MT Exchange Medical transcription exchange

There are some sites where you can immediately dismiss the entire thing as complete BS because it’s obviously put up by an internet marketer. That doesn’t mean I approve of the internet marketers and their crappy sites and crappy articles pushing crappy schools – but at least I get where they’re coming from and they’re pretty easy to spot.

The subject of today’s entry appears to be owned by Future MT – yes, a Crappy School with an aggressive affiliate marketing campaign. They’re all over the place. Their affiliates’ sites are all over the place. But when I stumbled on their Medical Transcription Trends site (it appears to be owned/operated by the owners of Future MT, not one of their affiliates), I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

But first – let me take a moment to dissect the Future MT web site. You have to love someone who will put affiliate links at their business web site! There’s nothing quite like money-making plugs for satellite dish installation and credit repair to lend credibility to a business venture. Even better, these are under “medical transcription links.” There isn’t one link there related to medical transcription – most likely because the money-making links are competitive schools. Since they appear to have an education alliance with a transcription service, why don’t they even put a link to that transcription service? And in a touch of irony, there’s an affiliate link for legitimate work-from-home jobs – apparently the owners of Future MT are covering all the possible money-making opportunities. Or are they suggesting that MT – and therefore their school – isn’t a legitimate opportunity? My other favorite on this site is that a graduate excitedly lets them know she’s landed her first job – with AM Trans Am. Apparently, they don’t bother warning their students about the various scams going on in the industry.

OK, the purpose here wasn’t to dissect yet another Crappy School – it was to comment on this site put up by Future MT. Some of the claims made are funny if you put aside for a moment that people are making decisions about their careers on the basis of what they find on the internet.

Before I begin, let me tell you that the entry is the only easy thing in the medical transcription profession.

Wha…????

Oh… this is why it’s so darn easy. You’re going to notice there’s absolutely no mention of how hard it is to get that first job:

You don’t need to possess a formal qualification to enter the field. No, this does not mean that medical transcriptionists are not qualified. They acquire the professional qualifications as they enter the industry. You don’t need any degree or certificate to make your way into the industry though. [emphasis added]

It seems they have (uncharacteristically) overlooked the opportunity to plug the need for an education – preferably the one they’re selling. I’ve bolded my favorite part. Enter the industry and BAM! You have professional qualifications! It’s that easy!

You don’t need to possess any kind of working experience. Yeah, you can make an entry even if you are a high school grad. It does not matter if you have ever worked in your life.

I like that “yeah” – kind of folksy, although I can’t help but picture Michael Cain in “Miss Congeniality,” telling Sandra Bullock – “It is always yes, never ‘yeah.’”

Notice how the issue of work experience is completely glossed over? Those of us who are actually working in medical transcription know that while the above statement is true, it’s only half true. I dare any of ya (see the folksy touch there?) to find a job listing for a medical transcriptionist that doesn’t require a minimum of 1 year of experience as an MT. If you do, send me the link. I have never, in 20 years, seen anyone care whether or not a prospective hire had work experience that wasn’t in medical transcription.

Then, they lose me with the conclusion of this article…

The easy entry into the profession has been mocked by many and the profession has been looked down upon. But just because there are no stringent prerequisites, you cannot become a medical transcriptionist. If you don’t have analytical skills or the willingness to study along with work or the commitment to meeting deadlines on a daily basis, this profession is definitely not for you. So, make sure you gauze your potential before entering this field.

Someone needs to proofread better…

Actually, the articles at this site read like many I’ve seen all over the internet that have been written by services, most of them operating overseas. It would surprise me if all these entries were actually written by someone at Future MT.

Jason Trusler, is listed as a principle at Future MT (and the contact for the various web sites I’ve found that are owned by them) and is a somewhat prolific writer of MT-related (and credit, which may explain the affiliate link at the business web site) articles. I have to say that Future MT has done its homework on internet marketing and they seem to be effectively employing the same tools as internet marketers to promote their school. Interestingly, Trusler’s bio states:

Worked in the Medical Transcription industry for over 12 years in many different fields. Currently does consulting for medical transcriptionist course training schools.

As far as I can tell, he isn’t consulting for Future MT – he’s one of the owners. And I’d be surprised if there was any consulting being done for other training schools, unless he’s counting affiliates for Future MT. I’m also wondering how many different fields there are in medical transcription.

