How to Participate in Healthcare Tweet Chats

In our previous blog on 3 Benefits of Healthcare Tweet Chats, we introduced Symplur, a company that organizes and tracks healthcare hashtags, tweet chats and conferences.  You can find a current schedule of tweet chats here.  Take a look around and, if any healthcare chats interest you, then this blog is for you.

Tweet chats typically have two to three people that moderate each session.  For some, like #HCLDR (Healthcare Leader), the moderators create a pre-tweet chat blog that provides details, such as topic discussion, questions to be discussed and resource links on the topic. I personally have found these blogs helpful and I appreciate the hard work and time the moderators put into writing them.

And so, here is a shout out to Colin Hung @Colin_Hung, Bernadette Keefe, MD @nxtstop1 and Joe Babaian @JoeBabaian.

To get the most of healthcare tweet chats, we recommend you:

1. Review any pre-chat blog information, so you are familiar with the topic.
2. Sign-in a few minutes early to be sure your connections are working.
3. Observe if you are new to tweet chats to learn how it all works.
4. Know the moderators and watch for their cues on changes in the discussion.
5. Share your point of view and engage in the discussion. Side discussions are okay, but should remain on topic
6. Share resources that provide insight into the disucssion.
7. Communicate with other participants outside the chat.
8. Review the analytics and transcripts provided by Symplur after the chat.
9. Use tools to make your participation easier. See our recommendations below.
10. Most of all, relax and enjoy the session.

Tools Designed to Help You Participate in Healthcare Tweet Chats

 

TweetChat.com

I have found TweetChat.com to be most beneficial when I participate in healthcare tweet chats since it is visually appealing and allows you to see tweets clearly.

Benefits of TweetChat:

• Allows you to be in the chat environment without distractions.
• Each tweet you post will include the hashtag so you do need to remember to add it.
• You can pause the stream so you can be sure you are responding appropriately.

 

Twubs.com

Benefits of Twubs:

• Also allows you to be in the own chat environment without distractions.
• You can control the speed of the stream flow and pause if needed.

Note: You will need to remember to add the hashtag for your tweet to be included in the stream.

Hootsuite.com

Hootsuite is a fantastic tool for keeping track of all your social media activity, including helping you participate in healthcare tweet chats. You can set up individual tabs for different accounts and within each tab, you can have several streams of similar activity.

Mike Alton of Social Media Hat has written an excellent article entitled, “How to use HootSuite to Manage Twitter Chats“, where he provides details on how to use this platform for tweet chats.

Benefits of Hootsuite:

• Allows you to save your hashtag in a stream which is automatically refeshed so you are always current.
• You can creaate additional streams within the same tab of other participants.

Particpating in healthcare tweet chats can be beneficially to you both personally and professionally. We would love to hear about the ones you particpiate in and why.