Web Ink Now

Top ten PR tips for small businesses

Last week I participated on a call with John Jantsch who asked me to share my top ten PR tips for small businesses with his audience. John is the author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide and he writes the very popular Duct Tape Marketing blog.

I had to take the call from my room in the Beverly Hilton because I was speaking at The Milken Institute Global Conference. OK, I'll admit that I didn't prepare for the call (sorry John) and just banged out ten tips a few minutes before we spoke.

After the call, I realized that sometimes there is value to top-of-mind ideas. Nuggets of value may be lost when you obsess over getting every detail perfect. So I thought I'd share the list with you. No, it is not comprehensive - given time I would choose different things for the list and re-order what's here:

1. The old ways to get noticed were to buy expensive advertising and beg the media to write about you and your products. The best way to get noticed today is to publish great content online.

2. Don't talk about what your products and services do. Instead talk about how you solve problems for your customers.

3. Be enthusiastic and have fun. People want to do business with people they like.

4. Don't rely on spamming the media with your press releases and PR pitches.

5. Use press releases to reach buyers directly.

6. Comment on blogs, forums and chat rooms (but don't talk about your products and services).

7. Read the popular books in your market and write a review on Amazon. Use your real name and affiliation.

8. Shoot a short video and put it up onto YouTube

9. Know what search terms people are using to find products and services like yours and create content that search engines will reward with high search engine rankings.

10. Don't be egotistical. Nobody cares about you and your products. Your buyers care about themselves and solving their problems.

The Milken Institute Global Conference: My brain's gonna hurt

I speak at a lot of conferences and events (about one per week on average). It's a cool job because every few days I meet a fresh set of interesting people in a fun setting and learn something new.

This week I'm leading a panel discussion at The Milken Institute Global Conference. Holy cow what a lineup of presenters! I think my brain's gonna hurt.

How about this panel discussion for cool factor!

Decision '08: What Awaits the Next President?
- John Cleese, Comedian, Writer, Actor and Producer
- Frank Luntz, Founder and CEO, Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research
- William Bennett, Former U.S. Secretary of Education
- Jerry Brown, Attorney General of California
- Richard Schiff, Actor (Toby on The West Wing)
- Moderator: Bill Schneider, Senior Political Analyst, CNN

I will send updates as much as possible via twitter if you want to follow it.

The Milken Institute Global Conference, April 28-30 at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, brings together some of the most extraordinary people in the world - from scientists, business executives and philanthropists to journalists, academics and Nobel laureates - to discuss, debate and deliberate today's most pressing social, political and economic challenges.

Some other A-list discussions that sound interesting: Tennis great Andre Agassi on "Taking the 'Risk' Out of At-Risk Youth," Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation on "Pursuing Your Passion," There's a Conversation With T. Boone Pickens. One I'm eager to hear is "Business Innovations That Are Changing the World" with Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google. Or maybe just pop over to hear His Royal Highness Michael of Kent participating in a one-on-one interview.

These are other panels I hope to attend:

Paying the Piper: How Can Music Keep Its Revenues and Its Customers?
- Quincy Jones, Producer; Composer; CEO, Quincy Jones Music Publishing
- Andrew Lack, Chairman, Sony BMG Music Entertainment
- Justin Goldberg, Founder and CEO, Indie911
- Moderator: Larry Carroll, News Anchor, KFWB News 980

A Discussion With Nobel Laureates in Economics
- Gary Becker, Nobel Laureate, 1992; University of Chicago
- Edmund Phelps, Nobel Laureate, 2006; Columbia University
- Myron Scholes, Nobel Laureate, 1997; Platinum Grove Asset Management
- A. Michael Spence, Nobel Laureate, 2001; Stanford University

I'm leading a killer panel called The Changing Rules of PR and Corporate Influence in the Digital Age
- Jason Calacanis, Founder and CEO, Mahalo.com
- Robert Dilenschneider, Founder and Principal, The Dilenschneider Group
- Steven Rubenstein, President, Rubenstein Communications Inc.
Moderator: David Meerman Scott (that would be me)

Follow my thoughts on twitter.

What the heck is Web 2.0 / social media / social networking and how do these concepts relate to the new rules of marketing & pr?

Recently I've noticed that many people have been using a bunch of definitions, including "New Rules of Marketing", "Web 2.0 marketing", "social media marketing", and "social network marketing" interchangeably. (Feel free to substitute "PR" for "marketing" if that’s appropriate for you.)

I don't think these concepts are the same at all, and I think that using them interchangeably creates problems for all of us.

Here's a summary from my perspective: "social media marketing" and "social network marketing" are two different things. From the marketing & PR perspective, both are subsets of "the new rules of marketing & PR". On the other hand "Web 2.0 marketing" is essentially a meaningless phrase. See below for details of where I'm coming from.

I wanted to spark some dialog about this as I think that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about what some of the various phrases mean. Additionally, the tools and techniques vary.

Please jump in with your thoughts.

Here are mine:

The new rules of marketing (and the new rules of PR).
These phrases were not used prior to me introducing them in 2006. If you Google either phrase today, you'll see that links to my site, blog, and work dominate the top results.

I say that the old rules of marketing & PR were that you either had to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write about you. Prior to the Web, there weren't other significant ways to get noticed. The Web has changed the rules. The new rules of marketing & PR are that you can bypass the gatekeepers and publish your own content online in the form of content-rich Web sites, blogs, YouTube videos, photos, ebooks and the like and reach buyers directly.

Web 2.0 marketing (and Web 2.0 PR)
The term Web 2.0 is credited to Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly media.
"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

Many people have taken the "Web 2.0" phrase and slapped "marketing" or "PR" on the end to designate something new. My opinion is that the term Web 2.0 (as coined by O'Reilly) was meant to describe how people use the Web and how software companies are creating applications that are Web-based instead of requiring downloading to your PC or delivered via a client-server environment.

I'd say that people who use the terms "Web 2.0 marketing" and "Web 2.0 PR" (or the related "marketing 2.0" and "PR 2.0") are using those phrases as a catch-all to describe "new" and most can't really define exactly what they mean except to say that "it includes blogs and YouTube and Facebook and other stuff like that."

Personally, I steer clear of using Web 2.0 when describing marketing and PR because it is imprecise and confusing.

Further reading – the Web 2.0 Wikipedia entry.

Social media marketing (and social media PR)
I'd suggest that the term social media describes online media with a participatory or interactive component.

A news story that is delivered online becomes social media if there is a place for readers to comment on the news story. Blogs, forums, Wikis, and chat rooms are all social media in my opinion because they include an interactive component.

Marketing and PR using social media involves creating social media content (starting a blog perhaps) and participating in social media (by leaving appropriate comments other people’s blogs or forums).

Further reading – the Social Media Wikipedia entry.

Social network marketing (and social network PR)
I'd suggest that the term social networking describes online networking tools and the ways they are used to connect groups of people on the Web.

By my definition, social networking sites include Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, SecondLife, Bebo, and others similar to these. People use these sites to network and stay connected with friends and colleagues and to meet other like-minded people.

Marketing and PR using social networking involves creating personal profiles, creating and joining groups, and building applications for others to use. It involves participating in social networking sites.

Further reading – the Social Network Wikipedia entry.

Here's something important.

By my definitions, "social media marketing & PR" as well as "social network marketing & PR" are two different things and both are subsets of the "new rules of marketing & PR."

The way I see the world, as marketing and PR people we need to think about the new rules as including lots of tools and techniques and social media and social networking are two of those. But there are many others.

What are your thoughts?

Al Gore: PR agent for planet earth

Al Gore was on 60 Minutes last night and I was struck with how successful he is in the role of Public Relations.

(Please note: This is not a political blog. I am not commenting on presidential politics or on the politics of global warming. This is commentary on Gore as a communicator.)

PR and marketing professionals should look to Gore as an important case study on how to do things right. Here are my top-of-mind thoughts:

1. Al Gore has successful communicated a powerful idea, that "Global Warming is the greatest challenge facing our time." He doesn't talk about his products -- books and movie -- instead he communicates powerful ideas. He knows exactly what he wants his buyer personas to believe.

2. Gore pays attention to buyer personas and he tailors his presentations accordingly. For example, when he talks to evangelical Christians, he includes passages from the Bible.

3. Gore is persistent, building his ideas over time. When he first started talking about Global Warming years ago, very few people were interested. He kept at it, speaking to hundreds of groups and building the buzz.

4. Gore understands how to use the media to help deliver his information. In practically every interview I've seen with him, Gore talks about climate change. To use an old PR term, he is "on message." Even when reporters draw him into other discussions, like who he supports for President, he brings the conversation back to what is important to him.