As a fine example of what you’ll see in internet marketing articles, Trusler writes an article on How to get medical transcription training, where he states:

One of the great elements of medical transcription is that experience in the field is not a requirement to have a good chance of finding employment, although it definitely helps.

See my challenge above to find a job that doesn’t require experience in medical transcription. Don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone from Future MT to provide objective evidence to back up this claim, however.

Then there’s this statement:

It will not typically matter to a potential employer where you have taken your certification course because many of them will test you before they choose to hire you.

Uh, ok – let me clarify for anyone who is researching MT schools and hasn’t made a decision yet… Potential employers do care where you have completed your medical transcription coursework. While it is true that they will test you before they choose to hire you, whether or not you even get as far as a test will often depend on where you got your education. Testing takes time and costs money and employers are only going to test people they believe have a reasonable chance of passing the test. Trust me – if they have to choose between an application from someone who went to an AHDI-approved school and someone who went to a cheap online program – like Future MT – they’ll test the people who went to an AHDI- approved school.

The more practice you have at transcribing and the longer you study the skill through your course training, the higher the chance you will have of an employer hiring you without any on the job experience, so it is important to take the course seriously.

In my experience, this statement doesn’t have even a half grain of truth to it – it’s completely false. There are only so many hours of available practice recordings available. Repeating them over and over again isn’t going to make a prospective MT more employable. Professionally-recorded practice tapes aren’t even close to real experience. The only experience that matters is real live experience.

Unfortunately, Future MT isn’t the only school to employ internet marketing tactics and make outrageous and/or false claims. They’re just the school du jour. So… it bears repeating because I know a lot of people come to this blog, looking for information on MT schools and MT careers:

• Don’t even consider a school that isn’t approved by AHDI
• Don’t rely on the FAQs – call and ASK specific questions about placement rate (percentage of graduates hired) and the placement program.
• Check with experienced transcriptionists in the medical transcription forums and at Facebook and ask about the school.
• Make sure anyone who responds positively doesn’t have a monetary incentive for selling you on the school – many, many schools have affiliate programs and they also pay current students and graduates for referrals. Call the school and verify that the person is actually a graduate of their MT program – no school should have any problem giving this information.
• If someone tells you a school is wonderful, get specifics. Are they working as an MT? Where? How long did it take them to get a job? How long have they been working? What did they think was great about the program?

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Not that any of us has a crystal ball or anything…

At his XY Files in an MT World blog at Advance, Jay Vance asks: Are Medical Transcription’s Days Numbered? This fairly brief blog entry includes a long quote from Nae Priest, originally at MT Chat. I’m not going to requote it or Jay’s blog – click through and read the whole thing, along with the comments.

I have to wonder where the overall job market is in the United States when the Department of Labor gives such a rosy outlook for medical transcription careers, in spite of a general negative outlook on the part of transcriptionists (and many MTSOs) themselves. And because they can point to the DOL information on medical transcription careers, the schools will continue to sell MT as a viable, vibrant work-at-home career.

Obviously, there are a lot of us with experience in the industry who disagree.

Jay brings up HITECH (see For the Record HITECH Act and HIPAA for a condensation of how this will affect medical records). After the hoo-haw surrounding HIPAA, I think a lot of MTs are thinking whatever. And, as we saw when HIPAA was passed, a few smaller MTSOs are jumping ship and selling their business before this big shoe drops. How HITECH will affect the industry overall remains to be seen, but there is a lot of discussion about whether or not it will inhibit or even eliminate overseas transcription… which, of course, leads to another discussion on how that would affect US MTs.

My opinion is that a pressing demand for more MTs in the US would not lead to higher pay rates. I think the result would be a harder push towards EMRs and point-of-care input. The way I see it, healthcare is under the gun to make records electronic and there’s a tremendous commitment of resources and money to make that happen. Short of money and already committed to spending quite a bit on EMRs, hospitals aren’t going to cough up more money to throw at manual transcription – they’re just going to find the motivation to make EMRs happen faster. Doctors who have invested in EMRs but not found the motivation to use them to their full capacity will find the motivation when faced with increased costs for manual transcription – they’re already paying for the EMR system and if it helps them eliminate or significantly reduce transcription costs, especially in the face of a rate increase, they’ll suddenly find they don’t mind using it quite as much as they did when labor was cheap.

