Well...not exactly today. It was about a week ago, actually. I'm very fortunate to be part of NH Citizens Health Initiative, a group that gets together regularly to determine ways to make NH a healthier place. Group members represent state, industry, and various private and public health concerns.
Recently we had a day long session discussing recent initiatives, results from past efforts and new directions, one being a strong push into social networking and social media. That's where I came in. Working under the aegis of The Center for Adaptive Solutions, I presented an introduction to social media workshop.
Before I got onstage, we had presentations by Dorothy Bazos, Holly Tutko, Ned Helms (pictured), and Laurie Davie, all fascinating and all enlightening. I was intrigued to learn from Ned Helms that health initiatives share a problem plaguing quite a few other places; a lack of leadership (something I'll be posting about in The Analytics Ecology some time soon).
Several Initiatives, Several Voices
We had a nicely packed room and the discussions were lively. I shared my experience re The High Cost of Cancelling WorkOutWorld Membership and everybody seemed to have a similar story. The workshop itself started with an explanation of what social media services address what audience groups and how to identify where your audience spends its social media time. From there we got into particular methods for getting people's attention online, how to deal with unwanted social campaigns and commenters and how to penetrate existing social groups to your benefit.
And then I gave a class assignment
I mentioned that the discussions were lively. This was especially true when I asked the participants to create a blog post based on that day's presentations and training.
One group took on the task of creating a social media campaign that tied together Robert Frost, cellulite, black flies and living in NH, another took up my suggestion of creating a hook (such as the quotes I use in my email signature) to draw people into a social media effort and another discussion dealt with creating social media campaigns for internal corporate use.
Fascinating stuff, all.
It was so much fun we're going to do it again
The Center for Adaptive Solutions will be sponsoring some additional workshops over the summer for everyone who's interested. The focus will be general and apply to all sectors, not simply health. You can learn more at The NextStage Store.
See you there!
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Upcoming Trainings:
- Creating a Social Media Campaign That Works - CAS-NextStage Live Training, Concord, NH, 8 Jun 2010
- Social Media Messaging with Meaning - CAS-NextStage Live Training, Concord, NH 21 Sept 2010
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Have you read my latest book, Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History? It's a whoppin' good read.
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