Twitter | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Twitter 116: 3 Steps to Joining or Leading a Twitter Chat

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Note: This post is specifically intended to help USA Today readers who are new to Twitter so they can participate in our #MayoUSAToday Twitter chats. For more introductory information on Twitter, see the Twitter curriculum.

Update: This week’s #MayoUSAToday Twitter chat is on concerns about memory loss. Join us from 1-2 p.m. ET on Thursday, Sept. 16.

In Twitter 115: 5 Benefits of Twitter Chats, I discussed why you would want to create (or join) a Twitter chat. Twitter 116 takes you through the how.

Prerequisite: It seems obvious, but to join a Twitter chat, you need to have a Twitter account. If you don’t have one yet, go to Twitter 102 for step-by-step guidance.

3 Steps to Twitter Chats

1. Go to Twitter.com and search for your desired hashtag. This applies whether you are joining an existing chat (like #MayoUSAToday) or creating one of your own. If you’re starting your own chat, your goal for this step is to find a tag that hasn’t previously been used.

2. Save your search for easy reference. When you see your search results for a chat you’re joining (like our Mayo Clinic/USA Today chat) you will see a “Save this search” link:

…right next to the “Real-time results for #(name of hashtag)”

When you click the “Save this search” link, you will add that search query to your list of saved searches, like this:

3. Use the hashtag in a Tweet to start or join the conversation. Here is an example of a tweet I did as part of the #MayoUSAToday chat (click to enlarge):

…and then after refreshing the page, you’ll see that the tweet shows up in the thread:

That’s really all there is to it. When the chat starts, just click on your saved search link and wait to see what tweets show up. You should occasionally see a yellow bar at the top of your search results that looks something like this:

Just click that yellow bar and the new tweets will show up. To reply to any of them, just hit the reply arrow next to the tweet…

…and be sure to add the #MayoUSAToday hashtag to your tweet so it will be included in the conversational stream.

There are other ways to participate in a Twitter chat, such as through desktop clients like Tweetdeck or smartphone clients like Tweetie or Twitterberry, but for Twitter beginners this is the simplest way, just using the main Twitter Web site.

Is this clear? Do you have other questions about how Twitter chats work?

Assignment:

Add the #MayoUSAToday chat to your saved searches, using the first two steps listed above.
For extra credit, join the conversation if you find this week’s topic interesting.

Twitter 115: 5 Benefits of Twitter Chats

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Twitter chats are an amazing way to bring together people for a focused conversation on a particular topic or surrounding an event, such as a conference or Webinar.

There’s no need for the people involved to know each other before the chat, and in many cases the chats can be great ways to connect with people who have common interests. For example, I frequently join the #hcsm chat for people interested in using social media in healthcare, and occasionally join the #hcmktg chat related to healthcare marketing.

For Mayo Clinic, we use a #mayoradio Twitter chat to gather questions from outside our local area for our Medical Edge Weekend radio program, and have done several joint chats with Mary Brophy Marcus (@BrophyMarcUSAT) from USA Today, inviting readers to discuss the topics of her stories with a Mayo Clinic specialist. We’re now using #MayoUSAToday as the hashtag for these discussions.

In 3 Steps to Joining or Leading a Twitter Chat, I take you step by step through the process of joining a Twitter chat. But first, here are some of the reasons you might want to participate. I’ll use the #MayoUSAToday chat as an example:

