Twitter Groups for Healthcare Marketers

[Dan Dunlop]

A couple of weeks ago (6-8-09) I wrote a post on the subject of LinkedIn Groups for heathcare marketers. I guess it is only fair that I now add a post about Twitter Groups for healthcare marketers. It's important that I admit upfront that what I know about social media changes and expands everyday. A friend of mine, Keith Fontaine, was doing a presentation on social media in healthcare and he described the process as trying to fly a plane while you build it. I agree! And I've found Twitter to be one of the more elusive platforms out there.

So, you probably know about Twitter. You may even have an account and post your 140 character tweets periodically. Well, Twitter also has groups that aggregate tweets from their members. The groups, as with LinkedIn, are sorted by interest area. There's very little risk in joining one of these groups, other than the fact that the members (your peers) see your tweets and they may, in fact, decide to follow you. At a minimum, I suggest you check out the groups available on Twitter (join Twitter first, if you haven't already). You may be surprised to see some of you colleagues listed as members of these groups. To access a directory of Twitter Groups, go to http://twittgroups.com/directory.php.

What I've seen is that Twitter Groups provide rapid access to the most up-to-date information in the industry. The people who belong to these groups are sharing links to articles, blog posts, and news stories as they find them. After exploring these groups, you may find that this is exactly the kind of resource you've been looking for. The challenge is to avoid social media burnout when you find yourself belonging to numerous groups on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, along with following some of the leading blogs in the industry.

Here are some of the Twitter Groups that I follow:

Healthcare Marketing Group (hcmktg)

http://tgr.me/g/hcmktg














Healthcare Communications & Social Media Group

http://tgr.me/g/hcsm















Healthcare New Media Marketers Group

http://tgr.me/g/heatlhcarenewmed
















Also, check out this terrific post by Christopher Boyer, on his Hospital Online Marketing Education blog - http://tinyurl.com/l4ckoy. Christopher's post has a ton of helpful information about tweetups.

Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketing Community & Blog

[Dan Dunlop]

Christopher, I want to go in and add a link to you post on my post. I'm doing it as soon as I send this message.
Yours has some great info!

[Dan Dunlop]

Christopher - You are one step ahead of me! Good to know I travel in good company. You know the saying, great minds...
Dan

[Christopher Boyer]

Dan, hey - what do you know. I wrote a surpisingly similar post a few days ago. Check it out: #hcsm and #hcmktg - two health-related tweetups every hospital should attend