Category: Twitter

Getting Twitter “Traction” in Health Care

I have enjoyed working with Chris Seper at MedCity News (on this story, for example) but I think he misses the point of @EdBennett‘s list of hospitals ranked by number of Twitter followers.

And therefore I think his recommendation also is off.

Certainly some hospitals (and other organizations) have just had their Twitter accounts on autopilot, sending Tweets based on an RSS feed. If they’ve done that, though, they aren’t putting a lot of effort (or any time) into Twitter. So even if they don’t have a lot of followers, you can’t really say the project has been a failure, because the cost has been essentially zero. We did this for several months with our @mayoclinic account at the start, and while it isn’t the best approach it can be a good defensive move (see my bottom-line recommendation below.)

But comparing hospitals to celebrities like Ashton Kutcher makes no sense. In fact, as I wrote in a comment (currently awaiting moderation) on the post Chris did about Ed’s list:

Look at the TV stations in the Cleveland market: @wkyc – 3883 followers; @fox8news 2,686; @19ActionNews 1,520; @WEWS 2,098. Only one of those would crack the top 5 hospitals, and one wouldn’t match the hospital numbers at all.

I think Chris is presenting not just a false choice, but a wrong-headed recommendation, when he says:

Hospitals may be better served setting up accounts for high-profile doctors and managing those accounts, rather than trying to gain followers for an institution.

I think this is wrong on two counts:

First, it isn’t an either/or situation, i.e. to  develop an institutional Twitter presence OR encourage individual physicians to engage. There is a place for both.

Second, if the alternative would be “setting up accounts for high-profile doctors and managing those accounts” then that’s really missing the point of social media. Public affairs staff can provide guidance and training for MDs who want to use Twitter, but as Ed says, “docs will do SM on their own if so inclined. Hospitals can’t make them do it.” And hospital PR staff shouldn’t pose as MDs and “manage” accounts for them.

I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made on our @mayoclinic account: our number of followers has quadrupled in the last six months as we have become more interactive. And we also have individual physicians like @vmontori and @davidrosenman getting active in Twitter. They’re both doing some really interesting innovation projects in health care, and are interested in the application of social media.

But we’re not managing the accounts for Dr. Rosenman or Dr. Montori. And the reason DrVes, Dr Val and KevinMD have gained lots of followers is because of their personal involvement, not because someone has “managed” their accounts for them.

The Bottom Line:

  1. Hospitals, or other organizations for that matter, should have a Twitter account, if for no other reason than to keep someone from brandjacking them. But the more they engage, the more valuable they will find even this corporate account.
  2. They should encourage and train individuals who are interested to get involved personally. You can’t manufacture passion, though. If doctors and other leaders are excited about engaging, they will likely be successful. But ghost-tweeting by PR staff would be the wrong approach.

Five Sweet New HootSuite Benefits

Picture 11

I got an invitation last week to upgrade my HootSuite account to version 2.0, and I’m really liking what I see.

I’ve long appreciated the ability within Hootsuite to pre-schedule tweets, and to manage multiple Twitter accounts. So, for example, when I was doing an event (such as Tweetcamp III), I have scheduled tweets for various times throughout the course of the presentation, to include links to particular items I was referencing. It’s particularly helpful for highlighting key Web sites or blog posts when part of the group is participating remotely.  And in the middle of a presentation I have to stay focused, not taking a minute to send a tweet.

Among the improvements of Hootsuite 2.0 I like the most:

  1. The “columns-to-go” feature lets you create a widget based on any search in Twitter, to incorporate within a blog post or your sidebar. So I created the widget above based on a search for “leeaase” or “Lee Aase” and put it within my SMUG sidebar.
  2. The columns for direct messages, mentions or any search term essentially duplicate the functionality of Tweetdeck (which I like a lot, too.)
  3. The ability to set automatic Tweets from an RSS feed. I used to do this using Twitterfeed for our @mayoclinic account. This is a good way to make sure each of our new Sharing Mayo Clinic blog posts gets tweeted at least once, because I know we’ve forgotten to tweet some of them. I think it’s especially OK given the fact that we are highly personally interactive in our Twitter account. Turning this feature on through Hootsuite was a lot easier than Twitterfeed, which had a complicated OpenID process when I used it, although it may have improved in the intervening months.
  4. The statistics package seems pretty strong. You need to use the Ow.ly link shortening built into Hootsuite to take advantage of this, but that doesn’t seem to be a major burden. I look forward to seeing how that works.
  5. Multiple Users. It seems this was added to keep pace with CoTweet, which lets multiple users tweet from the same account without sharing the username/password. This is a benefit because as administrator you don’t want to give every user the master password, because that could enable a disgruntled employee to change the password and lock you out of the account.

Twitter’s open platform that enables outside programmers to add new functionality is one of its best features, and I think Hootsuite has made some significant advances to incorporate a lot of the best features in some of the desktop clients and Web-based  platforms for Twitter.

What tools do you find most helpful in making Twitter more productive?

RAQ – Why are Auto Direct Message Replies in Twitter Bad?

In Tweetcamp III, as in previous Tweetcamps, I have provided Twitter etiquette guidance for those new to Twitter. More recently, thanks to @shwen, I’ve called that section “How to build ‘Tweet Cred.'”

One of my strong recommendations is to avoid using services that send automatic direct messages to your new Twitter followers. If you’ve been in Twitter and have followed even a few people, you’ve probably gotten some messages like this in reply to some of your follows:

Thanks for the follow! I’m so glad we’ve connected. Looking forward to your tweets.

This was sent by a robot, not a person. And it’s a step away from what Twitter is all about, which is real conversations with real people.

A SMUGgle recently asked, “So why are these automatic direct messages so bad?” So in keeping with our “Recently Asked Questions” format, I’m answering here to make it available to everyone.