Those of us who’ve been online for awhile will find this homily familiar: A rising tide floats all boats. The problem is, the people throwing that adage around assumed a rising tide. Guess what happens in a receding tide? You got it – all the boats are stuck in the same stinking mud. The real-world translation of that is – MTs are already seeing reduction in pay, to the point where it’s almost equivalent (and in some cases, less) than what an overseas transcription service charges. If HITECH brings all transcription back in the US, the most likely scenario (after the newfound motivation for EMRs) is that medical transcription will sink further into the pink collar ghetto, and MTs will find themselves working for rates equivalent to overseas. Possibly less – overseas companies don’t have to pay any US employment taxes or deal with the mounds of paperwork for employees that costs a company money.

And if HITECH doesn’t result in healthcare getting nervous about work going overseas (and I don’t know how it couldn’t), there’s then the cost of compliance – which includes background checks on all employees. Again, I think this is going to fuel the motivation to hasten adoption of EMRs and point-of-care documentation, simply because it eliminates the added costs and headaches.

More and more experienced MTs will bail out of the industry. Many women who entered the work force so they could be flexible and work at home while their children were young have now moved past that phase of their life and can participate in job markets outside the home. I don’t think any of this will stop the droves of young mothers and rural wives who see MT as the solution. And frankly, I sometimes wonder if companies would rather have inexperienced newbies just entering the field because they have lower expectations than those of us who remember decent pay, dictators and working conditions.

When I look at the jobs posted for MTs, it’s the same jobs, by the same companies, recycled over and over again – it’s difficult to tell if they just can’t keep MTs or if they’re signing that many new accounts, but even the #1 job site for MTs has less than half as many job listings as they did 2 years ago, and many of those are repetitive ads by the same companies.

Is there a future for MT? Sure there is – I’m just not sure it’s one many of us who’ve been around for awhile will want to continue participating in. It looks less and less like the kind of career I was looking for over 20 years ago and the changes haven’t been for the better. I have intense ennui when it comes to the concept of adapting to the changes – if I have to change, I’m going to find something that pays better for the years of experience I have. Frankly, I’d rather be paid $10 to do a mindless job like door greeter at the local supermart than bring years of skills as an MT to a job for the same pay per hour.

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I’ve been meaning to write about the American Transcription Association (ATA) since the Advance editorial, Inshoring jobs for MTs – and then again when For the Record published their article, Transcription group opposes offshoring.

Life kind of intervened – and it was summer and hot and I really didn’t feel like saying much about anything.

Well, the weather has cooled down (for now) and I’m catching up.

I like the ATA’s enthusiasm but I’m kind of confused about their direction and plan of action. (Then again, I’m not privy to it and I’m sure the web site only scratches the surface.) On the other hand, Donna Littrell, founder of the organization, seems to have put a lot of thought into it and more organization than I’ve seen in past efforts to start a new trade organization.

Until I went and re-reviewed the web site as research for writing about them, I didn’t realize they were including VAs (virtual assistants) and other types of transcription services. I understand that overseas competition is a concern for those people, as well. I understand that including them in the scope of what the ATA hopes to accomplish boosts the membership and vendor base. I am concerned, however, that it will blur the focus of the organization.

The medical transcription industry has been difficult to get a grasp on; even industry experts are only able to roughly estimate the number of medical transcriptionists in the U.S., the number of lines generated, the amount of revenue generated annually by the industry. On top of that, no one company has ever been able to capture more than a very small share of the estimated total industry. Part of the reason for this is because it’s largely a fragmented industry with a large number of mom-and-pop businesses and independent MTs, many of which are invisible in the industry – they don’t join organizations, they don’t go to meetings and if they are in the forums that attracted MTs, they stay pretty silent (but many of them aren’t even there).

If MT is still fragmented after all the consolidation that’s gone on the last 10+ years, the general transcription and VA industries are even more fragmented. And – because there’s absolutely no way of knowing how many potential customers there are for those services and approximately how much business they might generate in a year, it’s just impossible to even guess an estimate of either the amount of revenue generated in those industries or the number of people who might be engaged in working in those industries. When I put up Transcription Registry, I thought I had a fairly good grasp of what kind of transcription services were being offered. And yet – some of the specialty areas surprised me. (For example – I had no idea people recorded church sermons and had them transcribed!)

