Feb

09

Nine for Nine – Smart Twitter Tips

Development / Strategy / Technology

It’s February 9, 2015 and although I don’t publish Innovaision’s “These Nine Things” newsletter (subscribe here) on Mondays, I thought it would be appropriate to extend the NINE theme into today’s article. Herewith, then is a list of Nine Twitter Tips for Nonprofits that many readers will find interesting. Note that these tips are valuable for most any business!

1. Avoid jargon and abbreviations that will not be easily understood by people outside of your industry. The brief nature of a tweet might encourage this, but if you want to communicate across a wide spectrum, make sure your message is intelligible to the greater audience.

2. Use hashtags wisely. Sure, the #hashtag can draw attention to your message topic, and also make it easier to find tweets on a particular subject, but too many hashtags negate the value. Common wisdom is to use no more than two hashtags in any single message, lest your readers start to think of you as a spammer. Also, make your hashtags short words – #goodadoptions is much better than #findingsafeandhealthyhomesforkids.

3. If you are using a Twitter account that is designated for your nonprofit (and we recommend that you have one for exactly this purpose) use your nonprofit’s logo or an avatar (the small square picture in the upper left corner of your profile) based on that logo on your account to strengthen organizational “brand recognition”.

4. To encourage retweets, and allow followers to add their own brief comment or thought, consider putting 100 – 120 character limit on your tweets. If use the full 140 characters available on Twitter, there is no room left for any additional notes from the re-tweeter.

5. Tweet some interesting fact about your area of focus that will lend itself to being retweeted by your followers. Examples could include things like “The average American diet requires almost 1,000 gallons of water per day – more than the worldwide average for all uses, including diet, household use, transportation, and energy” or “A single drug-addicted person has a significant impact, often negative, on the lives of 4 to 10 other peoples – family, friends, co-workers, etc.”

6. Use Twitter lists (see instructions here) to keep your followers organized into logical groups such as Financial Supporters, Volunteers, Board, or Professional Colleagues. It will help you in so many ways!

7. Put a Twitter “follow button” that links to your nonprofit Twitter account on everything you post online. Blogs, newsletters, web pages, downloadable document are all good places to give people an easy way to connect with your account and become avid followers. Suggest that all email correspondence originating from your nonprofit staff include a link to the company Twitter account in the signature space.

8. Spread your tweets out over the course of the day! Twitter is like a stream running by your reader’s front yard, and they aren’t sitting out in the yard all day. If you bunch all of your tweets in the morning or after dinner, the chances that they will be missed entirely goes up astronomically. Send one message early, then one at midmorning, noon, mid-afternoon and so forth. This increases the chance that more of your followers will see at least one of your daily postings. If you are writing interesting content, they are likely to click through to see what else you wrote today.

9. Follow your followers, and follow people you hope would want to follow your nonprofit. It’s all about networking. When you follow a person or organization you think you might want to do business with, or ask for help from, they are more likely to follow you back. Similarly, following your followers and reading what is on their minds is a great way to get inspiration for your future tweets, to insure they are relevant and READ.

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Jan

26

Misplaced Frugality – Mistakes Healthcare Providers Make

Strategy

The cost of healthcare in the United States is a constant hot topic, and has been for some years now. Healthcare providers are under constant pressure to be more cost conscious while still maintaining a commitment to quality care. New health plans now in the marketplace, global payment mechanism or episode based reimbursement, an increase in the willingness of payers to take a hard line in negotiating with providers, and disruption from within the field of medical care that is bringing about a rise in new alternatives which often cost less (and can be priced lower) are all contributing to this pressure.

In a recent (November 2014) article in the Harvard Business Review entitled “How Not to Cut Healthcare Costs” authors Robert Kaplan and Derek Haas argue that by focusing on reduction of line item expenses and increasing the volume of patients seen – two of the main methods administrators turn to when they seek to improve the bottom line – but not attending to the proper mix of resources that are needed to be efficient and clinically effective, and not involving clinicians and other front line staff in the decision making process, the choices that are made will often lead to the opposite intended, mainly higher costs and poorer quality of care.