5. Gore understands how to use the Web. He has an attractive, content rich Web site and he is a blogger.

6. He is the undisputed thought leader when it comes to climate change and he delivers his ideas through various media including online, print (his book An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We can do about it), and video (the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.)

7. He knows how to deliver compelling live presentations.

8. Gore understands global communications. An Inconvenient Truth been translated into 27 languages, and he delivers speeches all over the planet.

9. Like many successful PR pros, Gore knows that sometimes advertising is important in an overall communications campaign. He is using the profits from his books and documentary as well has his Nobel prize award to kick off a $300 million advertising campaign to raise awareness about climate change. (You should start seeing TV ads soon.)

10. Awards programs, another PR tool, are part of his work. You can't do much better than an Oscar and a Nobel. (An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2006, and Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for the "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." And when he wins an award. Gore talks again about his powerful idea because he know the world's media is paying attention.

Al Gore, PR Agent for Planet Earth.

PR and Marketing pros can learn from his work. I certainly have.

When reaching out to bloggers, don't ask for them to write about you!

Lately I've been getting dozens of pitches a week from PR people who want me to write about their stuff on this blog. Most of the pitches are just spam, with the PR types using the exact same techniques that they have used with journalists for years.

To paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, spam is sending email that is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantively identical form to many recipients. That's what PR people do to bloggers now. And then at the end of their email they basically say: "please write about me."

Here are portions of actual emails I've received recently. (I've paraphrased or modified to remove the identity of the people who contacted me).

"Would [this news] be something you are interested in covering? If so, when would be the first time you could publish something on it?"

"Are you going to be able to post something about...? I can send you suggested copy."

"Can I send you [the new book] so you can review it on your blog?"

(It's not just me. Other bloggers I've spoken with have the same problem with PR people.)

Here's the thing. Bloggers are not the same as journalists. We don't have editors telling us what to do. We write about what interests us and we are always on the lookout for things to share. But it is not our job to write about you and your stuff.

Here is an important point missed by virtually everyone - bloggers have other identities and can help you in other ways:

> Would you be happy if I talked about your stuff in front of the 20,000 people I speak to at conferences and events per year?

> Would you like to see your stuff profiled in my next ebook? (The last one has been downloaded 100,000 times in three months).

> Want to be in my next dead tree book?

> How about if I wrote about it in one of the magazines I write for?

> What if I mention your company the next time I am on the phone with The Wall Street Journal?

> Or perhaps I could write something in one of the other blogs I contribute to such as The Tuned In blog?

> What about a tweet on something you did?

It's OK to share things with a blogger that you feel they might be interested in. Just don't spam them with broadcast pitches and whatever you do, don't ask for coverage. We all know why you contacted us -- don't belittle the information you send and embarrass yourself by begging.

Want the good news? I'm always looking for things that are of interest to me! I'm happy to have you send stuff my way. (Other bloggers are too). But don't ask me to write about it on this blog. And don't send me the same pitch that you sent to dozens of others.

Thanks for reading this far! Here's bonus information for alert readers like you. I am currently looking for interesting examples of online viral marketing for possible use in an upcoming hardcover book I am writing that will come out in 2009. If you have a great example of reaching people online, go ahead and send it to me via email. Hey, maybe I'll even write about it on this blog too.

ANALYSIS: Value of quote in the Wall Street Journal with a link to your blog and product

Many business people consider a "hit" in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best ways to get noticed. VC funded startups happily pay tens of thousands of dollars a month to public relations agencies to pitch them to reporters at the Journal and other important business publications like BusinessWeek and Fast Company. firms justify their fees when they secure a hit and show the press clips as proof of their skills when pitching new business.

For years I've been convinced that such exposure is overrated in terms of quantifiable measurements of success.

Now before I jump into an interesting analysis, I do want to say that there are many intangible benefits to being quoted in a major business publication or having your product talked about in them. You can put the information on your site and tell all your potential customers. It may convince an investor to jump in, an analyst firm to initiate coverage, or a potential employee to join the company. I am certainly not knocking the many benefits nor would I ever stop speaking with reporters when they call me. Coverage is important.

But what about the tangible results?

On Monday March 17, I was quoted in an article in the print edition of The Wall Street Journal. The article was titled "Attention, Bloggers: For small businesses that can't afford a lot of marketing, the blogosphere offers a cheaper alternative" and appeared on page R5 (the small business section of the paper). My full name (searching on it brings up only me) and my blog URL were both listed in the paper. The article was in my area of expertise and the things I write about in my books and this blog.

