media?
Dr. Nate: No way! I did it to promote my practice.  It’s a very diff kind of lifestyle.  I look forward to returning to my normal life.  Soon.  I have a lot of work to catch up on.

—-

And last but not least, there’s a party a.k.a “swarm” happening in downtown Tampa on Foursquare Day 4/16/10
6-9pm at the Hyatt Regency downtown
211 N. Tampa St.

• Free WIFI.
• Free appetizers.
• Generous food & drink specials.
• Tons of prizes and fun stuff!

Warning: What does Google say about you?

Today I was doing my usual search to see what Google says about me and found myself clicking the “books” query for the first time.  And there it was.  #1 in the search – Arts and crafts societies in America: the division of social and aesthetic reform by Julia Gorzka.  That surprised me.

Readers, that book was my master’s thesis.  There is one published copy in existence and it’s located in the library of the Bard Graduate Center in a townhouse on the Upper West Side. (Sidebar: you have to meet one of us to know about my niche in the arts – my master’s is in the History of Design & Decorative Arts.  Hence I was curating content before I understood what the internet was.  But I digress, that’s a story for another blog post.)

Only 1 printed copy of it in the world.  And Google knows about it.  Woah.

The moral of this story is be aware.  Be warned.  Google yourself regularly.  Have your Google alerts set up?  Good.  Still Google yourself.  Alerts are not infallible.  They never told me about my book.

What’s Your Digital Footprint?

Whenever I’m speaking on social media I talk about digital footprints and the need to be aware of what Google, Bing and Yahoo say about you.  For that matter, you never know when you or your company may be the subject of a conversation happening on Twitter.  Like it or not, want it or not – you’ve got a digital footprint.  Even if you are not on facebook, have not written a master’s thesis or write a blog – Google will more than likely find something published somewhere that includes your name.  And it will come up in the search engines.  That is your digital footprint.

Are you listening?

When was the last time you Googled yourself or your company?  Did you click beyond the general search to see what is attached to your name under blogs and videos?  Find any surprises?

Monitor and listen to what is being said online about you and your company.  Because people (a.k.a. your clients, your prospects, your employer, a potential employer, and if you are single – anyone you are going out on a date with) are going to look you up online.

Reputation Management

Have a plan on how you will respond to positive content (remember your manners and say thank you) and negative commentary (it’s called crisis management).  It’s only a matter of time before you find something surprising.  Don’t be caught with your head in the sand like Domino’s did.  Plan ahead.  Be prepared.

Need help?  Call me.

Is your Business Model Killing your Competitive Advantage?

If you were at risk of losing your business, would you be willing to do whatever it took to save it?  Would you be able to step away from “the way things have always been done” and stand in a new space to test and innovate, try something different, uncertain of knowing the outcome?

Clay Shirky’s post about “The Collapse of Complex Business Models” has me thinking about the distinction between businesses too beaurocratic to change, and those lithe enough to adapt.

Digital Darwinism.

It’s become common to hear commentary about how print media is dying.  Shirky comments on how “Diller, Brill, and Murdoch seem be stating a simple fact—we will have to pay them—but this fact is not in fact a fact.  Instead, it is a choice, one its proponents often decline to spell out in full.” Shirky goes on to paraphrase the media moguls as basically stating, “Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”

Lots of business leaders like Diller, Brill and Murdoch are standing in the space of “we don’t know how to do that” with their heads in the sand and/or their feet feeling like cement shoes.

The world we are living in is changing more rapidly than any other time in the history of mankind.  How and how fast is the internet altering your industry?  Your business?

As entire industries and individual business owners struggle with how to adapt communications, delivery, customer service, marketing, sales etc. to meet the demands and expectations of consumers on the social web, their future success lies in their ability to move beyond “the way we’ve always done things” and begin exploration and testing of “the way we are going to be doing things now and in the future.”

Shirky summarizes his thesis on the collapse of complex business models by stating, “When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.”

Position yourself to be the one who gets to say what happens in the future.

To survive and thrive you need a digital strategy to adapt your business model and communications to work in today’s world.  The internet continues to influence and impact consumer expectations.  How fast is your business responding?

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