It’s no secret that Lee Aase and the Mayo Clinic have embraced social media. Blogging, podcasting, YouTube… you name it and they’ve experimented with it, and in most cases been successful. I was fortunate enough to sit in on Lee’s session at the 2009 Ragan Corporate Communications Conference: “The $4 a week online newsroom and other MacGyver Tips.”

Lee (who is much taller in real life than expected) was kind enough to post his presentation to his blog. He shared simple secrets for quickly and effectively building a social media presence. While a lot of the tools he shared weren’t necessarily new, the reasons for using them in certain ways and the approach taken at the Mayo Clinic were what really got me thinking. Here are a few examples:

1. The Mayo Clinic has three blogs, and all are hosted at WordPress.com. They pay ~$10 a year to repoint the domain name to a mayoclinic.org site. My initial thought was, “Why aren’t they using WordPress.org and self-hosting the blog?” After all, it offers far more in the way of plugins, themes and features. (Click here for a quick explanation of the difference between these two platforms.) But Lee made a few great points. By hosting with WordPress.com, his team doesn’t have to go through the clinic’s corporate IT department. They don’t have to deal with firewalls, internal servers or just generally bogged down IT processes. Secondly, hosting the blogs on WordPress.com brings them more traffic. The Mayo Clinic blogs are often featured on the front/login page of WordPress.com, allowing many people to discover the blog that way. WordPress.com also has fairly simple analytics built in to the platform, so no one on their staff needs to go in-depth learning the ins and outs of Alexa or Google Analytics. And by repointing the domain name, they preserve the ability to eventually move to a different platform and not lose all of their search ranking.
Key Takeaway: Don’t always opt for the most advanced tool. Pick simple tools that reduce entry barriers allow you to get started.

2. With an existing “Medical Edge” radio show, the Mayo Clinic was already in the habit of content creation. It converted this show to a podcast and pushed it out through its blog. It’s also easier for busy doctors to record audio or video than it is to get them to write out a blog post. With a $150 Flip Video camera, Lee and his staff can interview doctors and researchers and post excerpts to the blog quickly and with minimal editing. There’s no need to invest in expensive A/V equipment and the training required for communications team members to use it.
Key Takeaway: Use existing content to ease your organization into social media. Find out the easiest way to get people to contribute (audio, video, writing) so that they’ll be more willing to participate.

3. “Don’t just pitch the media, be the media.” Lee agreed that this was somewhat overstated, but essentially the Mayo Clinic is creating its own content and that content is driving interest from traditional, mainstream media. The Mayo Clinic’s news blog has become a place for journalists to access information on Mayo Clinic research, publications, public health experts and patient stories. Lee’s even been successful with keeping certain posts embargoed and only accessible to journalists before releasing to the public. The content that the clinic creates and shares on its social media outposts has been picked up by national news outlets including CBS and the Wall Street Journal. Videos posted to The Mayo Clinic’s branded YouTube channel have been published online alongside news stories. Having so much rich content available in so many forms (blogs, audio, video) makes the media relations team’s job that much easier – in many cases the journalists are calling them to ask about content that’s been posted.
Key Takeaway: Create and share your organizations own original content. Make it interesting so that journalists will want to know more. Develop content in a variety of formats so that any outlet can use it.

Lee’s presentation really emphasized that social media can be pretty simple. Don’t complicate things. Pick tools that let you get started right away, use content that’s already at your disposal, and offer it up in a variety of formats that make it easier for reporters and customers to gobble up.

For more goodness from Lee, enroll in his Social Media University, Global, and become a Smuggle!