That’s all great – but does including such a diverse and fragmented (and potentially huge) group distort ATA’s focus? One of my criticisms of the old AAMT was that they tried to be all things to all MTs. The association was originally started by acute care MTs. I think AAMT would have gone a lot further than it ever did if they had just focused on that segment of the medical transcription market. I have to wonder if ATA is headed down that same road when they include such a diverse group unless they develop a really good, really concrete plan for handling it; i.e., dividing into sections and putting someone with a lot of experience in the section industry in charge of it.

The education and training requirements for entry into the medical transcription industry are also much different from those of the other industries. Are board members and general members who aren’t involved in the medical transcription industry going to want to spend the time and money needed to address issues regarding medical transcription education, training, job placement and credentialing? There are also going to be issues that arise from leaning heavily on the privacy and security issues of overseas transcription. There’s a lot of work being done by VAs and general transcriptionists that doesn’t involve anything that exposes privacy or security. There’s also a question of whether or not HITECH will take care of these issues in the medical transcription industry – I spoke with an attorney at TEPR prior to HITECH being passed – he told me if it passed, he would advise his MTSO clients not to use overseas contractors at all because the exposure is too great. (HITECH is another topic altogether or I’d get into it.) I’m not sure if privacy and security issues are much of a plank, much less enough to build a platform – and it’s especially weak when diluted by other types of transcription that don’t deal with these issues at all.

I vehemently disagree with the organization’s assertion that there are enough medical transcriptionists in the U.S. to meet the requirements. There’s absolutely no evidence to support this. There may be enough people in the U.S. who want to be MTs, or who would be MTs if the money was better – but if all work overseas was pulled back into the U.S. tomorrow, I don’t think there would be enough MTs to get the work done, even if they all worked 24/7.

In For the Record, Transcription group opposes offshoring, Scott Faulkner made some comments about the focus of the group being shortsighted. I agree with Scott on the issue that globalization is an irreversible component of our modern world. I disagree that ATA is implying that one group of workers is inherently more skilled, more responsible and therefore ultimately superior to another group of workers. I am going to guess that in the former reference, he means U.S. MTs and in the latter, he means overseas MTs. I don’t get that message from the ATA and there’s certainly a precedence in business for promoting domestic services and workers. There are overseas trade organizations for MTs that US workers can’t join – why not a US trade organization? Someone explain to me why it’s okay to have a trade organization for medical transcription in India or Pakistan or New Zealand or the Philippines – but not the US.

I encourage transcriptionists of all kinds to check it out, at least. It’s always exciting to see a new group that’s passionate about a cause and it’ll be interesting to see how the ATA progresses and where it goes. See below for how to find them.

For my own part, I’d like to see ATA leadership be a little more transparent. Bios of the Board members would be a nice start, as well as a statement of the legal status of the organization. I hope they continue standing on higher ground when it comes to other organizations, credentials, policies, etc. For the ATA to be successful, they have to send a positive message and build a solid platform that promotes the benefits of a domestic work force.

Related Links

1. American Transcription Association web site
2. American Transcription Association on Facebook
3. American Transcription Association on Twitter

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Here we go roundabout with the credentialing discussion – again.

I realized during the discussion on the Plexus social networking article that the article is approved for continuing education credits (CECs) for those who are credentialed CMTs. In my opinion, this takes the discussion to a completely new level.

First, indulge me while I talk (again!) about the credential itself.

In another comment in the Mandatory Credentialing entry, Lea says:

Credentialing is about moving the profession forward, not the individual.

This comment reminds me of a time when my children were in elementary school here in the Los Angeles Unified School District and I was involved in the parents’ group for the school. At that time, the big fundraising goal was enough money to install air conditioning. Unfortunately, because of inadequate electrical wiring added to the cost of the actual A/C system, it was a daunting task. So much money was required to install A/C for even a few classrooms, few (if any) of the parents would still have children at the school by the time there was enough money. It’s next to impossible to convince people to donate time and money for something that will not reap them (or their children) any benefit.