You can read the entire article online, but here is our synopsis.

There are five clear areas where mistakes are being made that result not in cost-cutting but actually in cost increases and often in lower-quality care. The authors identify these as: 1) Cutting Back on Support Staff, 2) Underinvesting in Space and Equipment, 3) Focusing Narrowly on Procurement Prices, 4) Maximizing Patient Throughput, and 5) Failing to Benchmark and Standardize. Here’s how each of these, in turn, becomes a problem. If you are part of the healthcare provider system, take heed!

1) Cutting Back on Support Staff

Since payroll is often 55 – 65% of most operational budgets, it is often the first targeted area for cutting expenses. Since clerical and administrative staff as well as back room support and front desk help are not identified as being direct “income generating” personnel – you don’t bill for your secretarial time – it seems logical that trimming the payroll by reducing the head count in these areas, through attrition or direct cuts, would be a good idea. The law of unintended consequences rears its ugly head quickly though. When clinicians and specialists end up spending more of their time on clerical tasks and paperwork, they spend less time working at the top end of their skillset, which is also the place where the highest income per hour is generated. It makes sense to be sure that you have adequate support staff to allow your most skilled and highest reimbursed personnel do not have to spend time doing tasks that a more economical staff member (in terms of payroll) can perform.

2) Underinvesting in Space and Equipment

Idle space is often seen as a terrible waste of resources. However underinvesting in space, equipment and (as seen above) support personnel can dramatically lower the productivity of the best resources. The authors cite the difference between two surgical practices, one which performs about 10 procedures per professional daily, and the other only 2 or 3. The difference is that the former practice provides two surgical suites per surgeon and the latter only one. Although the first group has a lot (half) of their space and equipment going unused all of the time, the latter suffers from enforced down time for the surgical staff, who have to wait between each procedure for the room to be cleaned, equipment to be re-sterilized and the next patient to be prepped. In the former case, this can all happen in the idle space while the skilled professionals move next door to their alternate suite. When that procedure is accomplished, the steps are reversed, with the team moving to the – now clean – second space right away. The cost of the idle space is far less than the cost of the down time for the qualified team of professionals. Additional examples are given that demonstrate the same point.

3) Focusing Narrowly on Procurement Prices

An over emphasis on negotiating best price packaging for equipment and materials from vendors is often undone by the failure to closely examine how these materials are used in practice. Paying better attention to this more practical aspect of materials management, and particularly soliciting input from the provider staff who thoroughly understand materials deployment and utilization can result in far more savings than just hard core negotiations with vendors.

4) Maximizing Patient Throughput

The trend lately has been to set standards, sometimes nearly impossibly high, relating to the numbers of patients seen by physicians in practice each day. If the measurement metric shifts to quality of outcomes however, it will often prove to be true that physicians will be more productive when they spend more time with fewer patients. For many conditions and to improve health in general, allowing physicians time to talk with the patient (and their families or caregivers) about proper post-procedure care will result in better outcomes overall, and can directly contribute to cost savings as in cases where some pre-procedure planning and in-home preparation could mean that a patient could go from surgery/recovery to home and bypass a more expensive trip to a rehab unit. These same types of savings can be realized in the general treatment of chronic illness, wherein more time spent with the patient often results in higher compliance with care plans, better outcomes, and a better bottom line for the healthcare practice.

5) Failing to Benchmark and Standardize

The authors speak (not exactly tongue in cheek) about “eminence based practice” rather than “evidence based practice”, and truth is that most professionals don’t like to have the way they do things scrutinized. However, using good benchmarking systems and examining the practice of individual clinicians followed by comparing and contrasting can often point out ways in which the best practices of individuals can become collective standardized practices, leading to both cost effectiveness and clinical excellence. An active, collaborative working relationship among professionals and between clinicians and administrators can bring about tremendous success stories. This article describes one example in which the Mayo Clinic, working with only five cardiovascular surgeons to help each of them learn how to improve their practice from facets of the other four, saved over $15,000,000 in three years!

Data gathering, benchmarking, process analysis, and a willingness to change. Encouraging collaboration among professionals and across specialties. Fostering an atmosphere in which all participants understand that they can both cut costs and provide quality care. Avoiding common pitfalls as described above. All of these factors can help make sure that we stop pursuing healthcare cost cutting measures that in the end work exactly opposite from what was intended.

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Jan

22

Never send to know for whom the phone rings…

Strategy / Technology

…it rings for thee.

Apologies to both John Donne, and Ernest Hemingway, but let’s face it – the smartphone revolution is upon is, with great vigor. Just think of what these little devices have done since their introduction only a few short years ago, if you, measure the key date as 2008 – when the first iPhone was introduced and the helldogs of Android were subsequently unleashed.

Smartphones have, for all intents and purposes, replaced digital cameras, GPS devices, laptops, handheld scanners, tape recorders, compasses, iPods and even flashlights (and virtually put out of business the product lines and sometimes companies that produce these items)! Most smartphone manufacturers make tablet devices as well, and now many are making smartphones a little bit bigger, which could likely kick their own tablet lines to the curb. The smartphone is making a good run at replacing other devices as well, including televisions, small ones at least. My smartphone can be programmed to function as a tv remote at the very least!

And this is just the device end of it. With the proliferation of Apps and the rise of cloud computing as a trusted place to store and retrieve information, the disruption is becoming logarithmic. The taxi business is being shattered by Uber and Lyft, credit card companies are feeling the pinch from companies like Softcard and Apple Pay, ATM machines could someday be a thing of the past, and Rand McNalley – when was the last time you bought a globe, or a road map? All of these once thriving businesses are falling to the portability, convenience and consumer control that is being made possible by the Holy Trinity of phone, app, and cloud.

The smart businessperson should be asking “How long will it be before the smartphone puts US out of business? Already entire occupational categories are threatened, including the guys who drive those cabs (although they can always go work for Uber), fleet managers, schedulers, logistics specialists, reference librarians (all librarians!), meter readers. And phones, apps, and data-in-the cloud is being used to upend the worlds of higher education, financial planning, and even medicine. Some of the top mHealth apps out now, for example, help us monitor our weight, set up a fitness program, track our heart health, provide first aid information and treatment recommendations, manage and treat our diabetes. Taking pictures of skin conditions or our eyeballs and sending them to a physician can avoid a trip to the clinic or emergency room and make the cost of such a visit cheaper when it is needed, and mental health apps can provide us with calming advice or connect us with a therapist around the clock or around the world.

The new technologies, wondrous to behold and use, are letting us do things we never thought we could do so conveniently, effectively, and cheaply. But make no mistake, it is also threatening almost every major institution in the world of work, business and commerce. If you understand that the bell is tolling for you, it’s time to start thinking about how you can participate in the digital revolution. Resistance, in the long run, will likely be futile. Don’t become a bookstore.

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Jan

19

What is Content Curation (and why should Non-profits practice it)?

Development / Strategy

In mid-2014, we wrote that “Content marketing is king.”, and encouraged our non-profit friends to get on the bandwagon. Since then, we have received several requests to explore this topic in more detail. Happy to oblige! This article will form the beginning of a series – which we plan to turn into an e-book ultimately – on Content Curation for Non-Profits.

So, what is this thing called Content Curation? More importantly, why should non-profit leaders understand it and embrace it as a strategy?

Many readers may be familiar with the term “curation” as relating to museums. I had a nice visit to the St. Louis Art Museum recently with my visiting daughter, and noted that there are many different types of things that are considered “art”. Paintings from the Renaissance, ancient African tribal masks, 3,000 year old Chinese pottery, modern “found art” full-body costumes, colonial furniture, sculpture from all parts of the world spanning centuries of creation and much, much more were on display. For each and every item on display, there were probably several that are currently in storage, and certainly dozens of other examples scattered throughout the world in other museums and collections, or even resting on a shelf in some dusty attic, awaiting rediscovery! In a given year, a major museum might find or be presented with thousands of items which it might wish to add to its collection. The curator then becomes the invaluable party to any transaction or process involving current, or potential acquisitions.

One primary duty is to determine the authenticity of a particular piece. There is little value in a faked object, or a copy of an existing, established work. The curator must also ascertain the value of an item, particularly if a purchase is being considered. But beyond these important basic questions, the curator also needs to be able to establish relevance for the museum visitor, often done by researching the provenance of the item and telling a little of the back story for each thing that is on display. Once an item is in the collection, the curator needs to take care of it, making sure it is catalogued, labeled correctly, and stored appropriately. On the museum floor, the curator decides how to arrange or display artifacts. How can this painting be lighted to bring out the most important highlights? Which of these things should be logically grouped together so that visitors can see more than one work of art at a time and perhaps learn more or make important connections by seeing them arranged with like items?

It’s probably becoming obvious that a good curator will not only have a significant impact on the value of a museum’s collection, but does in fact contribute to the overall perception of the public of the value of the museum as a whole, both as a collector of valuable items, and as an expert in the areas those items represent. For example, the art museum in St. Louis has a respectable collection of Buddhist-related art, but nearby in Kansas City, the Nelson Art Gallery has an equal or better one. If travel were no object, I would go to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., or perhaps the Victoria and Albert in London.

So, let’s apply what we know about museum curation to the Internet, and the vast amount of information available on pretty much any topic we can imagine. If it’s true that content is king, then content curation is certainly the crown prince! And, just as a museum curator wears many hats every day, so does an information content curator do so in his or her relationship with all of the articles, documents, images, blog posts and even Tweets that might be encountered every day online. Content curators find information, validate or verify the information, assign value to it, determine its relevance to their audience, and make notes that help readers see what that value might be. The successful online content curator then catalogues the information so that it can be easily retrieved, labels it correctly, and stores it for future reference. In the public eye, the content curator brings together similar items to create an information synergy, allowing readers to move easily among bits of writing or data that are related, and to develop fuller understanding of the topic in question for knowledge, research and practical purposes.

Let’s explore an example. Suppose my non-profit is involved in a specific facet of healthcare, say Alzheimer’s disease. We want to solidify our credentials as a leader in this field, which affects so many millions of people – not just those who have this condition but also their caregivers. To become a content curator on this topic, my organization will want to scour the web for well-written and validated clinical research, articles in the popular press, personal accounts about those affected by the illness, and much more. We want to discover who the best bloggers are on the subject, what current treatment seem to hold the greatest promise, and where you can find easy to understand explanations of what Alzheimer’s is all about. We also demonstrate value by providing links to respected treatment providers, and connecting people who want to help make a difference with organizations (perhaps including ours) that would benefit from philanthropy. Are there support groups in your area? I want my organization to show you how to find out if there are and, if so, how to connect with them. Is the disease preventable, or are there things you can do to maximize your chances of avoiding it? I’d like us to help you learn about that for your future benefit.

There is likely to be tons of information we will uncover, some more recent or relevant that others. We will sift through this information, validate it, arrange it and present it to you so that you can gain the maximum benefit with the minimum investment of your own time – gaining greatly from the work we have done for you. Our readers will come to trust us as experts, and to see us as the first place to check when looking for answers to their Alzheimer’s questions. In this way we become the paramount content curators on this subject, and gain esteem and influence we could never purchase otherwise.

We’ll be coming back to this topic soon, and discussing more about the value of content curation to your organization in future installments. Stay tuned!

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