Measuring Impact

One of the things that I have yet to master in this position is how to collect and measure the impact of our use of social media in spreading our message. Currently I have this crazy 8 tabbed excel document where I collect statistics from Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Podcast listens, and blogger mentions.

I am not sure what each piece really means but when I put it all together on the summary page, I think the numbers tell a story.

The one problem I have with collecting this report is the fact that is has been up to this point so manual. However, I am starting to find all kinds of great little tools that wrap the data up in a nice format that makes it easy to dump into my report.


Today I happened upon a really nice tool called Twitterholic! Twitterholic gives me all pf the twitter stats I really care about aside from our mentions... which I pull from my SM2 reports anyway. You can also get competitive data!

Do you have any tools that you use to collect data, that you would care to share with the readers? If so leave comments! I am really exited to see what else might be out there to help us to really understand the impact of social media use in buisness / healthcare communications.

Social Giving... Philanthropy 2.0...um what are we calling this?

I had the pleasure of meeting with our development office a few days ago. They had been quite hesitant about venturing into social media as a communications tool until now. What is different about now?

1) A local competitor just launched a donation campaign with lots of social media elements.

2) A patient/donor went and started a Facebook causes for the hospital without our knowledge or permission, and with the wrong non profit information!

So, now they want to talk to me.

I went into the meeting with my trusty presentation. I presented the user data I talked about the current online giving trends, and how according to the Washington Post In September, his single biggest month of fund raising, Obama amassed more than 65 percent of his record-shattering haul -- $100 million of the $150 million -- from online donations. Then I started showing examples of our national competitors and their use of social media to raise money... That is when the snickering started to subside.

I all honesty I did not know much about social media in the philanthropy space until I started researching to prepare for this. I learned a great deal from James at Convio. who sent me some great examples of applications. I read a few blog post, most from the Chronicle of Philanthropy... but those left me with more questions than answers.

Then I just started to search. I began to try to think like a donor. Someone who has been affected by cancer, and who might be searching online or in their existing social networks for a way to give back. That is when I started to see some overwhelming trends. I honestly found just a handful of organizations that were even making themselves available to be found and accept financial gifts online for cancer research. Those are the examples I put in my presentation.

For one organization I found at least 5 social channels where they were attempting to raise funds, when I added all of the funds that were donated to them through these 5 channels it added up to over $20,000. Now I know that is not the 10 million dollar gift that some hospitals may be accustomed to. But that is 20,000 that they did not have before, and $20,000 that they spend $0 to solicit for and collect. No mailing, no postage, no donor event... nothing.

In the question and answer part of the discussion there were lots of air quotes being thrown around in disbelief of the intentions "fans" and concern over not being able to "capture" the donor information. A few still did not really understand why or how, but I think the last word came from one of initial naysayers. After all of the discussions he mentioned once again how he could not believe or understand why so many people would put so much information online about themselves... "It must be an ego thing" but he began making an effort to verbalize how he saw this working into his vision of the campaign. He may not have really gone away understanding how it works, but I think that they began to understand that it is indeed going to have to be an essential part of their fundraiser communications mix.

Overall I am excited about working on this project. I love to see the evolution of thinking that occurs as a new group learns this method of communication. I think however this ends up fitting into the donation raising communications mix it will be beneficial to their overall goal of getting people involved in the fight against cancer.

To Do Listen to:
Podcast - Social Good, Host Allison Fine (Chronicle of Philanthropy)

Health 2.0 Makes it to Twitter

I knew this was coming, but could not have predicted that it would happen so soon. I have 2 examples of the business of medicine actually taking place within twitter. I just had to share my excitement.

Case #1
A colleague here at the hospital told me about this one. What is happening here is a Doctor in South Africa is at bedside asking a Doctor in India for real time assistance with a diagnosis. From other correspondence he has with this doctor in India, it is clear that he knows him personally and/or professionally, so he is a trusted source from the requestor's position.

From the message it sounds like he was probably bedside, maybe in a rural area. If you follow the stream it ends there. I expect that if the doctor replied it was probably in the form of a direct message. Which is a private message between 2 twitter users.



My colleague said that "if this was not a first, it was among the first time that he has seen this happen." Especially in places where you might not have access to experts. The personal relationships you develop could extend all the way to the bedside, no matter where the bedside is.

Case #2
This one may be a little contriversial, but there is no doubt in it's effectiveness. A researcher in her process of tweeting about what she is doing in the process of her work day. She mentions that she is looking for study participants. She is not cohersive, she mentions no less, no more.

Let me first say that it is clear that she is still a new twitter user. She has very few followers. Also, from what I can tell, no one re-tweeted this information. Despite that, right away someone who fits the criteria thanks her for the information and signs up for the study.



Clearly there is potential here. I am excited to keep watching to see how this develops. If you have any good examples of the business of medicine happening in twitter, please share. Thank's to both of these twitterers for seeing the possiblities and testing the envelope.

Two Ears... One Mouth

Sure we are participating in the conversation, but are we listening as much as we speak? One of the things that is great about social media tools is that you have the ability to hear what people are saying about you. If you are smart... you will listen, because that feedback is the key to understanding why the competitor is chosen over you. It is not smart to assume that you know what the issues are without hearing it from the source. The only effective way to do that a few years ago was either to send out a survey and make assumptions based on the percentage of people willing to complete and return it, or to pull together a focus group. Today people are very vocal about their use, love and hate of products and services. They share this information as a service to their family friends and contacts, either to protect them from a bad experience or suggest to them a service that was beneficial to their needs.

So now that this information exists how do you find it, collect it and use it for the benefit of your brand?

Here are a couple of things that we are doing that are helping us to listen mor carefully.

RSS feeds from Search.Twitter.com - Search.twitter is not only a great way to find new and interesting topics to follow. It is a great way to listen to what is going on around you. I have just 3 rss feeds set up on variations of our brand name. Whenever it is mentioned I collect that message. I try to read them ASAP because sometimes they are about pressing matters. More than once we were able to listen out for and react to people twitter from inside the hospital about problems they were having. In a few of those cases we were able to locate them and help.

Social Media Monitoring using Techrigy SM2 - I started out by monitoring everything manually using google blog search, and technorati. Although I was getting good information the process became cumbersome, and I was convinced that I was missing out on mentions. So I asked for budget for a low cost solution. I did not get much budget so I was either going to have to try and get buy in and supplemental funding from other departments or find a tool that fit in the budget. One day while researching products I ran across techrigy's "freemium" version of the tool. It gave me an opportunity to test the functionality with a few keywords and a limited number of results. It was just enough to give me a picture of what kind of volume we were receiving in mentions on just our brand name. I expect that my expansion to more keywords and more results will really help us to understand our audiences and their needs.

