Last week I was out of the office on Thursday afternoon to participate on a TV program called the Iowa Journal, produced by Iowa Public Television.

Paul Yeager, the show’s host, contacted me a few weeks prior regarding my recent hire as director of social media at the Iowa Hospital Association and asked me to appear in the studio to join their discussion on social media.

In the studio I was joined by Michael Libbie, principal and owner of Insight Advertising, Marketing & Communications, a Des Moines-based advertising agency that specializes in traditional media messages from print to television to social media. Michael also hosts a number of radio shows in the Des Moines market dealing with issues revolving around advertising and the rural lifestyle.

Iowans connecting with social media

Paul Yeager opened the show with some descriptive analysis of the various social media platforms in use today, while our 19 minute studio session made up the second portion of the half hour program.

Our discussion covered several questions about what social media is, how businesses are using it and whether or not it is making our lives better. Michael Libbie described how Insight Advertising has leveraged these new types of tools to the benefit of their clients. My role on the program was to talk about why I was hired at IHA and how we are using social media to interact with our member hospitals and health care professionals across Iowa.

Watch the episode online

This episode of the Iowa Journal also featured a friend of mine who has started his own social media consulting company, Lava Row, and includes footage from a tweetup, a meet up of Twitter users, held in Des Moines a month ago.

You can watch this episode of the Iowa Journal in its entirety on the IPTV website.

For more on the day’s activities, take a look at the post on Paul Yeager’s blog, Public Paul and Media, or Michael Libbie’s post on the Insight Advertising blog.