LikeMind Milwaukee

LikeMind Milwaukee converged this morning at Rochambo Coffee House on Brady Street for great conversation on social media and building your personal brand. Phil Gerbyshak shared his experience in developing his personal brand and the tools he uses to maintain his brand both online and offline. He shared a key bit of information with all of us: “it’s not about the tools, it’s how they help build relationships.” Phil shared insights into setting up his blog as the hub of his online personality and how he uses different outposts like Twitter, FourSquare and Facebook to interact and facilitate relationship building.

Check out twitter and search #MKELikemind to catch a glimpse of the conversation.

Join us on Friday, November 20 from 7 – 9 a.m. at Rochambo as we continue to bring the online discussion into the offline, face-to-face environment. We’d love to have you. More info on the guest speaker soon!

I’ve joined the international movement known as Likemind. Jeff Larche of Digital Solid has invited me to co-host the Milwaukee group and I’m excited for what’s to come. We’ll be gathering on the third Friday of every month at Rochambo Coffee and Tea House on Brady Street in Milwaukee. The get togethers will feature great coffee, excellent conversations and a handful of presentations from thought leaders across Milwaukee.

Likemind was started by Piers and Noah with the simple goal of bringing people together over coffee to have a conversation. Likemind is now a global movement that has finally made its way to Milwaukee. We’d love to have you join us. For additional details, drop me a line.

I’m amazed to see the evolution and growing importance of mobile devices and access to information. I was thinking about this at work today and how we have an opportunity to tap mobile devices for access to health info. Working in health care I have yet to access info from my phone but we did create a mobile version of our site that allows you to find a doc, location and health info. I’ll share the results as we track the usage.

If I can post to my blog from my phone, why not be able to research a condition if I’m sick, find a doc and schedule an appointment. Another item to add to my to do list!

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Walk On – Exploring the Digital Experience

Any thoughts? Can this technology make it easier to interact?

Posted via web from jameyshiels’s posterous

For individuals, there is a great How To from Ben Parr at Mashable
that provides a good approach to identifying and managing your
networks. There is also a desktop solution that I will be
experimenting with called Sobees. Sobees claims to "offer an easy unified user experience to get, organize and share information from the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Digg, Flickr and YouTube directly on the desktop". Sobee sounds similar to Collactive which is a company that offers a robust social media management platform for the corporation.

Finally, for those who support Corporte social media programs, I would recommend reviewing the Forrester Wave Report on Listening Platforms as well as the agencies they recommend.

How do you manage yoru social media profiles?

I've spent my time since my arrival educating the organization on what social media is and how we can enter into a new level of conversation with our caregivers, patients, donors and the communities we serve. Recently, I've been finalizing our 2009 strategy and slowing rolling out the program. We're currently establishing a presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. I'd like to share a recent experience we had with Twitter, a tool that is tough one for individuals, let alone corporations to get their heads around. At the end of the day, Twitter is what you make it. 

Aurora Health Care has been steadily expanding its
presence on Twitter and exploring ways to use the tool to help us learn about online conversations especially those focusing on health care. Our
network is quickly growing and has been very useful in helping us on a couple of
projects. We're currently developing social media guidelines to help caregivers
within the organization as they participate in social networks and other
opportunities on behalf of the organization. I was in a team meeting and we decided to check to see what other corporations were doing around guidelines for employees. I quickly pulled out the trusty iPhone and sent a tweet to the Aurora network and my personal network. Ten minutes later, I had five examples and over 20 links to corporate social media guideline examples. 

This is information we otherwise would have needed to
spend time researching and tracking down. Instead we used the power and
knowledge of our network to facilitate the process. If we can do this for simple
things like this, think of what we can do for patients around health care needs
and information. Amazing opportunities. 

]]> http://jameyshiels.com/2009/03/social-media-and-the-organization/feed/ 0 http://jameyshiels.com/2009/03/social-media-and-the-organization/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WalkOn/~3/fCFYiNTAZQc/ http://jameyshiels.com/2009/01/overcoming-the-fear-of-start/#comments Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:45:20 +0000 Jamey http://jameyshiels.com/?p=11 I’m overwhelmed by the number of opportunities available to take Aurora Health Care into a new direction with digital communications and social media. It’s an exciting time for me and my team but it is also challenging because we’re facing the Fear of Start.

In an organization of 30,000 employees, one of the most challenging items is determining where to start. It’s a paralyzing experience when you consider the organizational goals, overall strategy, resources required and need to have the right people on board.

I came to a realization this week during a team meeting. We’ve got nothing to lose. The team is primed and ready and all I need to do is lead us out of paralysis. I’m going to do three things to get us out of the current situation and moving forward. 

Our first step is to overcome the fear of the unknown and who needs to be on board. We will do our best to educate internal participants on digital communications and social media along the way rather than waiting for them to “get it” before we start. We’ll start small and grow as more and more people see the vision and get excited.  

Our second step is to realize that their is no template. I’m a big fan of templates and established processes (ask my previous boss) but there isn’t a one size fits all template for instituting social media internally and externally for an organization. We need to be prepared to experiment, fail, learn and do it again.

Finally, I need to motivate my Tribe. I need to lead by being courageous, by making mistakes and learning from them. I need to empower my team to do the same. We need to take risks and harness the excitement of the organization.

The time has come to lead and overcome the fear of start.