Sorta Like Social Media Training

I saw this video at a training class that I attended recently. It was such an accurate depiction of how a hands on social media training feels to me. The concepts are simple but what is simple to you is not always obvious to others. Then the fear of messing up or exploring beyond the surface. If I ever have the time to present again, I will probably start out my conversation with this video.

HIMA IS08 Conference Presentation

HIMA IS08 Presentation

From: jennifertexada, 12 minutes ago

HIMA IS08 Presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social media)

Presented at Houston Interactive Marketing Association IS Conference in October 2008


SlideShare Link

Social Media Training for our Faculty

Today is day two of The Department of Faculty Development's Social Media Week (insert fanfare here) at the hospital. One of the people in Faculty Development saw a presentation that I did in March on Social media learning communities, and realized that this information would be valuable to her audience. So they hosted and planned a week of social media training sessions for faculty... all that I had to do was round up some help and show up!

I am so glad they did this because I think that getting the faculty to understand the value of" joining the conversation" and participating in "communities" is where we as an institution will gain the most value from our participation. All I can do is push out news releases or promote events but our faculty are THE experts... the ones that patients, caregivers and other physicians from all over the world look to for accurate information. Their participation will not only increase awareness of the expertise and value of our institution, thus improving brand awareness and reputation but also drive creation of accurate and reputable health information available online.

Session #1 was on... Monday was the "overview session" the turn out was not what we hoped it would be. I am not sure if that was because it was on a Monday, or because this was the second time I presented this information... but either way the small number allowed us to have a more intimate discussion of the topics and really dig into what they wanted to know. The number one question seemed to be how do I use (fill in the social media site) to benefit my need. Many of the people in the room already had a Facebook, or Linkedin profile, but were not exactly sure what to do with it.

The rest of the week will be hands on sessions in small groups where we will tackle the basics on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Knol, Podcasting and and a few other topics. Today was the first of the hands on sessions. I lead the session on Linkedin @DrMiggy (on twitter) lead the session on Facebook. Many of them brought their laptops, but because our WiFi connection in the room was slow I let those with accounts and specific questions come up to the podium and drive. That was a blessing in disguise. People began to learn from each other and address their concerns from their perspective, not surprisingly they had many of the same questions. We cleared up a number of misconceptions and I expect to have some new Linkedin connections before the end of the day.

After it is all over and I have had a chance to catch my breath I will try and share the feedback and lessons learned from the series overall.

Me, Twitter and Hurricane Ike

Although I never really mention the hospital by name... most of my readers know where I work. Recently we went through somewhat of a disaster. We have always talked about using twitter, and social media in crisis communication but it is not until it really happens that you figure out how it works.

So I knew the plan in case of emergency I should communicate out our status online from home using our social media channels and the web site. So the wind was blowing and the trees came down and the power went out, and never came back on... that is when I realized DSL does not work without power. (Note to self buy a wireless card)

But what I did have was my blackberry and cell phone. So my boss called the next day from the ride out command center and gave me the update, so I sent out the first tweet. I have twitter set up to feed to our Facebook so I was covering 2 bases with that.

Hospital Name fared well through #Ike all patients and staff are safe. We remain closed through the weekend 03:40 PM September 13, 2008from mobile web

That same day they found someone who had power to update the website. Now I had something to link to.

Hospital Name will be closed for the remainder of today and there will be no appointments Monday Sept 15 www.hospital.org 01:03 PM September 14, 2008 from mobile web

With no power for 90% of the city patients and employees alike were following these tweets. We went from 150 followers to 275 followers in 3 days.

#Ike update...Limited patient appointments tomorrow and back to full operations on Wed Sept 17 03:13 PM September 15, 2008 from mobile web

We left on a Thursday night and got back on a Wednesday morning and of course announced our full operation but then began to use twitter to espress our needs. The response to this was amazing. Not only local media but people from as far as Boston were retweeting our need for blood and platelets!

Due to #Ike, blood supplies are severely depleted & a large number of patients at require daily transfusions. http://tinyurl.com/7gmf6

On a personal note it was comforting to hear from my friends, colleagues and total strangers when I was at home in the dark disconnected from the world. During the night of the storm I went down stairs to find water coming into my entry way. After that I could not really sleep anymore. Sitting there in the dark watching my twitter stream on my phone made me feel a little safer somehow. Maybe it was just the fact that I knew that others out there knew where I was, and I knew where they were? When I got back to work on Wednesday, I heard others tell very similar stories. One person told me that for her it was Facebook. She kept track of where all of here people were and even found gas thanks to Facebook and her cell phone.

What would I do differently... I think I could have sent more twitter messages, but personally I was a little shaken up and tending to my children, but if anything like this ever happens again, I think I have a better handle on how powerful a tool this really is during crisis and how to harness the power.

Listening Skills

Lets say you were on a bus full of people and just a few rows back you heard someone mention your spouse, child, or even boss by name, clearly and specifically what would you do?

Would you :
1 Go back and smack them around until they stopped?
2 Turn around and stare at them directly, or inject yourself into the conversation?
3 Completely ignore it and go about your business?
4 Just perk up your ears a little and try and move a little closer so that you could hear the conversation? Perhaps position yourself speak up if necessary after you knew to content of the conversation and who the converse-rs are?

Your answer to this question may direct how you feel about social media use in your industry.

If your answer was 1... You might be on the road to becoming one of those embarrassing stories of organizations who develop a poor online reputation because of brand damaging behavior on the web. Discussion of your product or service even if negative can be an opportunity to improve or at least admit that you have things to work on. You are not really stopping the conversation by doing at best you are just moving it to a place where you cannot listen.

If you answer 2... You understand that listening is important, and transparency is good, but you are being creepy! Often listening and noting is enough. Sure get involved if there is some customer service that you can truly contribute, but if not just hang back.

#3's Just because you ignore them, does not mean that they are not talking about you. If it was your daughter's teacher on the back of that bus talking about how she skipped school (neg) or how great she was doing in class (pos) this might be good information to have from a strategic perspective. I recently heard someone say it was like having a phone in your office, advertising your number and not ever picking up that ringing phone.