Public discussion that spreads as it continues. When a new person joins the discussion by including #MayoUSAToday in a tweet, it spreads the word about the chat to her Twitter followers. Any of her followers who retweet or reply to her tweet extend the reach still further.
Broad geographic reach. Speaking of extending the reach, the beauty of a Twitter chat is it can be worldwide. Some diseases or conditions just aren’t common enough to build a critical mass for discussion locally, no matter how metropolitan the location. Getting people together physically is tough, but with Twitter you can gather people with common interests virtually without them having to leave the comfort of wherever they use their computer. And of course with iPhones, Blackberries or Androids people can join the chat from wherever they are: I did a recent chat from O”Hare airport in Chicago.
No need to raise your hand. Unlike an in-person meeting, you don’t need to be recognized by the moderator to ask you question or make your comment. Just include the #MayoUSAToday tag in your tweet, and you’re part of the conversation. If you use the tag to interject your marketing messages into a discussion, you won’t last long in the chat (or in Twitter). Users will report you as a “hashtag spammer” (a term that is part of a Twitter lexicon I plan to publish) and your account will be suspended. But if you’re a real person who just wants to join the conversation without hijacking it for pecuniary reasons, you’ll find people in Twitter quite friendly and open.
Wallflowers welcome. It’s fine to just lurk and listen. You can just click the #MayoUSAToday link, for instance, and watch what others are saying. But more importantly, a Twitter chat can be a great tool to get discussion from the whole audience at a conference, instead of just those who are most verbose and comfortable speaking in public. So when I do a presentation, I generally create a hashtag that enables everyone to comment or ask questions. This can help make sure we hear from the introverts, whose ideas may not otherwise get as much consideration as they deserve, which leads to the final point…
No time limits. Many if not most Twitter chats have a set time during which people have agreed to gather. The #MayoUSAToday chats are scheduled to run for one hour, during which time our Mayo Clinic subject experts are online to answer questions tweeted by USA Today readers and others drawn into the conversation (see Benefit #1 above.) But the time expiring doesn’t mean you can’t continue to tweet using the hashtag, and the conversation can continue on at a slower pace. So if someone tweets with a #MayoUSAToday tag three hours after the scheduled chat ends, it just means the question probably won’t be answered right away, as it would during the one-hour window. This also obviously applies to conferences and other in-person meetings; just because people have gone home doesn’t mean the conversation has to end.

In 3 Steps to Joining or Leading a Twitter chat, I will take you step-by-step into joining the #MayoUSAToday chat, and you can use the same pattern to join other chats (or set up one of your own.)

Thesis 9: Social Media Synergy with Mass Media

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This post is part of a series related to my 35 Social Media Theses, in which I will discuss and amplify upon each of the statements I believe define the social media revolution, particularly as they relate to healthcare. This relates to my example of Thesis 33, which is being demonstrated as I write this.

Even though I firmly believe in Thesis 4:

Social Media are the third millenium’s defining communications trend

…that in no way diminishes my appreciation for the power, influence and purpose of mass media. That’s why I have stated Thesis 9 as follows:

Mass media will remain powerful levers that move – and are moved by – social media buzz.

One example of this from my personal experience is, of course, the “Octogenarian Idols” story of Marlow and Frances Cowan, whose YouTube piano-playing video at Mayo Clinic has been seen 5 million times, and led to a story in the Des Moines Register and their appearance on Good Morning America and a spoof on The Tonight Show. These mass media features exposed at least another 5 million people to this special couple and their 62-year (so far) love affair.

I’m excited to be able to share another great story of social media synergy with mass media, and how it may help thousands of patients find relief for debilitating wrist pain. And it’s happening as I write this.

USA Today has a story this morning about Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Jayson Werth and his comeback from a career-threatening wrist injury. You can read Jayson’s story as written by Mary Brophy Marcus (@BrophyMarcUSAT – it’s also in the print edition), and for more background on the injury you can see Jayson’s Sharing Mayo Clinic story and the post I wrote on our Mayo Clinic News Blog when he hit two home runs to help send the Phillies to the World Series for the second straight year.

A big part of being able to do those posts was the Flip video camera, which I used when I was in Philadelphia earlier this year, to interview Jayson about his experience. And with those posts and having Jayson on video, Mary (and her editors) saw both the significance of Jayson’s comeback and how this is an injury that affects not just elite athletes, but everyday people.

It’s hard to know exactly how many people have a split tear of the UT ligament in their wrist, because most doctors don’t know about this type of injury. As Dr. Richard Berger, the Mayo Clinic orthopedic surgeon who discovered the injury type, has said, the MRI scans for these patients would typically be interpreted as normal because the ligament isn’t completely severed: it’s split lengthwise. So it may be as common as an ACL tear, but patients keep having to deal with wrist pain for which their doctors can’t find a cause.