And if others have additional comments or reasons (or even a contrary opinion, though I’m doubtful of that based on the reactions I saw in in the #Tweetcamp3 stream), please add them in the comments below.

Let me give you a real-life analogy taken from our recent experience with high school graduation parties. My wife Lisa and I are at the stage in life in which we attend lots of these, both for extended family and friends of our kids. And of course it is the common courtesy for graduates that when someone attends your graduation open house and gives you money, you should be sure to send a thank you note. (My daughters are still finishing theirs.)

The thank you notes we received from two grads, whose open houses were held he same day, illustrate why auto direct messages to new Twitter followers are a bad idea.

Let’s call these young men Tim and Mark (not their real names.) We received notes from both “Tim” and “Mark” at about the same time. The language on both was similar…something to the effect of “Thanks for coming to my graduation party and for the gift of money for my graduation. I’m going to use the money to help pay for college expenses.”

But while “Tim’s” was written by hand, “Mark” had photocopied the text and pasted it into the card, and then just signed his name.

Which do you think gave us a warmer feeling?

Lessons for Twitter:

  1. When someone new follows you, it’s not necessary to send a direct message to acknowledge it. It’s better to not acknowledge a new follower than to have a machine do it for you.
  2. Save your direct messages for personal, special communications. Many users choose to have text messages sent to their phones when they get direct messages, so if you are sending an impersonal “form” tweet as a direct message you are likely alienating followers.
  3. If you want to acknowledge your new followers, do it personally, either through a direct message you write based on having checked their profile and tweets or, better yet, through an @ reply that indicates to your followers that this person has interesting things to say.

Twitter is a person-al medium. Let’s keep it that way!

What do you think? Do you have other reasons why auto d messages in Twitter are bad? Or do you think there is any place for them?

“Don’t Try This at Home…”

Normally when you hear a warning like that, the implication is that the task should only be done by a trained professional, not by amateurs.

I had a different experience of this admonition today as we were getting ready for Tweetcamp III. Instead of using a phone conference call or professional video Webcasting, as we had done for our first two tweetcamps, I thought it would be great to do this one via uStream.tv.

I even tested it “at home” Saturday night, with my very first ChancellorCast embedded here on SMUG.

It seemed like the perfect solution. Put the slides on Slideshare.net. Use the PC in the room to show the slides to the local audience, and use the built-in camera on my MacBook Pro to Webcast video and audio to the 100+ participants from all over the U.S. and Canada (and even one from the Netherlands.)

Unfortunately, when I went to uStream.tv at about 8 minutes before the scheduled start of #tweetcamp3, here’s what I saw when I hit the Broadcast Now button:

findingserver

It said it was “Finding Server” but the reality was different.

So after trying to get through for about 7 minutes, at 1:59 CDT I decided we needed to revert to the audio conference method…and after a few hiccups with getting the right number and authorization code, we were able to get going about 2:13.

In some ways it was an interesting audio representation of the “Tribe” that had gathered, because for the better part of five minutes we had a popcorn-like sound of beeps as new callers joined.

It also showed the power of Twitter, in that by using the #tweetcamp3 hashtag we could get word to almost everyone, and switch probably more than 100 participants from video Webcast to phone conference in less than 15 minutes.

My takeaway: “Don’t try this at home” has a second meaning beyond the traditional. Just because something works at home in testing doesn’t mean it will work in a presentation. It’s important to do a run-through in the exact room where the presentation is taking place, and using all of the technology that will be used in the actual event.

I generally have my slides for presentations uploaded to Slideshare.net for two reasons:

  • I don’t like to give out the presentation in hard copy, because I want to have people looking at me and the screen instead of their laps. I don’t want them reading ahead either. By having the presentation on Slideshare, I can tell them where they will be able to refer later, and we can just engage in discussion.
  • In a pinch, I can present from the Web instead of my computer, so if for some reason my computer doesn’t talk nicely with the LCD projector I can use one that does.

It’s what grandpa used to do when he would wear both a belt and suspenders to ensure that his trousers stayed put.

It’s good that we had audio conferencing as another option. It would have been better to try the broadcast from within the room when I arrived there about 25 minutes before the program’s scheduled start. I just though that since I could get to uStream.tv from behind the firewall I wouldn’t have any problem connecting to the Video server.

I know better now.

And let this be a lesson to you, too.

Thanks to everyone who participated in Tweetcamp III today. I hope you found it helpful and worthwhile. I look forward to going through the #tweetcamp3 tweets and seeing what I can learn.

I won’t thank you for your patience, because I don’t know whether you were patient or not. Maybe you were secretly stewing. But at least nobody flamed me. So I’ll thank you for that, and for hanging in as we worked out the kinks.

Update 8:45 p.m. 7/13: I was able to record the video Webcast tonight, so now I think the Tweetcamp III post is a nice archive you could share with people you want to introduce to Twitter.

Twitter 152: Tweetcamp III

Here are the slides and the video Webcast window for Tweetcamp III (#tweetcamp3), which will be held Monday, July 13, 2009 from 3-4 EDT. Please note that the video window will not be live until the time of the program, but you may preview the slides if you wish.

Update 4:30 p.m. CDT July 13: We had some technical difficulties with uStream.tv (I’m fairly certain they were related to our firewall) so we had to do Tweetcamp III via phone conference instead of Webcast. I will probably do did an encore (or take a Mulligan) tonight from home that you can see below.

Update 7:30 p.m. CDT July 13: Hit play on the video below, and then you can follow along as I narrate the slides.

Tweetcamp III

View more documents from Lee Aase.

Here is the video window:

Credits:

I welcome your feedback, either in the comments below or via a tweet using the #tweetcamp3 hashtag.