Of course I recommend answer #4 whether you are on the bus, answering the phone, checking e-mail or monitoring social media mentions of your name, products, or keywords. Listen to what your customers or non-customers are saying about you, and respond accordingly. EXAMPLE; I found out about a feature of our site that did not work on on Firefox in Mac from watching twitter. I was able to fix it based on simply listening to the conversation.

For us I am listening out for current patients, perspective patients, caregivers to patients, people diagnosed with cancer and looking for answers and professionals looking to connect with our professionals. If I see a trend I note it, if I see an issue, I flag it, and send it to the appropriate department, if I see someone I can help, I ask them if there is anything I can do to help.

Right now, I am finding it with RSS feeds from Google Blog search, Technorati & Twitter search and collecting it all in a fairly messy excel document for reporting. I am in the process of looking for out of the box social media management tools. I will let you know what I come up with.

Social Media & Work/Life Balance Part 2

Problem #2 Can you represent your work life balance in your social media use & still be professional?

I am a person who uses Twitter, and Facebook in both a personal and professional capacity. In my personal social media accounts, I often talk about both work, and my personal life, because I am a whole and multi-dimensional person. Many of the professional connections I have made are because people have gained an understanding of both sides of my life. They are also parents, like I am or they have lived in Boston, or California like I have or they love dogs like I do... I can go down this road forever, but for some reason my work and my life intersects with the work and lives many others thus creating stronger business /personal connections.

Yet I am still hearing about people being reprimanded by their managers for this type of behavior. I have heard about people being chastised for talking about their sick child, or their plans to attend a social/professional happy hour on their own personal pages.

Managers, as long as your employee is not being vulgar, defamatory or obviously inappropriate please try not to scrutinize their every tweet or post. If they are also using it for business, they are cultivating an audience, and connections beyond the ones you can reach with press releases, or billboards or banner ads. I think they used to call it "word of mouth"? Don't make them follow the advice below.

Social media users, try to think through your posts and tweets, write them like a micro blog to your audience. Let them get to know you as both personal and professional. If you continue to have problems with backlash from managers, try setting your permissions to private, and remove your twitter feed from your Facebook updates, or blog.

Social Media Work/Life Balance Part 1

This is a post that I have been meaning to write for some time now. But events from the last few weekends ago made me realize that I needed to do it sooner, rather than later.

Problem #1 - Monitoring of social media, if done well may cut into your work/life balance

A few weeks ago I took my last "vacation" of the summer a long weekend in my hometown. During a hurricane preparedness meeting we joked about me not being allowed to travel during hurricane season, and the fact that I was "allowed" to go this one time because there was nothing in the gulf that week. The day before I was scheduled to come home, the news about hurricane Edouard reaches me via twitter.

The storm held off until I got into town and I was able to stay on call from home that day, but it was a close call.

The very next weekend, I was busy getting the kids school clothes and supplies together. I did not check twitter all weekend,only to find out on Monday that there was a patient/caregiver having issues in the hospital. I did all that I could to follow up, but the issue had passed. I felt terrible that I was not able to respond more quickly.

Can I be plugged in at all times? Probably not. Maybe we can pass the plug from time to time?

The Birth of a Podcast Series

Because of a shift in our value of "interactive" content and the launch of our iTunes University presence, one of my goals for the year was to produce more digital content. After months of planning and presenting and writing the podcast was born!

Getting this podcast series approved was not that difficult, because this is the second podcast series we have launched. The first has some differences in format and function however because of it's success, it helped solidify the value of an audio podcast.

The other major difference between that podcast series and this new one, is that it is produced and hosted by an outside company... This one is created totally in house.... with a very small team.

How Podcasts are Made (at least this one)
This may be T.M.I... and a bit like hearing about how babies are made, but bare with me because it may help you in deciding if you really want to get into the business of podcasting...weekly!

We start by gathering the thoughts of a bunch of communicators who work in different aspects of the institution, and we come up with a list of topics that are newsworthy and interesting to our perceived audience. Once we have a list of about 8-10 topics I start looking for experts who are interesting, well spoken and not afraid of a microphone. Picking the topics 8 at a time poses some challenges. We want our content to be compelling and time sensitive to things that are going on in the news, and 8 weeks is often a long time to sit an episode on the shelf.

Then I start scheduling... this is the hardest part. With doctors, their schedules are tight, we cannot take up much of their time and emergencies come up. To make matters more complicated we try and book 2 doctors at the same time.

Our shows' host who is also a doctor guides the conversations based on a series of questions that he develops. He records sometimes 2-3 episodes in one day. We sit in a small room, not a true sound studio, but it works. Our AV department sets up basic recording equipment and 3 really good mics and they sit around the table and talk. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes. We could probably do it with less equipment, but I think the professional microphone set up makes the guests take the show a bit more seriously.

Once we have finished the block of episodes, they are edited very slightly to take out things like coughs and accidental cell phone vibrations, then we transcribe them and put them up on the website, and on iTunes one episode a time.

The show has been airing for about a month now and the listens and download numbers are still pretty modest, but if I learned one thing from the other podcast series is that it took about 6-9 months for a show like this to generate good numbers. Patience, promotion and collaboration are essential in getting the most out of this medium. I am confident that once I spend more time marketing the series, and making episodes available in more areas of the site, and through out social media it will be worth all of the effort.

Staffing the Effort

I recently tuned into a "twebinar" hosted by Chris Brogan, Radian6 and Cross Tech Media. The discussion was essentially about the importance of listening to the conversation, but quickly turned to the barriers that businesses face to actually having the ability to listen... Listening to that many conversations sometimes takes more than one set of ears... and ears cost money.

The issue of staffing the social media effort has been recently very top of mind for me as we step into the beginning of our fiscal year. If you were curious as to how many people we are doing this with? The answer is 1.5... me and my assistant who works part time. Recently I have had the pleasure of discussing this very issue with other social media /communications professionals within other health organizations.

I am most likely not going to get any more staff to continue our efforts, so like all of my counterparts I will have to train more team members, more communicators, more faculty and members of other departments to listen to the conversations happening in their areas of interest and respond and participate appropriately. We have already made a good start to this effort. The web 2.o discussion group that I started has resulted in about 30+ people representing at least 8 different departments that have some level of social media knowledge. Many of these people have taken what they know back to their departments and are responsible for some of the new Facebook, and Twitter pages that you have seen come out of the institution.