The article also appeared in the online Journal at WSJ.com (my blog URL was a hyperlink) together with a companion article called "Recommended Reading Small Business: Marketing With Social Media." In this piece, the WSJ asked Scott Monty for recommend a list of blogs and books for owners and managers at small companies looking to learn more about tapping social media to engage customers online. Scott mentioned my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR and said it is: "A must-read. Mr. Scott delves into strategies of how to reach consumers directly and how to get into the social-networking space." (Thank you Scott).

So what would you expect? Ten thousand extra links that day? More? A thousand books sold on Amazon that day? More? That's the sort of result that many people expect and why they spend so much on PR firms.

The reality is much more sobering.

Let's make a value of 100 as the baseline of the amount of blog traffic I got in an average day this month. On the day of the WSJ hit, I got a 95. That's right, on the day of my WSJ hit with my blog URL listed, I got fewer visitors to my blog than an average day in the month of March. My best day this month was March 5, the day after a post I wrote called "The new rules at universities – authors connecting with students." Lots of people shared that article and some wrote about it on their blogs. On March 5, I scored a 186 (almost twice my average traffic).

The best traffic driver to my blog this year was a result of the hundred or so bloggers who wrote about the publication of my latest ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing. For several weeks after I published the ebook, my traffic was double the norm.

What about books sales? I'll use my Amazon ranking as a proxy for book sales. The Amazon rank, which updates every hour based on actual book sales, indicates what number your book is among all the millions of books that Amazon sells. Since its release in June 2007, The New Rules of Marketing & PR has consistently hovered in the 250 to 850 range. Early in the morning of the WSJ hit, the rank was about 600. It finished the day at about the same place (meaning that the relative sales rate for that day did not change as a result of the WSJ mention). As I write this on Thursday morning, the Amazon rank is 328, meaning that substantially more books are selling today than Monday when the article appeared. But during no day this week did my rank go above the typical range that it has been for the past nine months or so.

What can we learn from this?
> A hit in the WSJ and other big business publications is great—but not as great as you might think. If you get one, think about tangential benefits (like bragging rights), not actual sales. Think how you can leverage the notoriety, not just what will happen without your help to push it along. Use it to influence other media and analysts, don't just sit back and wait.
> There really isn't a holy grail of marketing & PR. The closest I've found is to create something yourself and publish it online to drive traffic. That blog post I put out had more success than the WSJ. The best thing I've ever done to drive traffic is write an ebook. The case examples I write about prove this theory.
> Lots of little hits are much better than one mega PR hit. Passionate bloggers drive traffic to my blog and help drive sales (thank you all!).
> Mega PR hits may drive some interest with what you do, but you should really think through if it will actually drive sales.
> Maybe, just maybe, WSJ readers buy books in physical bookstores instead of Amazon. Perhaps I'll see a sales bump at Barnes & Noble and other stores in March… But I doubt it.

The new rules at universities – authors connecting with students

I went to Kenyon College, graduating in 1983 with a BA in Economics. I took only one English class and got a "gentleman’s C" so it's an odd thing that I should end up writing books. Go figure.

While at Kenyon, the professors' ideas were clearly important to the education process. Reading and independent study outside of the classroom environment was also a valuable aspect of learning (although in my case, I was more interested in the finer points of partying and debating the merits of punk, ska, reggae and new wave bands, so I didn’t do all that much studying). Considering Kenyon is a small liberal arts college that uses the seminar approach for advanced classes, fellow students were also an a significant part of the learning experience.

However in four years, I don't ever recall giving the authors of the books we were reading for class any thought whatsoever. I vaguely recall Milton somebody wrote my Economics 101 text, but don't recall any other names. I never met any authors and they were not a part of my learning experience whatsoever.

There is a new model for learning today, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

Forward thinking schools are involving authors of the books used in class by including them in a virtual social media classroom. Web-based collaboration tools and social networking allows an author to be an input into the learning process (from the comfort of their own offices) and smart professors understand this.

I've been asked a number of times by professors who use my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR for class to participate in virtual classroom discussions and I enjoy volunteering a bit of my time. I hear from students that they find the experience helpful too.

Robert French, who teaches public relations at Auburn University offered me my first exposure to virtual guest lectures. I spoke to his class via Skype and as a result of "meeting" students, have taken a look at some their blogs (students are given the assignment of creating a blog for class). Nothing like having the professor and the author of the text used in class looking over your virtual shoulder to get you thinking about that blog assignment!

