Presentation entitled the "Art of Twitter" delivered at the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand's Annual Scientific Meeting in March 2015 in Adelaide. Follow Henry Woo on twitter @drhwoo or on his blog at www.surgicalopinion.blogspot.com.au

1. The Art of Twitter
Henry Woo
Associate Professor of Surgery
University of Sydney

2. Relevant Disclosures
• American Urological Association Social Media
Workgroup
• Co-author EAU Social Media guidelines
• Editor-in-Chief, BJUI Knowledge

3. What is Twitter?
• Web 2.0 platform
– Owners provide software infrastructure
– Users provide content
• Content in the form of “tweets”
– 140 character limited expression
– videos, images, links can be added
– Hashtags enable searchable keywords

4. Tweet Examples

5. Tweet Examples

6. How to Get Started?
• Firstly, sign up to Twitter
• Easy process, follow the prompts
• If Britney Spears and Kim Kardashian can do it,
there is hope not only for luddites but hope
for all of you.

7. Twitter App
Walk Through

8. Twitter App Walk Through

9. Terminology Review 1
• Tweet
– 140 character limited content
• Following
– Twitter accounts whose tweets you’ve selected to
observe
• Followers
– Twitter accounts that have chosen to follow your
content
• Twitter feed
– tweets you see from people you follow

10. Curating Your Twitter Experience
• What you see on twitter depends upon
– Who you follow
– Which hashtags you follow
• If you want to see tweets about butts and
other crap, you follow Kim Kardashian
• If you want to hear the moans of teenage
girls, you follow the #1D hashtag

11. Hang on a sec. What’s a Hashtag?
• # used to mean a shortcut notation for
fracture
• Nowadays, nobody aged <30 thinks of it
meaning anything other than hashtag in the
context of social media (SoMe)

12. Hashtags
• Searching keywords
• A search on a hashtag will uncover tweets
where #something has been included within
140 character tweets

13. Hashtag Examples
• Disease specific
– Eg #pcsm
• Professional discussion
– Eg #hcsm #hcldr
• Conference hashtags
– Eg #AUA15, #USANZ15
• Journal Clubs
– Eg #urojc, #igsjc, #nephjc
• Entertainment/Other
– #QandA #TheProject #royalbaby #auspol #libspill

14. 

15. 

16. 

19. Who to Follow?
• Decide if you wish to keep the feed totally
professional or not
• Most choose a mix
• Suggestions
– Journals
– Other urologists
– Famous people of personal interest to you
• Unsure – see who others are following and
follow the same

23. Lists

24. 



26. Twitter Feed Strategies
• Work out who you want to follow
• Work out which hashtags you want to follow
• Work out which lists you wish to follow
• Mute those whose tweets you wish to hide
but when you don’t want to unfollow
• You can selectively turn off retweeted content
from those you follow

27. Terminology Review 2
• Handle
– @something – try to keep it short
• Hashtag
– a searchable term in the format #something
• Mute
– Hide tweets from specified accounts
• Lists
– Groups of accounts you may compile or join
– You don’t have to follow or be followed by individual
accounts to be in a list

28. What About Your Own Content?
• Create your own tweets
– Succinct interesting comments or thoughts attract
attention/interaction
– Images, videos, links enhance your content
• Share the content of others
– Click the re-tweet button and somebody else’s
tweet will be shared to those who follow you

32. The Art of Twitter?
• Curate the content you receive
• Your content creation can curate your
followering and interactions with your tweets

33. Enjoy!