One of my counterparts at another hospital gave me a great idea! When we start blogging I will have to expect that my bloggers, and hopefully others in my department to support me in monitoring and responding to comments made within the blog.

I believe that we will be able to continue to grow our social media communications program however it is going to take the support of our community to do it. During the "twebinar" someone mentioned the Sun Microsystems example. I am not so sure that I want the burden of monitoring 4,000 internal bloggers, but the idea is spectacular! If I could get 500 people that had a good enough grasp of social media that they could develop and manage their own institutional presence, we would be a powerhouse of support and answers for our audience.

Where Are we Going Next?

As I come to the end of our fiscal year I begin to think about strategic planning for then new year. How will I continue to manage the program, and expand to new channels that make sense for the hospital?


I have recently noticed a number of new social networks with a focus on medical audiences. Places where heath care experts invited to contribute or share with others. Recently I have become aware of new sites that we might consider participating in. I am looking closely at sites like;

Labmeeting
HealthCare Magic
MedPedia
Sermo

I am starting to believe that this is where the social media model is going...toward niche social communities. In the area of Cancer patient support sites like Cancer Compass and Planet Cancer have been providing a sense of community for patients and caregivers, for some time now, but the field is expanding. For those not in health care, I have a feeling that if you look you might find the same thing. Our personal and professional interests are what drive search, and search for the most part is driven by keywords.

Here are a few other examples of sites I know about that are developing communities based on health care or scientific interests.

ICYou
Scivee
Livestrong.com
Disaboom

So I have a new lists of sites to review, and work into next years plan, I expect the list of sites that I think we should get involved with will only expand in the next 12 months. So my plan is to watch, get involved within the communities I am watching and apply goal oriented strategy to our entries into these new territories.

Blog Guidelines... A 3 Part Harmony

I have just begun to get to the part that I have been waiting for since I started this job....Developing the blog. I have submitted the project request and it is "in the queue"? I have crafted the "pitch" slide deck, that I am scheduled to present to all of the major stakeholders.

I wrote the first draft of the guidelines document.

Let's stop there. I learned the most about this blog by writing the guidelines document. I started with the assumption that I would be writing one document explaining to people how the could and could not use and comment on this blog. It was shaping up to be a multi page monster that would probably be further beefed by our legal department and never be read by anyone who it was intended for.

So, during my vacation, on the train trip between destination 3 and 4, while waiting for my daughter to finish with my laptop I began with ancient tools... a pencil and paper to write a list of the audiences who would need some guidelines for use of this, and the list of things each audience would need to know.

So finally I began to craft a set of rules for ;

1. Commenting from the outside world
2. Commenting from employees
3. Writing posts for the bloggers that would be participating

The result was a pretty succinct 3 page document that address the needs of most anybody who would use this blog for communications to or from "the institution". It has not passed through legal yet. So there will probably be a part 2 of this post.

Where to Find Me

Big Brands, Big Plans Keynote Panel: July 29, 3:30-4:45

Get the inside scoop on how leading brands are driving success through social media,
SEO, Websites, and Testing, and apply the principals to your own initiatives.

Panelist include:

Steve Latham, CEO, Spur Digital;
Enrique Gonzalez, Web Analytics Manager, National Public Radio;
Susan Allen Farrell, President and CEO, Eventigy;
Aaron Kahlow, Founder and Chairman, Online Marketing Summit;
Scott Blair, General Manager, eCommerce and Web Marketing for Retail Concepts;
Jennifer Texada, Digital and New Media Program Manager...

Hope to see you there!

Is it time to have "The Talk"?

Communication about your social media program is essential to having a social media program. It definitely should not be left up to one team to generate all off the communications that goes out through social media channels. In a diverse organization like ours, there are so many voices, and forcing all of them through one channel would lack authenticity.

However social media is not something that you want your organization learning about “on the street" and then just digging in and participating on your behalf. I hear lots of people telling me that they know enough to be "dangerous". In social media we really do not want our representatives out there “being dangerous”. This is the type of behavior that makes communications groups nervous about opening the social media gates.

I was on the phone today with a fellow communications professional. We were talking about training for a group that wants to use Facebook or something to reach a broader audience than they are currently able to. She told me to be careful…A little information can be dangerous in the wrong hands. There is that word again…Dangerous.

It was at that moment I realized what had to be done.

As many of you know, I have a teenage daughter. At the beginning of middle school I sat her down to have “the talk”. Some may say, she was too young to hear this, or that I was giving her information that she could turn around and use to make poor choices. My answer to that was...I would rather her hear the truth from me than learn about it in the streets. The advice her friends may give her will most likely not mirror my goals for her and the morals of our family.

I would rather her learn about this stuff at home, that way if she has questions she knows who to ask, if she makes a mistake, we can deal with the consequences, and she can't say that she didn't know.

So I expect to spend lots of time this year having “The talk” with anyone who will listen. My goal is to teach them how social media works from the perspective of the institution's core values and strategic vision. I think the institution is mature enough to hear this now. Plus there is so much talk, and incorrect information on “the street” about what we are doing, who is allowed to do it, and what we should not do. If we teach them the rules, the benefits, the consequences and how to do it the right way maybe we communicators won’t feel so endangered by their desire to explore these new options.

I think the talk will start like this...Ladies & Gentlemen social media in the context of relationship building can be so very good. But it takes a commitment to see positive results.

Franchising your Content

Whether you are a fan or you consider them the coffee antichrist the Starbucks model of brick & mortar development is a marvel that is difficult to ignore. As we all know there is a Starbucks in every airport, train station, college campus, in every business district, on almost every corner. Additionally the brand can be found is sin grocery stores, Hospitals, Local Deli etc. Similar to the early days of spread of the ATM machine the presence of the location is by default and opportunity to promote and extend the brand.

The concept is simple. The more places that you are found the more opportunity there is for your customers or potential customers to reach, and connect with you. Is the location important? Of course. However, the strategy behind the location is more important than who your neighbors are. Is it good business practice to choose not to open a Starbucks in a business district if you don’t like the billboards in the neighborhood? Does this potentially dilute the brand? Yes, but only as far as mass brand recognition damages exclusivity.

The needs of your customer should be the drive of where you choose to place your product or service. In health care we know that (1) consumers start their search for health care information on search engines. We also know (2) they take advice and recommendations from the people they trust, their friends, family, community and professionals.

Inclusion in most social media sites also means additional inclusion within the search engines.
Creation of content within a social media site provides opportunity for customers to connect to your presence directly and/or share your content within their own community.

