A presentation to the Society of Academic Primary Care PHOCUS Group - 23 March 2017, Oxford

1. #SWSAPC17
A guide to using
Twitter
Dan Richards-Doran
Communications Manager,
Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences
@_DanRichards | @OxPrimaryCare

2. Why tweet
Getting started
Thinking about your content
Getting the most out of Twitter
Acting with caution

4. Why should scientists tweet?
• Scientists are a trusted voice for people without a
background in science
• Connects you with your research community
• Supports the generation of impact*
*Liang X et al (2014). Building Buzz: (Scientists) Communicating Science in New Media
Environments. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.

5. Getting started – your bio
• Get the right balance between personal info and
professional info
• Include link to your researcher biog
• Include “views are my own”
• Are you identifiable?

6. Who to follow
• Your university, department and funder(s)
• Your PI, head of group, past PhD supervisor
• Other influencers and researchers in your global
research community
• Academic publishers
• News and blogs in your research area
• Twitter lists

7. Think about your audience

8. Familiarise yourself with
your institution’s social
media policy or guidelines

9. Using twitter and blogs to advance your research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOq55U6M7tg
Professor Susan Rvachew, School of Communication Sciences and Disorders. McGill University
00:00 – 1:29

10. LSE Public Policy Group 2011:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/
files/2011/11/Published-
Twitter_Guide_Sept_2011.pdf
Your chosen style:
• Middle ground
• Drop the jargon

11. Things to tweet about
• Publications, website updates or blog articles
• Invite feedback on new ideas
• New developments in your area i.e. government
policy change, a think tank report, new journal
article
• Tweet quotes from speakers at conferences using
the conference hashtag

12. Promote yourself
• Include your twitter handle in your biogs, email
signature, department profile, presentations
• Ask relevant people for retweets
• Follow people, they will follow you back

13. Develop a wider strategy
• Consider ethical restrictions?
• Do you have the right audience?
• What do you want to achieve?
• Develop your key messages
• Keep up the posting frequency – other content?
• Influencers and advocates
• Actionable and sharable content

14. Develop a wider strategy
• Set a posting schedule
• How will you monitor your posts?
• How does your social media output contribute to
your wider impact strategy, if you have one?
• Integrate your social media strategy with other
communications.
• Get some advice – Press team or other comms
staff

15. Develop a wider strategy
Create a social media strategy for your research that delivers
real impact
Prof Mark Reed
www.fasttrackimpact.com
http://www.fasttrackimpact.com/single-post/2015/10/27/Create-a-social-
media-strategy-for-your-research-that-delivers-real-impact

16. Publication: What to include
• Include:
• Name of journal
• Name of paper or finding in laymen’s terms
• Credit your department
• A hashtag
• Direct link to paper
• An image

17. Share
Ask for retweets
Keep up the momentum
Tweetdeck and Hootsuite can help

18. Getting more out of Twitter –
boost your engagement
Hashtags!

19. Source: https://blog.bufferapp.com

21. #primarycare
#generalpractice
#obesity
#heartfailure
#hypertension
#ptexp
#dementia
#dementia
#WhyWeDoResearch
https://www.symplus.com/healthcare-hashtags

23. Twitter as a sounding board
“If I run into a genomics or bioinformatics problem, I
know that I can go to Twitter, tweet about it, and
because I’ve got enough bioinformaticians and
computational biologists following me, probably
within a few minutes I’ll get an answer.”
Jennifer Gardy, in The Scientist

24. Images and infographics
According to Twitter, tweets with an image are
retweeted 35% more than text-only images

31. Design software:
Adobe Illustrator – can be expensive
Inkscape - free
Gimp – free
Pictogram - free
Try Powerpoint and save as .JPG
Images:
Pixabay – royalty free

32. Monitoring - tweets

33. Twitter Analytics

34. What to monitor
• Audience engagement – is your audience
interacting with your content
• Impressions: how many people see your tweets
on their timeline
• Audience profile: Do you have a relevant
audience?
• Audience size and reach: What is your follower
count and potential reach

35. Altmetric: article-level metrics

36. Tweet with caution
You could get quoted
Think “would I be happy if this
was printed?”

37. • Don’t tweet late at night after a few drinks
• Respond to your questions, it could be fruitful!
• An unhappy follower? Being trolled? Try to take it
offline
• Tweets can be deleted

39. Your challenge today –
Set up a twitter account and share your
experience of the conference
#swsapc17
Thank you
dan.richards-doran@phc.ox.ac.uk
@_DanRichards | @OxPrimaryCare