I've also done virtual presentations to students at Diane Thieke's PR class at Rider University and Karen Russell's class at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.

One of the most interesting experiences is with Steve Quigley's New Media and PR class at Boston University. Each term, the class has a (closed) Facebook group and in the past two terms, the students invited me to be a member. Last term the Facebook group was called "New Media Rocks my PR World" (love the name) and this term the Facebook group is called "Media Socialites" (love this name even more).

Here is the Media Socialites Facebook group description: Professor Quigley's new batch of student social media sponges, eager to soak up as much information about New Media and PR in a semester as is humanly possible ... and, in proper social networking fashion, making important connections along the way.

In the group they share ideas and have pulled me into a few virtual discussions. I enjoyed the interaction so much that I joined the class in person last week for a conversation with students.

A new crop of really smart and social media savvy people are graduating this May. Companies should consider hiring people like Christine and Pamela and their many classmates.

University classrooms are being transformed by social media. How about your business? Is it transforming too?

Personal branding, great design, and a new masthead

I'm a huge believer in the power of personal branding on the Web. How cool is it that you can create interesting content that people want to read and share? Things like ebooks, blogs, YouTube videos and the like show the world your passions. And then interested people seek you out.

For nearly a decade, my favorite designer is a genius named Doug Eymer. I worked with Doug in my last corporate VP marketing job and continued using Doug to create killer designs for two of my book covers – Eyeball Wars and Cashing in with Content. Doug also designed my Web site and my two most popular ebooks The New Rules of PR and The New Rules of Viral Marketing.

I commissioned Doug to do a new masthead for my blog. The direction I gave Doug was that I wanted to convey through the masthead the ideas I talk about, particularly the concept that you can create great content on the Web and that you don't need to rely on expensive advertising or begging the media to get noticed.

I also wanted to carry consistency of my designs through my various publishing endeavors. The blog masthead was the one thing that had been a little "off" because the old design (which I liked very much) was done by a different person.

Here is the old masthead

My friend, the positioning guru Mark Levy, says of the new masthead: "Doug nailed it, David. It's perfect. It's energetic, passionate, and shows the power of the individual's mind and voice in action. Bravo."

I think Doug did a great job, don't you?

(Note – if you're reading this soon after I changed mastheads today and you're seeing my old masthead, you may need to hit refresh on your browser.)

Thanks Doug!

The New Rules of Viral Marketing - free ebook!

The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free

> Imagine you're the head of marketing at a theme park, and you're charged with announcing a major new attraction. What would you do?

> What would you do if you were a vice president of marketing for a technology company and you were ready to find a new opportunity to advance your career?

> If you were a marketing executive for a big, famous company, how could you quickly put a human face on your organization?

> Or think of a marketing program that you might initiate if you suddenly had to launch a startup technology and services company targeting marketing professionals, Web designers, and business owners interested in improving their Internet marketing. How would you do it?

The answers will surprise you. The smart marketers profiled in The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free tell you exactly how they used viral marketing and provide advice in their own words.

Download The New Rules of Viral Marketing now! It's free and there's no annoying registration requirement.

You and I are incredibly lucky.

For decades, the only way to spread our ideas was to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write (or broadcast) about our products and services. But now our organizations have a tremendous opportunity to publish great content online—content that people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family, and colleagues.

How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free!

Word-of-mouse is the single most empowering tool available to marketers today. I wrote this e-book so you can take advantage of the power of viral marketing too. In it, I share ideas that will help you create your own viral marketing strategies and campaigns. These are the "new rules" I've used to create marketing programs that have sold more than a billion dollars' worth of products and services worldwide.

It's not easy to harness the power of word-of-mouse, but any company with thoughtful ideas to share—and clever ways to create interest in them—can, after some careful preparation, become famous and find success on the Web.

Please download my new ebook. And if you find it interesting, please share it with whomever you believe would benefit from reading it. Thank you.

The Brave New Media World – social media for hospitals

This morning I had an opportunity to participate in a terrific event called The Brave New Media World sponsored by the Massachusetts Hospital Association. What I love about social media and marketing is that every time I have a chance to interact with people from a particular industry, I learn something new.

Hospitals have a terrific opportunity to use social media, but are jumping in slowly. People such as Deborah Chiaravalloti, Vice President, Public Relations & Marketing at Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport, MA, who I enjoyed speaking with prior to the event, are eager to learn and were paying close attention to the speakers.