Of course your communication goals should be considered in your decision to “franchise” your content outside of your site. Just as a new brick and mortar this expansion requires management in the form of dedicated resource/s. Just like the Starbucks machine in your local deli, this does not necessarily mean a new “body” but it may require training of your current team and attention to the needs that may come from the additional traffic that your expansion may cause.

Joining the Conversation

Late last week "the institution" made a big step forward in our journey into web 2.0.

We participated in the conversation!

Not anonymous, not a friendly "Thanks" to a fan speaking positively but a public high profile post with a name attached to a negative comment made about us by one of are larger non-fans. I was so proud of us that day. We responded with a straight in a short but effective statement that was posted within few hours of the blog being put up.

In typical blog fashion the conversation within the comments turned from the actual post to comments directly to our comment. Our post changed the level of responses, into a real conversation about what we are doing, what our position is, where we really stand in the debate. There were lots of commenter's taking our side, and only a few still voicing disapproval. The best part for me were posts cheering us on for stepping into the conversation.

This one step out into the fray has opened doors for us across social media channels. I expect it will help the internal critics to understand that 1) At the moment this form of communication is not going away 2) Ignoring it does not improve the brand

Mirco Blogging to Win Friends & Infulence People

Just last week I had lunch with a patient, his wife, their adult daughter, and a co-worker. It was a wonderful experience. We laughed, and talked about all of the things we had in common. We talked a bit about treatment, but not much.

That was the first time I had ever met them in person, but I felt like I have known them forever...thanks Twitter.

I ran into their daughter on Twitter a few months ago, when she stumbled onto our Twitter pages. I tweeted back and a relationship was formed. I mentioned our meeting to the editor of our online publication and she wrote a story about the connection and how patients can connect to each other and the world through tools like Twitter.

Yes there is lots of noise on Twitter, and plurk, and pownce and sites like these. I hear complaints about not wanting to know what some guy in North Carolina had for breakfast. But with some simple searching you can connect to the people and conversations that matter in your world. (try searching with http://summize.com/) Those conversations are happening whether you are in on them or not.

The other question I hear is about monetization of the use of these sites. For me our lunch that day was enough to make it worth it. But if we must, after lunch we headed over to a services clinic that the family knew nothing about and made the patient an appointment for a self pay service. During lunch we also had a conversation with the wife, also a survivor about treatment options that might be available here that were not currently offered to her at her treating facility. If she finds something, she is potentially a new patient. I speculate, but assume that she made the decision to ask based on the conversation and relationship we all began to build that day. She was not asking a hospital, she was asking a person that she knew.

This for me is what my job is all about. Being a resource for the people out there on the internet looking for help, answers and a human connection to a brand.

All I Have Learned about Blogger Relations I learned in Kindergarten

When I first took on my FY 08 task list, something called "blogger relations" sat somewhere near the bottom of the list. I was not sure how exactly to take on this enormous task.

I sat is seminars, and read articles from "experts" on the subject. I heard that bloggers are tough to talk to, and if blogger relations is not done "right" it could be disastrous to your brand. I know a little about public relations, and no offense to the mainstream press, but they are not always kind to pr folks. Needless to say, my anxiety level kept this task untouched on my list until Q 3.

Finally one day, I had a press release, on a genetics topic, and via e-mail I introduced and shared some info with the blogger responsible for Genetics & Health. She was very nice, and great to work with. Now I realize that blogger relations is very similar to the first day of kindergarten, or the first day at a new school. Everyone is out in the playground.... Some of them already know each other... You can either sit on the outside watching them talk and play or you can step out, say hello, introduce yourself and tell them that you like to play too. On a personal note, my parents moved me around quite a bit. Between K and 12 I went to 10 different schools. I was the new kid practically every year. So this, I "get".

Still in the early stages, my blogger relations strategy thus far has been this. If I have news, or information that I know might be interesting to the blogger, or their readership I e-mail them, I tell them what I know, and I ask them if they might want to hear from me again if I get anything else. I am a blogger, I am always looking for interesting stuff to share, every time I get something good, I share it, and I don't care who or where it comes from, as long as the source is credible. Turns out, everyone else I have approached has felt the same way.

Just to round out the analogy, here is my simple blogger relations tip list

1 Don't poke your nose in if you have nothing to say
2 Use your good manners, please and thank you go a long way
3 If there is anything you can do for them in return, just do it
4 These are people and "blogger relations" is just a fancy term for making new friends
5 If they don't want to be your friend, leave them alone

If you have more basic blogger relations tips please feel free to add onto the list.

Cancer Patient Lost Everything / The Power of Social Media

My pal Dr. Miggy e-mailed me this weekend to tell me about a patient at the hospital that lost everything in a fire. She sent out a post on twitter about the chip in page that she created to raise money for the patient. "Just thought I'd share this with you. I set up a ChipIn page for donations to a patient and his family who recently lost everything in a house fire. What they were able to salvage got stolen out of their car while they were staying in a hotel. I sent out a tweet about it and so far, since about 2 PM, we have collected over $600 to give to the family. Now, I could be wrong, but I don't think this would have happened if it weren't for twitter. I'm truly overwhelmed by the generosity ofthis group of people." This for me truly illustrates the power of the social media and the one-to-one connection is creates often times between perfect strangers.

Expanding the Channels - Social Bookmarking

So I have to keep it moving with the social media program, so in my effort to expand the channels I found a new way to reach the "low hanging fruit". On the recommendation of our SEO agency, I have begun to expand into social bookmarking sites. This is proven to be an easy way to expand the program, and the number of links out there in the world.

The only problem here is the amount of ground there is to cover. There is no way to cover it all, so again I am picking my battles. With the help of my trusty browser "share this" icon I have set off to Stumble upon, Furl, Digg and Del.ici.ous everything wonderful that our site, content, or partners has to offer.

Want to see what I am doing... take a look
Stumble upon - http://mdandersonorg.stumbleupon.com/
Furl - http://www.furl.net/member/mdanderson
Del.ici.ous - http://del.icio.us/UTMDACC
Ma.gnolia - http://ma.gnolia.com/people/MDAnderson/bookmarks

Don't panic if you don't see your favorite stuff here. I promise I am working on it, and feel free to e-mail me if you want to speed up the process.