The same is true in MT. One reason the CMT hasn’t been widely embraced is the fact that it holds little value for the practitioner MT. Head down, trying to grind out lines and scraping for work, trying to pay the bills, the average MT has little interest in advancing the profession. It’s an obscure and remote purpose with no immediate benefit. AAMT/AHDI has been telling the MT community for years that we should all be concerned about advancing the profession and that joining the organization and being involved is how we do this, getting credentialed is how we do this. For years, AAMT/AHDI has had difficulty communicating its purpose in a way that resonates with practitioner MTs and the CMT is no exception. Over and over and over, MTs hear the same mantra from AHDI leadership and CMT supporters.

Giving credit where it’s due – and because she feels I’ve been beating up on her here – Lea Sims wrote a good article on how we got to this point at the AHDI Lounge: Let’s Talk Wages. I think the article is a good start on the discussion, but I’m going to disagree with some of the assessments and conclusions (what a surprise, eh?!). For AHDI, the answer is always get more involved in the association, get credentialed. The article discusses Blue Ocean stratagies; the problem is, apparently it relied on the Wikipedia explanation and not the book. Because in the book, there is a discussion about barriers to imitation that are required for Blue Ocean Strategy to work – otherwise, even if you find or create your “Blue Ocean,” the sharks move in and you’re back in a bloodbath. For the Blue Ocean strategy to work, it needs to go without challenge for 10 to 15 years. In the medical transcription world, there have been no barriers to imitation and attempts to differentiate were quickly imitated. In fact, the very innovation that was meant to differentiate was picked up by SaaS (software as a service) vendors, who turned around the differentiating characteristic and made it available to anyone for a fee. In Blue Ocean terminology, once again the chum was thrown in the water and the sharks circled. The truly negative effect this had – along with HIPAA legislation – was to start working against smaller transcription services, who struggled with the cost of technology and the cost of compliance with HIPAA. The cost of entry for many of the SaaS platforms was prohibitive – $10,000 and up per account, more for speech technology, with minimum line requirements (understandable because of the costs associated with ramping up SRT) – and what had begun as a differentiation strategy became just another commodity, a requirement of doing business, not an added value to the service.

But the biggest problem underlying all of this is not just the commoditization of medical transcription – it’s the commoditization of healthcare in general, rising costs and reduced reimbursements, coupled with the push for electronic records. There simply isn’t any evidence that credentialing would monetarily benefit the MT work force in an environment where there are increasing cost constraints and a huge push towards eliminating or significantly reducing the need for manual transcription. I realize AHDI has to remain positive about the outlook for medical transcription in an electronic record environment, but I don’t feel the need to put on rosy-colored glasses, so I’ll say what they can’t – I’m not optimistic about it. I don’t think there’s going to be a blue ocean any time in the future of the industry. I think a lot of people are going to drown if they don’t start thinking about an exit strategy. And let’s face it – who is going to come out ahead in the competition for business in an electronic record environment? Again – the large companies that have the money to put into the technology.

So, after evaluating the industry as a whole, and the place of transcription in it, I’ll move on to the value of credentialing. We’ve all heard Albert Einstein’s famous quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” For years, AHDI leadership has stated over and over and over again, that if enough people get credentialed or credentialing is mandatory, perceived value will increase and wages will increase. Even if we believe this to be true, the problem is getting everyone in the supply chain not only to believe it to be true (see the paragraphs above), but to “buy in” for that long haul. And AHDI has never seemed to understand that in order to get people to buy in for the long haul, there have to be immediate benefits that carry through. There’s only so much people are going to be willing to sacrifice to promote the profession when they not only don’t see any benefit after years of being credentialed, but they see no benefit from the organization that supports the credential.

And if AHDI sounds like a broken record on this point, I feel like I’m a broken record as well. I’ve said it in other posts here – for MTs to see a benefit from credentialing, the employers have to start preferring or requiring it. If there was actually preferential hiring of CMTs, more MTs would get the credential. But the employers need to see a benefit, as well. And part of that benefit is that CMTs are more qualified than non-credentialed MTs and/or that there is a benefit to the client that creates sufficient differentiation that the service can either obtain the contract over an outsourced service whose workers aren’t credentialed or that they are able to charge more for the service, thus offsetting the cost of preferential hiring and pay incentives for the credentialed MTs. In my opinion, the commoditization of medical transcription has progressed beyond the point of no return. Healthcare industry factors simply aren’t conducive to any scenario that increases the cost of labor for transcription. Hospitals aren’t making money – they’re operating at deficits that run into millions of dollars per year.

