How to Use Twitter Effectively -- Part 2

In Part 1 of this blog series we spoke about creating a Twitter strategy and the importance of communicating frequently. In this post we'll continue discussing how you can use Twitter effectively which will help you build your social media following and educate your patients.

PROVIDE QUALITY HEALTH INFORMATION

Twitter is a hotbed for sharing information with others quickly and efficiently. You want your followers and those you are following to care about your message and associate your account with medical expertise related to your practice.

The followers that care about what you are tweeting is more important than having a vast number of followers. Tweet about the content relevant to your practice, and make sure the information is is of high quality (backed up by sources, research included, facts, etc.). The content you share should also be relevant to your practice.

Make sure there is a balance between curating your own content and sharing information from others.

Hashtags are another important aspect of Twitter and are often misunderstood. Using consistent healthcare hashtags is a great way to categorize your content and boost your reach, especially when others search for a specific topic that falls under a particular healthcare hashtag.

Check out the top 30 healthcare Twitter hashtags to use. 

MANUAL IS BETTER THAN AUTOMATED

People always prefer interacting with other humans rather than automated machines. This makes Twitter a great avenue to showcase the personality of your practice. Get into conversations with others, reply to your followers’ Tweets (even if they aren’t about you!), and share relevant information that others post about.

The human approach will always curate a better response than Tweets that sound robotic.

OVERALL

There are many different strategies and approaches to using Twitter effectively, but there are key elements that should stay in place. Curate a solid strategy and follow through with it. This takes time and effort, but the payoff is worth the exposure to new potential clients. Follow relevant profiles that matter to your practice, interact daily with your followers, retweet others, communicate manually, and provide quality information for others to learn from.