Truths of Social Media

I am here at the New Comm Forum conference this week hoping for some insights on what I am am trying to do with social and digital media at the institution. I have met some really interesting people and heard some comforting news about what is happening in communications and social media across many industries. We are not as behind as we sometimes think we are.

In a conference full of communicators, and authors on communication practices you hear lots of sound bytes. Thus far Joe Jaffe, Jim Long and Richard Binhammer provided for me the best of the quotes.

These are the truths that resonated most with me.

• You have to be social to understand social media. This is not the right communication vehicle for people who don't like people.
  
  
• Social media is about the intersection between media and technology
  
  
• Nobody is in control --- Not communicators, not consumers nobody
  
  
• Humanity | Humility | Humor
  
  
• If you want to understand social media you have to be like a storm chaser, and drive right into the eye of the storm. You have to be a "all up in it" to really understand it

When I get home, you may hear me integrate these into my pitches, training and conversations. I think these will be important points to make in helping the nay-sayers and social media newbies to understand what this is and why and how to use it to meet our goals.

Feel free to use them too.

Care and Feeding of 2.0 Development

Yesterday was very busy. It started with video shoots and ended with a podcast meeting. Somewhere in between that I landed myself on an web steering sub sub committee, and attended a networking luncheon. I was at my desk for about 1 hour and 30 min of my 9 hour day.

While at that luncheon I stopped to speak with a guy who is hoping to travel down this 2.0 rabbit hole with his organization. We got onto the topic of how hard it is too start and keep these social media projects going once you get them started. This is something that I have been thinking quite a bit about lately. As we get closer to the end of the fiscal year, and my project plan is rolling out I am realizing that in the not so distant future, I will have to maintain all of the FY08 projects while implementing the FY09 projects.

How AM I going to do that?

1- I am going to stick to the plan
Back in January I was required to write a strategic plan for implementation of social and digital media for the institution. It identified the projects, and tied them to the strategic goals of the institution, and the department. It was the best thing I could have ever done for helping me to focus on the task at hand. I still use it as my roadmap for what I am doing, and why. I am going to write another one in September.

2 - I am going pick my battles
Even with the plan in place new opportunities present themselves often. We have recently been approached by a few social media sites, and a couple of video content sites to help them develop with content from our experts. These are potentially great partnerships, that would develop the brand and provide the guarantee of quality in this online healthcare content. HOWEVER...They all want original content, and exclusive rights to it. So with every request a writer, or videographer has to be pulled to produce this stuff, and I have to stop what I am doing to shepherd these projects. If it does not match my road map for the year, and it is more time intensive than it is beneficial I would rather not do it. We just can't do everything...right now.

This journey into 2.0 has been paved with planning, and policy writing, and watching and testing, and training. This is a new area of content development for the institution, so I cannot say for sure how we are going to juggle all of this? I imagine it will be like any other communications initiative, it will take constant care and feeding, and will require support to help it grow.

Wish me luck!

Video and the Quality Debate

The debates about the quality of the video and audio content we create in-house are as hot as ever right now.

The are two camps
- Some folks think that viral, un-produced content is the way to go. Last year the "experts" said that your video content should look homemade, and authentic. The flashy produced look would turn youtube type viewers off.

- The video elite frown upon youtube and any content like it. To them it is unprofessional and nothing less than broadcast quality will do, even online.

While at a conference over the weekend I heard a refreshing take from a multimedia person who works for one of the local papers. In essence she said that their organization has content that has shot by professionals with big fancy cameras and stuff shot on the fly with a handicam, then there are levels of quality in between. She said, they understand that their audience understands the differences in the purpose of the content, and they consume it for the content and so much the quality.

I have to agree with her. I think there are times when you get a gem of video or audio while you are out in the field, and you should not just dump it if the type of content is what your audience is really looking for. On the other side of that just because a piece is well produced does not mean it won't be popular on youtube. One of our best looking videos on youtube is the second most popular one.

Let's just try to produce quality content, in a timely manner that represents the institution well.

I have been having quite a few discussions about video and audio lately. This is not the last that you will hear on this issue.

Shameless Promotion of Web 2.0 Projects

Now that we have launched the first phase of our web 2.0 presence, here begins the fun. It is time to start spreading the word. As a former marketer I would expect that I would be full of ideas on how to do that. All of the things that immediately spring to mind for me include shameless self promotion, since that is not how social media works, my list to date is short.

- Added the links to the newsroom page
- Sending out an e-mail message to our subscriber list letting them know we are there
- Asking everyone I know using these social media tools to join and share with their contacts

Next week I am meeting with internal communications, they can help in getting the word out in house. That is a group of 17,000 possible followers and friends. Maybe they know some others that might be interested?

Do you have any ideas on what else I can do to promote theses tools

How to get more relevant followers on Twitter

Contributed by: Michelle Calabretta

http://drmiggy.com/

If you intend to use twitter to spreading content to a particular audience, there are ways you can find and target those people.

First, use a key word to search for people to follow. For example, just type in “cancer” in the find folks! box on the right hand toolbar. It will retrieves 66 people on twitter that have the word “cancer” anywhere in their profile. If you click on their avatars you can look at their profile page and see what they are tweeting about. Follow the people who seem to have similar interests, and more often than not they will follow you back

If you have a gmail account, another tool to find new followers is the gtalk application. At the very bottom of any page on twitter you can click the explore link. It will take you to a page of external applications, just scroll down until you find gtalk. Click on the link and follow the instructions to add twitter as a buddy in your gtalk list. Once you do that, open an instant message window with twitter in gmail. Type “track cancer” and send. Now any time some one on twitter tweets the word “cancer” twitter will send you an instant message with the tweet and the name of the tweeter. You can go check out their profile and see if you want to follow them. Again, more often than not they will follow you back.

The gtalk application can get a bit annoying if you keep it on all the time, so if you get tired of it just send another instant message to twitter with “untrack cancer” and the updates will stop. You can stop and start them any time and build your contact list.

There many third party applications for twitter, so if you have some time check them out in the explore page and see what else you can get into! I'm a big fan of the “blocks” application, which is a graphic representation of how your network is connected and who else they are interacting with. It's a good way to find people who may have similar interests as you and your other contacts.

If you ever have any questions about twitter, just ask some one who has been around a while. The twitterverse is extremely friendly and helpful, so don't be shy!