But let’s suppose for a minute that we believe credentialing adds sufficient value to accomplish the stated goals of increased recognization, reversal of commoditization and increased pay. I’m going to ignore the RMT credential – it’s an entry-level credential. If we’re talking about a CMT credential that has sufficient meaning to gain preferential hiring and pay incentives, then as an employer, I’d want to believe that those people are worth it; i.e., the best of the best. I want to know that the continuing education they get adds to their knowledge base and skill level.

All this discussion leads me back to the Plexus social networking article and the fact that it was deemed worthy of CECs.

Let’s look at the AHDI web site and the requirements for qualifying for getting an article, presentation, webinar, etc. approved for CECs:

Let me emphasize a few points here and how they relate to the comments made in the other entry…

“… must be formally presented by qualified professionals…”

That leaves open a pretty wide door – qualified in what? I would hope that means qualified in some way to speak on the topic being presented, yet that doesn’t seem to be the case here. A gastroenterologist is a qualified professional but probably wouldn’t be the best person to write an article on plastic surgery, no matter how well researched it was. Anyone who really wants to support the credentialing process should be confident that the qualified professional is, indeed, qualified in the subject matter being presented. Otherwise, Nae Priest (no offense, Nae!) could have written this article and been deemed a qualified professional. And I’m pretty sure she’ll admit she’s not qualified to write an article on social networking!

There are all kinds of articles, including invesigative and research pieces written by staff writers who are not “authorities” on their subject matter – they are simply reporting what they have researched. If there was a standard suggesting that in order to write about something in public media you had to be an authority on it, very little writing would get done by an one.

While I agree with that statement, not all articles are approved for CECs, either. Yet – this article was. I can think of at least one communications director for a major healthcare organization who offers a free tutorial on effective use of Facebook for both personal and business use and how to keep the two separate. And since he has spent the time to do that, as well as the time to engage in telephone conversations with me about it, I’m pretty confident that he would allow use of some of his materials for free and he might even be willing to write an article for the publication that was more authoritative and helpful. How did I connect with him? Social networking. Even within the AHDI membership network, there are qualified professionals with experience in social networking – the Keystrokes Transcription Service group on Facebook has almost as many members as the OA-AHDI, which would also have been a good resource for laying this foundation.

The requirements also indicate:

“Articles, presentations and workshops directed to lay audiences or the general public are generally not creditworthy.

This particular article earned CMTs one credit towards the “MT Tools” (4 total credits required in a 3-year recredentialing period).

By a really loose interpretation of the above, it’s possible that the basics of social networking might fall under “MT resources and references.” I say loose because the article was so general – it made no mention of MT groups on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn or anywhere else, or how they might be utilized to better connect with other MTs. At best, it could be described as being directed towards lay audiences. There was nothing in it that was directed towards medical transcription in particular. There are no specific healthcare documentation resources listed. It could have been in any publication.

According to Lea Sims:

The value of a social networking article for MTs (and why it was assigned credit) was simply to help the at-home, isolated MT who may be clueless about social networking get a little more comfortable with it.

OK – I get that. But I’m still critical of why this was approved for CECs. Members at AHDI may have been interested in knowing more about social networks – I’m sure there are a lot of things AHDI members are interested in, but that doesn’t automatically translate into a responsibility by the association to fill the void and give CECs for it. I’m not seeing the leap of logic that indicates telling them more in a very generalized way falls in the category of “MT Tools.” Actually bringing in the MT resources in social networking instead of making the article very general would, in my opinion, have moved the article from one directed towards laymen to one that was actually about MT resources in the social networks. If the organization feels its members aren’t ready for such specific information, that’s understandable – but don’t give CECs for teaching them how to crawl, for heaven’s sake! One would hope that the CMT credential is for people who are running, not crawling, and that the continuing education actually enhances their MT abilities.

I am sure the argument could be made that it’s just one CEC among many. The problem is that once a credibility gap occurs, we all start wondering what other flaws exist in the system. The CMT already has credibility issues. Fluff CECs that could best be described as “Social networking for Beginners” add little to the credential that’s supposed to be the hallmark of excellence. Most employers would consider social networking for their MTs to be a personal thing, best engaged in during off hours. Nobody wants their MTs spending time in the social networks when they should be working. What, specifically, is there in the social networks that makes my MTs better MTs, able to do their work more accurately or faster? And why should I pay them more to learn how to be more sociable online? To put not too fine a point on it, employers may not really care that their MTs are socially isolated – in fact, they’d probably point out that many people become MTs because they prefer to be isolated.

