Twitte rhas grown to more than 8 million users in the U.S. and companies, non-profits and government organizations are increasingly joining Twitter to interact with their constituents online. The challenge lies in understanding how to best use Twitter to the benefit of an organization. Twitter can be a powerful tool for health marketers to create community and provide useful information to their supporters, advocates and other constituents. Twitter’s ability to connect people with similar interests can be harnessed for the greater social good if users adhere to a few key best practices. After viewing this presentation, you will be able to describe: 1) What Twitter is, the basics of how it works, and why health communicators should be using it; 2) How to follow the three easy steps, Follow, Create Content and Engage to build community on Twitter; and 3) The do’s and don’t’s of participating in the Twitter community.

1. National Conference for Health Communication, Marketing and Media Twitter Best Practices for Non-Profits and Health Communicators August 2009

2. What is Twitter?

4. Twitter Enables Real Time, Broad Reach Followers Receive Tweet User sends a Tweet Followers Read, Reply or Re-Tweet Two-way communication

7. Three Simple Steps for using Twitter

10. @RedCross The Red Cross uses Twitter to “to get important info out to affected people in the immediate aftermath of a disaster”. They also tweet preparedness tips and disaster information, health alerts and helpful resources. Updates are made frequently, and remain relevant to the issue at hand. 38

12. @CDCemergency CDC Emergency is creating great content that people find valuable as evidenced by their nearly 600,000 followers. They Tweet information about the Pandemic Flu and other relevant information about public health emergencies.

14. @LIVESTRONG LIVESTRONG does and excellent job engaging their supporters, replying to their tweets, retweeting relevant information and providing value to their followers. They promote conversation about cancer on their Twitter handle, causing widespread support in the Twitter community.

15. #BlameDrewsCancer BlameDrewsCancer is a hashtag that a recently diagnosed cancer patient, Drew Olanoff created to “beat up on cancer”. The hashtag turned into a humorous trend on twitter with everyone blaming Drew’s cancer for their problems. He recently partnered with LIVESTRONG and is trying to find a sponsor to donate a dollar to the organization for every #blamedrewscancer tweet.

16. Twitter Best Practices

19. Additional Resources and Take Aways

22. Additional Resources http://delicious.com/360DI/twitter 57