Who uses Twiiter?

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A little off subject here, Craig. I have never "tweeted" or looked much at "twitter". What is the benefit of this technology? To me, it seems like another time-drain.....and one that I don't have time for. I would be interested in what use twitter can be for the practicing podiatrist. Maybe start another thread?

Anyone else use twitter and want to share its advantages/uses?

 

Interesting story about Twitter.

http://gawker.com/5858767/twitter-addiction-destroys-mans-life

 

Re: Hello

Good afternoon Kevin

My name is Stefan Edwards. I am a practicing Podiatric Surgeon working within New Zealand. I was trained by Donald Kushner and Jeffery Robbins via Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine back in the 90's. I have recently been appointed as the President of the New Zealand College of Podiatric Surgery. I enjoy reading your comments a look forward to contributing, sharing my experiences on this forum and hope we can correspond. Kind regards Stefan

 

I use twitter and facebook as my main way of advertising and seeing what Craig Payne (among others) has to say. I've only been doing twitter for a few months and havent yet learnt how to use it effectively though I'm getting there. I've had a facebook page for about 1 year. It didnt generate much business to start with but over the last 3-4 months I've been getting 2-3 new patients a week through facebook alone.

Social media takes a lot of time, is free to use, and I find it works. An advert in the local paper cost a minimum of £25 a week and generates 1-2 new patients a month but takes very little of my time.

 

I don`t twitch, or whatever, and have only just recently been persuaded by my daughter to create a facetube page for work. Don`t like it, but I `spose it`s a necessity in this spirit of the age

I`d also appreciate an explanation of how these social meeja sites benefit us.

 

Podaitry Arena is social media with a very specific audience which allows practitioners from all over the world share ideas. Facebook and twitter do exactly the same, allow people to share ideas. But they also have a much broader audience which is beneficial for advertising, especially as the audience can be targetted. If I put a post on my facebook page it will be seen by aproximatly 200 people most of which live in the local area, though the odd one lives in India, Aus and USA. In my local area there are 6 running clubs. If I post on their facebook pages the post will be seen by 100-400 people, all runners many of which will be injured, recovering from injury or trying to avoid injury.
On twitter I follow my local dentist and she follows me. I retweet her twits and she retweets my twits. As a result her followers see my tweets and occasionally 1 will call me.

So the main benefits are advertising and sharing ideas.

 

Hmmm, don`t like people following me. But, i get the drift.

I`ll give it a go. Cheers, Andy :drinks

 

Re: Hello

Stefan:

Welcome.:welcome:

Thanks for introducing yourself. Don Kushner was one of my clinical instructors at CCPM and Jeff Robbins was at CCPM when I was teaching on the weekends at CCPM, early in my career. Congratulations on your appointment at the New Zealand College of Podiatric Surgery.

New Zealand has a special place in my heart since this was the first country to invite me to speak internationally, 22 years ago in August 1991 in Auckland. I lectured there with O.A. Mercado, who lectured on surgery, and with Jeff Stone, who lectured on practice management. The dinner at that seminar was one I will never forget. I met and sat next to the former prime minister of New Zealand, the late Robert Muldoon, who I was able to speak with for some time and found him to be a very interesting man with lots of great stories.

I returned back to lecture again in New Zealand in February 1997 in Wellington and haven't been back there to lecture since that time. My wife and I loved our two visits to New Zealand and think it is one of the great countries of the world. You are lucky to be living there.

I'm looking forward to your contributions on Podiatry Arena.:drinks

 

Hi Kevin,

I am an avid Twitter follower & sporadic Tweeter. Twitter is great for receiving & sharing information quickly, you will get info from key sources generally when a media release is sent out - before media processes & publishes it. People & organisations will tweet links to articles of interest so you are not limited to sharing 140 characters. It benefits from interactivity - retweeting (RT's) etc. I sent a tweet critical of our previous PM for playing the 'misogyny' card against the leader of the opposition then hanging out with a radio show host who sprouts misogynistic comments like they are going out of fashion (sadly they're not...). This tweet got RT'd & responded to numerous times & then the PM's press office got involved, which drew more RT's. The original tweet reached over 50,000 people so information & commentary can spread like wildfire.

There is much less marketing on Twitter than Facebook, which I like. I use it mainly for social commentary, political information and news. I don't use it to promote my practice, we use Facebook for this. From a health perspective you can get access to policies and research as it is released, you might like to follow WHO (@who); Dr Karim Kahn (@BJSM_BMJ); Dr Mike Evans, who is great at combining social media & medicine (@docmikeevans); NY Academy of Sciences (@sciandthecity); my personal favourite science geek Dr Karl Kruszelniki (@DoctorKarl); any amount of health & fitness tweeters or me - but don't expect any podiatry comment (@jaynearlett)!

Start by following a heap of people (or organisations) & just check in from time to time - delete any you don't like - some will chew up your feed with meaningless tweets, but you will find some that are interesting for you & engaging. When you find someone who's tweets you find interesting, have a look at who they follow as some of them will also be appealing to you. You will also quickly learn the art of hashtagging. Search # pretty much any topic & you can see all posts relating to this quickly. Use #'s so people can find your posts. Twitter is generally pretty public, you can make it private but it kinda defeats the purpose of Twitter - if you want privacy, use Facebook & lock it down. You can also private message anyone on twitter so you can engage individually if you wish to.

Set it up with an app on your phone, is the easiest & quickest way to get info.

have fun

cheers

Jayne