Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I receive a newsletter every morning about the economy from an analyst at Bear Sterns, now JP Morgan. It’s one I actually enjoy reading.

However, this morning my newsletter came with a big surprise… apparently, Andrew Graham’s out of the office this week, and some staffer sent a notification that he’d be gone for the week to everyone on the list. And…

Instead of blind copying everyone, they copied everyone, and I now have personal, private emails for everyone else who gets his email newsletters.

I’m pretty sure that staffer is getting their head handed to them on a plate right about now.

I have the integrity to delete the note and the email addresses associated with it. But can I trust everyone else on the list to do the same?

So a little lesson to all marketers - our email addresses should be protected as fiercely as our phone numbers, home addresses, etc… THINK before you send a mass email of any kind. Are you protecting the rights of everyone on the list?

I’m afraid that I keep reading more marketers are adopting email as a communications vehicle in this economy, and I believe we’re going to see a lot more of this kind of mistake. I have a separate email address for my newsletters, and recommend you do the same. It might just help to protect you in cases like this.

My healthcare marketing guru is Ellen Hoenig-Carlson. I recently taught her how to blog, and am now learning new things from her every week about the state of pharma marketing, healthcare marketing, and what I call “health 2.0″ which is an area of bliss (and great frustration) for me.

Ellen recently posted that Medpedia came online this week, and I’m hopeful it’ll get early traction and begin to show up at the top of search - well above the Wikipedia entries on health.

Why? Because unlike Wikipedia, it’s got requirements around who can edit posts.

Ellen observed:

“Unlike most social encyclopedias, Medipedia has limitations on submission. Only trained professionals will be able to write and edit pages on the Website, and all contributors will have individual author pages detailing their qualifications and backgrounds.

Medpedia was developed in association with some high powered organizations:

• Harvard Medical School
• Stanford School of Medicine
• University of California Berkeley School of Public Health
• University of Michigan Medical School”

I popped over to the site and created an account, happy to see the sign up process is inclusive (my formatting edits):

“The mission of Medpedia is to openly share and advance medical knowledge. Anyone with an interest in participating in that mission is welcome to create a profile on Medpedia, including both medical professionals and consumers….

• If you are a physician or PhD in a biomedical field you will be granted direct editing privileges to the knowledge base.
• If you are a medical professional, but not a physician, your profile will qualify you to join the professional network and allow you to “Suggest Changes” to the medical knowledge base.
• If you are a consumer, creating a profile on Medpedia will allow you to “Suggest Changes” to the medical knowledge base, join Communities of Interest, and follow topics of Interest.”

In her post, Ellen wondered what would happen to the WebMDs of the world as a result?

I really hope that they continue to thrive as information resources, as I know WebMD content is reviewed by medical and nutrition professionals. But I will be going to Medpedia for my health information quests first, because it is creating a community around healthcare, and the other sites devoted to it seem to be more interested in talking to, not (potentially) learning from, their members.

I’d be interested in others’ opinions… whom do you trust for your online medical information?

I was in a pretty good mood this morning when I popped onto TweetDeck to check the tag cloud and see what’s going on in the world… Today, Baby Boomers are booming. Curious, I found that Forrester has just released a report called How to Reach Baby Boomers with Social Technologies (hint: make it REALLY simple…) In which Jeremiah Owyang’s Abstract reads:

“Baby Boomers aren’t technology Luddites; in fact, more than 60% of them consume socially created content. You’ll also find Boomers leaving their opinions on Web sites and even joining social networks.”

Over on Read Write Web, Sara Perez  wrote:

“The best bets for getting Boomers interested in your content is to create blogs or videos that relate to the life or work-style of Boomers, Forrester suggests. And if you’re looking for feedback and contributions from the Boomers themselves - like comments or criticisms - make that process dead simple. Don’t introduce overly complex sign up forms or processes. Instead, encourage low-effort contributions such as star ratings.”

Wow. I’ll tell you my dead simple response to that. And it’s a pretty low-effort sign that’s so universally recognizable, even kids get it:

Imagine my hand in a sort of fist at about shoulder length. Three of my four fingers aren’t visible…

I just read a great article over on BusinessWeek called Debunking Six Social Media Myths (a must read for those who think social media marketing is a piece of cake) and found a very cool little tool called Tweepsearch mentioned in it. Basically, it allows you to put anyone’s user name into it, and it’ll pull up all their followers’ bios and city, and give you an idea of how the people who follow anyone characterize themselves.

Try it on your own followers… (here are mine…) it’s pretty cool.  I can see using it for profiling people I might want to follow or reach out to for more like them!

Okay, for those of you in health care that need a little reality check on the use of social media by doctors (who’ve embraced it in a big way)… check out this article on CNN that describes surgeons Tweeting their surgeries. From the article:

“Dr. Craig Rogers, the lead surgeon in the Henry Ford surgery, said the impetus for his Twittering was to let people know that a tumor can be removed without taking the entire kidney.

“We’re trying to use this as a way to get the word out,” Rogers said.”

Imagine! They use it as an educational tool for those of us looking for information. And check out people’s reactions to the #hfhor thread - they love it! I’m totally signed up to follow @HenryFordNews, and they tentatively plan to live Tweet another surgery on March 6.

And… in case you were wondering: