We have another batter up for social media batting practice. Dave Delaney has recommended five tips for a pediatrician. The full scenario and his ideas are below. While we’re on the social media batting practice topic…Mitch Joel included a comment from me on his most recent episode of Six Pixels of Separation. He had some great additional info to include. Here’s the scenario that was pitched to Dave and his ideas follow…

Scenario: A pediatrician wants to know how she would be able to use social media to promote her practice. She’s currently spending money on local advertising in multiple areas and wants to know how social media marketing would work for her. She’s not viewed as the best pediatrician in her community but is widely recognized as one of the top five.

Dave’s ideas:

1. I would recommend that the pediatrician create a Google Adwords campaign targeted to her local zipcode(s).
2. I’d advise that she be sure she is included on Goggle in their business search results by adding herself to Google maps.
3. Depending on her available time and interest, I would suggest developing a blog and posting to it regularly. The blog would also offer all appropriate social bookmarks and tags.
4. She should also considering posting on local parenting forums always being sure to link back to her website.
5. Finally, she should consider sponsoring a quality parenting Internet radio show (AKA “podcast”) like Two Boobs and a Baby.

Thanks for the ideas Dave. I’ll include a similar real-life scenario I discussed a long time ago about a blogging dentist I know here in town.

Being busy with work is great (particularly when you’re self employed as I am) but when you’re trying to keep a blog up it gets tough to maintain sometimes. Last week there were some things I wanted to mention but didn’t take the time to, so here are three things I’ve been meaning to post over the last several days…

Thank you PRSA Nashville. Last week I had the opportunity to be on their panel discussion about social media and it was a lot of fun. It was interesting to hear what some companies are doing in social networking but there were also traces of the old thinking when one person commented that her organization doesn’t allow blogging. I got the sense that she was not a fan of that particular policy but she’s not in a position to do much about it. I would name the organization here…but that would give them further reason to dislike blogs, so I won’t. It was a good reminder that there’s still a lot of understanding needed for all the social media but what I’m seeing now is that even the staunchest of holdouts from a year ago are finally realizing that the new media isn’t a fad and is actually changing media as a whole.

Google Maps has street level views in Nashville now. Google announced last week that Nashville is one of thirteen new cities with the street view. I wasn’t familiar with what Google Maps is doing to get actual images from the street level for major cities around the country until an episode of The New Mediology when Nathan told me about it. Since then I’ve wondered when Nashville was going to get it, and wouldn’t you know it just launched last week. It’s very cool. [HT to Rex Hammock for this.]

Adobe launched a free, online version of Photoshop last week called Photoshop Express. I’ve heard mixed reviews about Photoshop Express but haven’t yet had a chance to play with it. My guess is the people who didn’t use Photoshop previously will like it whereas all the designers who are familiar with the software will recognize any limitations it may have. Adobe is positioning it as a lighter-weight version of Photoshop so you have to expect it won’t do everything the software does but you sure can’t beat the price. [HT to Steve Nesmith for sending me an email about this a few days ago.]