That’s why getting this story in the mass media, in this USA Today article, is so important: it will alert many patients and doctors about a wrist pain cause they may not have considered. That’s why we scheduled a Twitter chat on #wristpain for Thursday, November 12 from 4-5 p.m. EST. Dr. Berger (@RABergerMD) will be available to answer questions and talk about the UT Split Tear injury and how it’s treated.

But this is where the real synergy comes in: Mary and her editors only had 30 column inches to devote to the story (believe me, we’re thankful for all the space they did find!) but they realized that people who think they might have a split tear will want much more in-depth information. And so they helped make it more likely that those people would be able to find the additional information, by adding this widget on the USAToday.com site:

For our part, we did this blog post about the Twitter chat that also includes a list of surgeons Dr. Berger has personally trained, so patients can come to a surgeon closer to their home. We also included a link to a scientific paper Dr. Berger has published on the subject, as well as a TV story about a bowler with the injury and an in-depth audio podcast with Dr. Berger.

The focused Twitter chat this afternoon will be great, but the other neat part about having the social media component is that it can continue long after the one-day run of the print story. People can continue to ask questions by tweeting @RABergerMD or using the #wristpain hashtag, or may leave longer questions on the wrist pain post on our Mayo Clinic News Blog.

I hope you will pass this information along to everyone you can (especially if you know of someone with wrist pain), via Twitter, Facebook or old-fashioned email. I will keep you posted on some of the results we’re seeing from this social media/mass media synergy.

Twitter 132: Creating a Twitter Search Widget

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In Thesis 33, I invited those interested in helping to spread the word about the #wristpain Twitter chat to

retweet this: @mayoclinic: Know anyone with mystery #wristpain? Discuss a common cause Thurs on Twitter w/@RABergerMD http://bit.ly/dBlMH
post to their Facebook and/or (if you’re really motivated)
embed a Twitter search widget in your blog in a post on in the blog’s sidebar.

So I thought it would be good to give a step-by-step course on how to set up a Twitter search widget.

Note: This is one of the things you can’t do in WordPress.com, because the javascript is not allowed on WordPress.com blogs. You need to be using a self-hosted (WordPress.org) version, or a platform like Blogger or Typepad. One of the few downsides of the free WordPress.com platform.

So, here’s the step-by-step:

1. Go to the Twitter Search Widget page. You will see a screen like this (click any of the images to enlarge):

2. Since you don’t really want to display all of the Tweets using “OMG” in their body, you need to change the title and search criteria. Here’s what I did for my widget about the #wristpain Twitter chat:

3. You can adjust appearance and other settings if you want, but all you really need to do at this point is click the “Finish & Grab Code” button, highlight the code by clicking on it, and copy it to your clipboard.

4. Go to your self-hosted WordPress blog (the process is similar for Blogger or Typepad) and either create a text widget for the sidebar, or a new post into which you want to insert your widget.

If you are doing a new post, be sure to switch from Visual to HTML view before you paste in your code:

Meredith Gould: Great Humanitarian

Here’s a little story about the power of Twitter and the communities it helps to create, and the nice people it enables you to meet.

Earlier this week I attended the e-Patient Connections conference in Philadelphia, where I presented our Mayo Clinic social media case study.

Unfortunately, when I got to the airport (I had to leave just after lunch), I realized that I had left my Flip video camera on the podium at the conference. The video below tells what happened next, and expresses my gratitude:

The conference was a great chance for me to meet lots of great Tweeps with whom I had only interacted via Twitter and our blogs, including, in addition to @MeredithGould, @danamlewis, @daphneleigh, @philbaumann, @ePatientDave, @whydotpharma and @SusannahFox. I met several more with whom I hadn’t interacted previously, but look forward to getting to know in the coming months.

Thanks to @kevinkruse for organizing a great conference, and again to Meredith for her Philadelphia airlift.