First up was Larry Weber, Chairman, The W2 Group and author, Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business published by Wiley the publisher of my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. The W2 Group, "a next-generation marketing services ecosystem that helps CMOs in their new role as builders of communities" just received a $30 million investment from Monitor Clipper Partners, a Cambridge, MA-based private equity firm affiliated with the global consulting firm Monitor Group. Congratulations Larry. I'll be watching W2 as Larry embarks to "develop the company into the dominant player in the multi-billion dollar next-generation Web 2.0 market."

Here are a few things I captured from Larry.
"In the hospital world the social web is going to be huge."
"Emotion, a huge part of the social web is also part of health care, for example people living with diseases."
"Definition of branding is all about the dialog you have with constituencies. The stronger your dialog, the stronger your brand is."
"We haven’t seen the impact that the blogosphere has yet. It will be must more influential in the future."
"Next time you go to the Boston Public library, be careful because you may step on a homeless PR person."
"Leveraging Social Media in Marketing can help you to do all of these things: Brand building, lead generation, research and development, product or service launch, customer retention, partner & channel communications, thought leadership, internal communications, media relations, and crisis management."
"Every company has a right to build thought leadership and talk about the things that they know very well."
"Definition of Marketing = the influencing of opinion through content."
"Role of traditional media is to drive people to online communities."
"Marketing is a verb, not a noun."
"They should take the $50 billion that they spend on pharmaceutical advertisements and give half to charity and put the rest into social media. Why spend so much on TV, all the ads are the same anyway – it doesn’t matter if it is Viagra or an asthma dug – its good looking people running in a field."

I was thrilled to hear from Paul Levy, President and CEO, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School); Blogger of Running a Hospital. I’ve been following Paul’s blog for some time. How cool is it for the CEO of a well-known hospital to blog.

Here are the interesting things I captured from Paul's discussions (these are paraphrased):

1. This all started as kind of a lark in the summer of 2006 when I read an article in the New York Times that said that only one of the Fortune 500 CEOs had a blog. So I thought this would be fun. Why don't I start a blog and learn about how to do this. So I started to blog. Traffic built slowly until The Boston Globe wrote about it and it took off.

2. I started to post about clinical data we were seeing in the hospital in virtually real time—things like quality and safety. I heard things from other people who run hospitals who questioned what I was doing. We as an academic medical center are high cost part of the medical system. The public has the right to know what they are getting for their money. What better way to make a case that we're adding value to our public, and the government agencies that regulate us. Why not show what we're doing as a public institution?

3. The other thing I found out by accident is that as a management tool in the hospital it is easier to get people to work better, People in hospitals are caring and they want to eradicate disease. For example Ventilator Associate Pneumonia. We created information about the VAP that helped to save more than 90 lives and posted it. This creates better work because we are not afraid to say what we're doing and how we're helping. We put ourselves under the microscope.

4. We are not doing this as a matter of competitive advantage. We don't think they find the hospital by reading the blog. This is an exceptionally useful tool as part of the public debate and to hold our own people accountable.

5. Paul showed us his stat counter page with traffic of about 10,000 per week. "You've got to be a little brave to do this. I don’t put anything on the blog that I wouldn’t say in another way."

Teresa Hanafin, Director of Community Publishing, boston.com (affiliated with The Boston Globe which is oened by The New York Times). Teresa talked about OhmyNews and other citizen journalism sites. All the speakers are Facebook members but only about 20% of the audience is. Teresa is working on ways to take the best parts of Facebook and putting it on Boston.com. There are more than 100,000 discussion topics on Boston.com. Users have updated over 50,000 photos to Boston.com. All companies can make use of people’s creativity. There are hundreds of restaurant reviews. People post videos of high school sporting events. Communities give people ownership and provide people with a way to take the community into different directions – for example, people who met on the wedding boards ended up a few years later starting a parenting board.

I showed several of my favorite examples of hospital viral marketing:
Johns Hopkins Health Newsfeed Podcast – a terrific weekly podcast with Elizabeth Tracey, director of electronic media for Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Rick Lange M.D., chief of clinical cardiology at Johns Hopkins for people who want to become informed participants in their own health care.

Sharp HealthCare's Baby Gallery, a free online photo gallery and birth announcement service for parents, family and friends of babies born at Sharp. What’s cool is when people share their baby photos using the Sharp Baby Gallery, they sell Sharp’s service in the process.