Hashtags, Health, Oh My!

Hashtags. Retweets. Mentions. Just a couple of keywords that are always used in the fascinating world of twitter! With roughly a billion users and over 320 million active users monthly, twitter is a great tool that can be utilized by Health Organizations and professionals looking to expand their organization or brand, and provide their target audiences with information specific to them and the company! Once you've learned the twitter lingo and gotten a few tips up your sleeve (which by the way is super easy), you'll be well on your way to fully implementing twitter as a part of your social media campaign. 

Twitter is a microblogging social media site that allows it's users to post status updates with a 160 character limit. Twitter allows users including health professionals and organizations follow one another, therefore people interested in you, will follow you! Twitter offers condensed communication through tweets but also allows for direct or private messaging among two users. 

Twitter moves at a very fast pace meaning that tweets are constantly being sent by users. Certain topics may trend or be discussed by many users at once on the site. When a user sees a tweet they find interesting or can relate to, they may retweet it which shares the tweet to their followers (GREAT because more people see the information) or they may favorite it (twitter's version of the Facebook "like") and they are able to access their list of favorites at anytime! 

Utilizing twitter for your health organization will allow you to share information quickly, concisely and connect with the people that you follow and people that follow you! As a health organization or professional, you can tweet out information regarding new health findings, studies, concepts relative to your target population or to your company. You can pretty much tweet anything.. (well we will become more specific in a second)! Several tips are listed below to help jump start your awesome, fun, and tweet-filled twitter experience!! 

Cody's Corner!

• Goals & Education

• You know the drill. Define your goals of utilizing and implementing twitter within your organization! Once that is determined, educate yourself and your staff on how twitter works (i.e. retweets, mentions, hashtags)
•  Goals include finding out your target audience! 
• Balance
• According to Social Times, since twitter moves at such a fast pace, you need to balance the amount of time you spend formulating a tweet (not that it's rocket science but you want to be clear) and actually tweeting things out.
• Character Limits
• Twitter limits you to 160 characters and there's even less if you have to mention people, use hashtags or include links so be concise!!
• Mentions
• Mentioning a user on twitter is like public communication, anyone who follows you can see it and the user you mentioned will be notified of the mention! It's a great way to include others when tweeting relative information
• Hashtags
• Twitter's version of keywords. Important. Important. #Important. Especially when you're just starting out tweeting, using hashtags will help you get discovered by others using that same hashtag or searching that hashtag! (but, make the hashtags relative)
• Links
• Often times, health organizations will need to include links in their tweets, however links can be excruciatingly long, often times consuming the character limit, use link shorteners like Google or Bit.ly to shorten URL links! 
•  Apps & Tweet Overload
• It can be annoying when a user mass tweets 10 things in a row to their followers. If you have several tweets you want to share with information, try utilizing an app that will queue your tweets for you and send them over a period of time. That way, your followers are not bombarded all at once by information! 
• HIPAA
• When discussing health information, it is crucial to be weary of sensitive information! It is illegal to discuss personal health information with users over the internet, including twitter and even if it's through private message. 
• If the information you want to tweet or direct message has to do with a user's health status, do not discuss it. 

American Medical Association

1. The American Medical Association twitter account is a great example of a health organization effectively using twitter. With over half of a million followers, the AMA focuses on sharing health information to a broad group of people. Their target audience is people in general because after looking at several of their tweets, they include political aspects and how they tie into the medical field as well as tweets toward medical students. You may just be a general health twitter account like that AMA and that is fine, but just make sure when tweeting you aren't showing any favoritism. The AMA tweets often too, but doesn't bombard their followers with a constant feed of status updates. They also include links in their tweets and their links have been shortened to provide more room for headline type information.
   
   As always, have a happy & healthy day!
   - Cody