I also like the brevity of Twitter. I’ve spent more time on this comment than I would on three Tweets.

For instance, recently, we posted live tweets from a press conference held in our Hollings Cancer Center. We received direct feedback from local media reps who wanted us to “tweet away.” Perhaps local media reps in other markets are not as responsive on Twitter, but in Charleston, every outlet is covered on the Twitterverse. Also, national media outlets are encouraging their journalists/reporters to have a Twitter account, so you can connect with them as well.

Also, I completely agree with the comment made about trying multiple messages out. Throw it out there and see what sticks. Now is the time to experiment. Twitter will catch on more and more each day. When the ‘eureka’ moment occurs in the healthcare industry regarding Twitter, you’ve already built a captive audience.

Addressing your key point, however, perhaps Twitter is not the right forum to engage with patients. In fact, I would argue online communities are the better forum for such a conversation.

For now, my suggestion would be to start with a simple strategy. Decide on the audiences you are trying to reach and post messages that would engage them. If you see someone posting about your institution, follow them. If you see people in your local community that fit your target audience, follow them, too. They will help spread the news about community events. And lastly, engage with your local media reps. They see it as a mutually-beneficial relationship.

I agree with most of what you say. Twitter is not going the save health care, solve global warming or restore the economy. I too am weary of the true believers who think it’s the magic bullet for any problem.

At the same time, I’ve had enough of the nay-sayers who go on about it being a complete waste of time. I get it. They don’t like it, and that’s fine.

Is there no place for a reasonable, balanced view? Twitter is a simple idea that has great potential. Just like the telephone, it’s value increases as the network of members grow. If there are only two phones in the world then you have an interesting toy. If everyone has a phone you have indispensable business tool. Repeat with the fax machine, email, etc.

The entry costs for all these tools are low, so trying them out it is easy. I don’t agree that you need a detailed strategy. If I had to build a full-blown business case, strategic plan and ROI forecast for every web opportunity – well, you know hospitals, we’d still be thinking about launching our first Web site.

Try, experiment, see what works. There will be many dead ends (see Second Life), but there will also be great successes, and no business case will tell you which one to pick.

Of course, you don’t put all your focus on Social Media. As I’ve noted before, out of 1,000 visitors to my site, 700 come from Google and 1 comes from Twitter. You better believe that I pay attention to SEO and SEM.

But, if you think like I do, that in the long-term Social Media could change the landscape of the Web, now is a good time to get started.

There are a number of reasons for this scattershot practice: web folks like to tinker; many of these tools are free, and take little time to use; it’s fun; it sounds good in presentations and networking cocktail receptions at conferences.

But to be truly effective and worth the time to maintain (which is crucial), these tools are best deployed in the service of an overall strategy. You have to answer some crucial questions beforehand, and craft an execution plan: Who is the specific audience for the tool? What is your specific goal? What specific kinds of content can you deliver to achieve your objective?

Generally, simply “putting it out there” doesn’t do much outside your Powerpoint presentation. You end up with a toolkit full of blunt instruments.

We’ve discussed using it for reaching internal staff, but to avoid the hassles of getting them to make their own accounts and follow a feed, or get SMS, we’d have to just point them at the URL of our account. At that point, why bother? Just use a real blog (rather than a limited micro-blog). Which is pretty much what our internal communications site is.

Some things to consider when asked to use Twitter on the job (see below). These will be straightforward to you all, but I’d like to hear any other additions to this, or thoughts on these.

What about this problem lends itself to a micro-blog? Would a full-blown blog be more appropriate?
Is there a dedication to posting new content?
What’s the measure of success?
How will this effort tie-in to your other Web efforts?

a few questions:

First, a lot of marketing and communications folks focus on using social media to connect with patients, but most CEOs are concerned with connecting with their staff. Even if the audiences are small by comparison to web sites, could the be substantial in terms of percentage of total employees?

Building on that, can providers reasonably expect to ‘invite’ people who are not using social media to do so? Can we say “hey, come interact with us here on twitter?” and expect to get employees and/or patients?

Thanks for the thought provoking post!

-N