The Needle is Moving

Today I presented the future institutional Facebook and Twitter pages for final blessing at the VP level. We are approved! (applause here)

To get to this point we had to

1. Educate quite a few folks on what these tools where and how to use them
2. Find examples of how other people were using them, in the context of health care
3. Immerse myself in regular use of the tools, and monitor the trends
   
4. Develop the plan, goals and strategic vision for use of these tools
5. Include all of the key groups in development of the guidelines
6. Write the guidelines documents, and edit, and edit
7. Develop the graphic and editorial content for the pilot users
8. Get approval on the guidelines, graphics & editorial plan

Now that it is blessed, I will announce it to the directors, on Monday. If that goes well I will flip the switch and soft launch before the end of the day.

Then

• Make announcements to my key stakeholders
• Participate in an internal communication plan
• Once the pages are up and I am happy with the
  results, I will formally share the news externally
  

This could not have gotten done without strategic planning, communication and training and development of a community of social media champions and mentors. Thank you all so much, you know who you are.

This is just the beginning.

Winning Converts

I remember a time when many people felt that a web site was a business luxury and the internet was a fad. Ten years later it is only natural that the same people are afraid of the changes happening in the way the web works. Early adopters be patient, they just got comfortable with its permanence. Find comfort in the fact that Television, and Rock & Roll, and Hip Hop were also considered fads.

It is our job to be evangelists for the tools we believe in, and not be ashamed and hide our twitter use from the people who just have not come to understand its power for business communication and relationship development.

I have gone out to a number of groups evangelizing for Web 2.0. I have hit walls, had to answer touch question, and told the story at least 100 times. Although I have not yet converted all of the masses, I have had some success. I have even created a few new evangelists in the process. I proudly admit I am personally responsible for at least 10 new twitter addictions.

In my mission trips this I have learned:

Social Media use is a personal experience
I watch television. I watch to get news, and history shows, I like sit com’s and even a little reality TV. My 5 year old also watches TV. She likes cartoons, and kids shows. The media is the same, but our motivations are different. With social media you can show them how you use it, but they may not relate to that. In showing them how to use it, relate to them on topics that are interesting to them.

Get them to try the tools
As noted above, Social media is a personal experience; even the learning curve is different for every user. But you will never understand how it works for you unless you try it. Convince new users to sign up for something and try it for a few days.

Let the numbers tell the story
66 Million Facebook users don’t lie. 40% of them are over 35 years old. One of the great things about communicating on the web is that it is measurable. A simple Google search or a check of a sites advertiser solicitation pages will give you the justification you need to make your case about the power of new media tools.

Let your competitors tell the story
You need only to take a look at the Mayo Clinic Blogs or Facebook pages to see one example of how credible use of these tools is a present reality. Innovation is a platform of our core values, hiding from new technology is not very innovative.

You will know when the light begins to shine, because they will start to come to you as the expert with questions instead of avoiding you as the crazy social media radical (that you probably are).

Evangelists, Please comment with your tips or feedback. What has worked for you in converting your cohorts?

My name is Jennifer... and I am a Twitterholic

I use twitter. I use it almost every day. I use it to keep in touch with people down the hall, and in other departments. I use it to stay on top of what is going on in my industry, and to keep up with where my daughter is. I have a new story every week of how twitter has made something better or easier.

The only thing I like better than twitter is all of the cool little tools that people have built for it or around it.

Daily use Tools
Twitter Fox - I have a few tools for twitter use downloaded in various places but I seem to go back to twitterfox every time. That is mostly because I am conditioned Firefox user. In my work I ussually have a web browser open, usually firefox. It sits in the corner of my screen, it does not really effect my work flow, and if I see something interesting enough to stop I can open twitterfox and read, or click to open twitter, in a new tab.
I have also downloaded twhirl. It is a cute little app that sits on my desktop, but I almost never open it, so I don't use it much. I tweet from my blackberry using Gtalk

TwitDir - Is what it sounds like, a twitter directory featuring the top 100 twitterers
Tweet Volume - Lets you see keyword volumes in twitter.
Twitterfeed - Takes your rss feed and turns it into tweets. No fuss updates to your twitter page

I have read that a new twitter app is created every day. You can keep up with whats new on the twitter wiki http://twitter.pbwiki.com/ There is a link to it in twitter, at the bottom of the page in the explore twitter section. One of the cool things I found there was:

Quitter - a tobacco cessation program built with twitter as a platform
http://qwitter.tobaccofreeflorida.com/

How do you use twitter? What twitter tools do you use? Do you have any stories about how twitter has made your life easier?

Facebook Fever

After two meetings last week and two scheduled for this week, I am starting to get the feeling that Facebook fever has hit. A number of departments, looking for ways to stretch their dollar, and reach out to untapped audiences, have decided that Facebook is a good place to start.

I agree.

I think Facebook is a logical place to put lots of our content. Because it is a social site, and not managed by the institution, some thought needs to go into how we stay consistent and credible in this arena, yet let multiple content owners handle their content in a way that works for their audience and content. I equate it to something my mom used to say whenever I would go to a sleep over or out with a friends' family "House rules... You are representing your family".

What is done so far to help establish the house rules

• I am on draft 5 (or 6) of the Social media news distribution plan. It includes development of Facebook for news distribution, and beyond. I present it for approval on Friday. I guess I better finish it soon!
  
  
• I put draft 1 of the Facebook development guidelines on paper. The next step is to get my early adopters into one room to make sure I cover all of our basis with the final document.
  
  
• I found a guinea pig. Cancerwise has a closed access group in Facebook. Here Darcy is building things out to see how they may work.

Because of the number of groups anxious to start using Facebook. I anticipate that development of this will all happen very quickly. Have questions about where we are going with this Facebook stuff? Post your questions to the blog.

Making the Case for Social Media

I am starting to hear that that folks all over the institution are looking to promote their content beyond WWW. Weekly, I find out about new projects that have a web 2.0 element to their plan for communications. Additionally I hear about others aching to implement these tools into their communications plans, only to be shut down for lack of understanding, or fear of transparency.

The difference I notice in these two scenarios seems to come down to one thing. Education.

Some of us (like me) are lucky, we work for tech savvy, early adopters. In this case, creating a reasonable implementation plan is enough to make the case. For those who's managing director may be hesitant, all hope is not lost. Your first step should be to educate your supervisor, and your entire team for that matter on the tools you are hoping to implement. I warn you that step one is not so easy, but it is important in ultimately making the case.