Maybe I could get some of my blog entries approved for CECs.

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In today’s ironic category, Nae Priest sent me an article from the AHDI Plexus publication (which I no longer get because I’m not a member). Diving into the Social Networking World strikes my funny irony bone because it’s written by Lea Sims, director of communications and marketing for AHDI.

If there’s something AHDI hasn’t really mastered, it’s social networking for business purposes and online marketing.

I’m going to ignore the social networking for personal reasons that the article covers. In my opinion, a discussion of social networking for personal use has no place in a business journal.

What’s left is a useless discussion of social networking for business. And my educated guess is that it’s useless because the communications and marketing director at AHDI doesn’t have a really firm grasp on how to really harness the power of social networking to promote a business.

Years ago, when I was a member of AAMT, Mike DeTuri told me they have a communication problem. I replied that I didn’t feel it was so much a communication problem – people just didn’t listen to what they were saying. I’ll never forget his snappy response: “Isn’t that a communication problem?”

Indeed!

Let’s take a look first at their use of the very popular Twitter social networking site. The AHDI Twitter account is at least complete with picture and background. In contrast, the MTIA Twitter account looks like the red-headed stepchild of the communications and marketing department, with the default background and no profile picture. At least the profile is otherwise complete! But here’s why the Twitter accounts are so indicative of how AHDI communicates… they aren’t using Twitter to communicate with people and build relationships – which is the very hallmark of social networking online – they are using it to talk at people. AHDI follows exactly 2 other Twitterers, and one of those is MTIA. They have 128 followers.

Twitter Followers: Having Twitter followers is essential. I looked at the Twitter account of a friend who is an author and I told her she didn’t have enough followers. She said she was being selective about who she followed. I understand that – to a point. However, if you have no or few Twitter followers, you are talking to yourself – you might as well not be on Twitter at all. If you don’t have followers, you are being cybersnubbed. You might not mind from a personal perspective – but you should mind from a business perspective. No business ought to be talking to nobody.

Twitter Following: If a Twitter account holder doesn’t follow any/many people, they are the ones doing the cybersnubbing. They are not building relationships – they are indicating they only wish to engage in one-way communications. In other words, they want to talk at you, not with you.

Experienced people who use Twitter to promote their business know that building relationships is important. You have to actually engage other people. Otherwise, it isn’t social networking. The rule of thumb is 80/20 – 80% of the time you should be engaging others and not promoting whatever it is you’re there to promote and 20% of the time you can spend on self promotion. AHDI’s use of Twitter is not interactive. They don’t follow enough people to be listening and engaging.

And that’s just Twitter. Their use of LinkedIn is so minimal, they might as well not be using it at all.

When I was at the TEPR meeting in January, I was talking to a friend who had a booth there. He was telling me about the cost of attending and how little real business he was getting from exhibiting there. I told him he could find more qualified leads at LinkedIn for free than he was getting at the conference, but he’s not using LinkedIn effectively. Well, neither is the communications director at AHDI. Lea Sims has 1 – yes, that’s a big, whopping ONE – connection at LinkedIn. And yet, LinkedIn is one of the oldest and largest business-oriented networking sites. By not actively engaging in this community, AHDI is missing out on a huge opportunity to network and educate.

AHDI seems to do somewhat better when it comes to Facebook; but again, it appears they are talking at people, not engaging and networking.

Social networking for business can be extremely effective, but it is networking. It requires time, effort and two-way communication. The benefits can be enormous. The number of people networking and communicating online is exploding and most social networking sites provide a free platform to tap into those markets. There are business segments that understand this, study how to tap into it – and work a plan. Others simply flop around, getting bits and parts right but they have no cohesive plan or they aren’t willing/able to commit the resources to doing it right.

I acknowledge that doing it well is time consuming. However, if you aren’t willing to take the time and you don’t actually use social networking effectively for your business – don’t put yourself out in the community as an authority and don’t write articles and give webinars as though you know what you’re talking about.

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