1) Articulate your goal/s - What is it that use of this tool will help you to accomplish
2) Provide the support - Demographics, and statistics to support your claims
3) Define the use & tools - Examples help, what might this look like, and who else is doing this
4) Measurement of Success - Define what success means, and how you will measure it.

Finally, use your resources. If you work here, join the Facebook Web 2.0 discussion group. Most of the attendees at these lunch events are either already using these tools, or are writing plans to use these tools. If you don't work here, there are plenty of local groups and experts talking about this. Go to meet ups, bar camps, or conferences, you are sure to meet someone who would be happy to share their knowledge. If you are in Houston, HIMA is a good place to start.

My job here is to help develop some direction around social media communications here, at this place we call...umm...work. Use me as a resource, I am gathering the information anyway, and I don't mind sharing.

What is up with the Big Blog Plan?

As many of you know the development of an institutional blog is on my project list. I have been here a month, what is taking so long!

Right now I am in the research phase. I am looking at how other blogs are structured, how they are commented on and trying to understand what lessons I can take from them and apply to our communications. I am also looking to take some of my leftover budget money and find a consultant to help me define these best practices and help in creating the development plan.

There are also a couple of things that we are waiting on before we move forward.

1) The approval of the internal blog policy by legal. Once they get that pushed through the external policy should be much easier to develop.

2) The time line of the site redesign. The redesign is scheduled to be completed by September. If that deadline is met, it may not be such a good idea for us to develop the product, then redevelop it for the new site. Additionally, Rythmyx has blogs and social media tools built into it's newest release.

This is more than just a project, this is the development of a new communications vehicle for the entire institution. It is worth it to put in the time and effort to do it carefully. If all goes well, I expect to have the development plan written and ready to put through the approval process by early April. I will keep you all informed every step of the way.

Earn your Sharing Badge

The social bookmarking / sharing bug has arrived at our front door.

During a Patient Power meeting, someone suggested that we add del.ici.ous links to the event pages as a way for users to share their content with friends. Great idea! We had planned on making book mark links available on the page anyway, so no one took issue with the idea. We looked at our options and picked a badge style that would fit well with the look of our page, and this was done.

A few months later, Adi Espat stopped by and asked if we could add digg or other social sharing badges to her awareness page. Great idea, but then the fear set in. As this desire grows will our site begin to look more like an ad farm for social media sites, than an information source for patients, physicians and their families.

That is when I discovered Share this. Share this is a one icon tool that allows you to choose what sharing sites you offer to your readers, within a little expandable window. You can also choose to send your content via email. So instead of putting links to digg, delicious, facebook, newsvine, technorati... and every other think you can think of, we can just drop this one snippet of code onto the page and BAM! you've got it all.



The draw back? It is javascript, and as everyone who works on sites here knows, you cannot add .js in our cms when you are working in IE.

So to get it into your page you have to publish your page, then go back and open it in Firefox, or Netscape, then put the code in at the end of the page and close. Do not go back and preview... It WILL break the code. It is the same process you have to do if you put in streaming video, or a poll.

If you want more info, or you want to give it a try, just let me know. I will can give you the snippet of code, and walk you through placing it in, if you need help.

I gave the code to Darcy this morning, you I think you might see the Share this badge in this month's issue of Cancerwise. If you do, try it out and let me know what you think?

What the Flock?

A few days ago I Twittered about a tool I was testing out called Flock.

Flock is a web browser that is dedicated to helping you keep up with all of the social media tools you are using, in one place. I am sure I have not discovered all of it is secrets yet, but for someone like me it is pretty helpful.

All day I get questions and comments and links posted to twitter and facebook that I need to watch. I also need to keep an eye on the bloggers and blogs for mentions of the institution. It is nice to have one place where I can go to see all of that content that I am interested in.

I have found a few things about it that I don't love. It takes some time to configure your settings. It took me at least 2 days to customize it for my needs. It does not seem as fast with my twitter updates as other tools. I would also like it more if it kept me logged into everything, instead of having to log back into everything every time I close the browser.

If you have always dreamed of having just one place where you can manage and monitor all of your social media communications, then I would recommend that you give it a try. If you spend less than 20% of your day in social media spaces, I wouldn't bother.

Tip! If you use firefox, you can keep up with twitter and facebook just as easily by installing twitter fox, and the facebook browser app.

I know that a few of my twitter followers did download Flock, What do you think? Please share your experience.

Blogged with Flock

Promoting Video Content Outside of the Main Site

I have been asked a number of times about the "point" of posting our videos on YouTube. Yesterday I got another question about this. New concerns were expressed over the perception that our content is not as viral as other content on Youtube. Is it worth the effort?

Here are the highlights of my response, with some additions for context ...

Yes, it is true that people may not be specifically looking for videos on health care, as much as they may search for other things. But what they are searching for is content on their condition. As we know many of those searches start in Google. Now that Google has started offering blended search results (meaning photos, video, blogs all come up as search results), we would be missing a real opportunity to promote our content to a broader audience, beyond subscribed readers of the on-line publication.

....
We have only had 7,600 video views on youtube since we launched in July of 2007. True 7,600 video views may seem like a small number, but hopefully that equals 7,600 people who found the information on their condition that they we looking for, or who saw the human side of treatment here.

This is free promotion of the content that you are already creating for the main site. Despite the low numbers I encourage you to continue to create video content, and continue promote it outside of website.

Also keep in mind that Youtube is not the only place where that video content can live. Each video that is posted on Youtube should also be posted on Google video, Yahoo video, IcYou.com and Scivee for research and scientific based content.

Hope this helps to clear things up.

What am I doing with this Blog?

I have been sitting on this blog for a few weeks not sure what how I would continue to populate it. Luckily, in response to an e-mail I called Darcy De leon, editor of Cancerwise and pal.

We got into a discussion about the learning curve for this stuff that I work on. I mentioned that spend quite a bit of my day answering lots of questions about social media, video, audio, SEO and general web best practice stuff, sometimes the same questions over and over and over again. I don't mind, that is part of what I am paid to do. But Darcy mentioned that, even as web savy as she is, she often has to ask some things once or twice because it does not really sink in, or the context is not clear at the time I first answer it. She mentioned that she might like to have some place to go look up the answer. That is when the the light bulb finally went on!

So now I know what I need to do with this blog! I will post:

• The questions I get and answers I give
• The new stuff I learn and how we might use it
• Updates to the questions, stuff I learn
• High level project updates & announcements

I would love to hear what you think about this plan? Is there anything else you would like me to keep you up to date on?