Social media helps cardiologists learn, build personal brand

M. Chadi Alraies

MUNICH — Cardiologists benefit from engaging in social media because it helps them learn and build personal brands, according to presentations at the European Society of Cardiology Congress.

“We covered three main domains in social media,” M. Chadi Alraies, MD, interventional cardiology fellow at Wayne State University, Detroit Heart Hospital, and a Cardiology Today Next Gen Innovator, said in an interview. “We think the most use for cardiologists in general is to learn, to educate and to build a personal brand. Personal branding means either research interests, clinical interests or a new technology or innovation.”

Alraies (@chadialraies) and Sheila Sahni, MD, (@DrSheilaSahni) interventional cardiologist and director of the Women’s Heart Program at Garden State Heart Center in Clark, New Jersey, and a Cardiology Today Next Gen Innovator, gave a series of presentations on why cardiologists should use social media, how it helps them learn, how it helps them educate others and how it helps build their personal brand.

“The education purpose is to share a new skill that you learned such as a new technique in the cath lab or echo lab, or even a paper you wrote that you would like to share with colleagues,” Alraies said in an interview. “In terms of learning, you can sign up to follow a scientific committee or a journal. This keeps a constant feedback of information coming and you can use it to learn without going to the journal itself, and prevents something from coming up without you noticing.”

Social media can help with personal branding by providing a quick, brief way to highlight someone’s research or practice, he said.

“We do good things for patients in the lab and at the bedside and we see interesting things, but we don’t always have time to write and get it in publications,” Alraies said in an interview. “Sometimes by putting a short synopsis or an image that does not violate patient privacy on social media, you can achieve big breadth and reach and other cardiologists can learn from it.”

To get started, one should choose a platform; create an account; upload a professional photo; write a short description about oneself; select keywords and hashtags of interest; follow key opinion leaders, societies and journals; and if confident, start sharing opinions and material, Alraies said in a presentation, noting that it is fine not to share anything if one is not confident.

He noted that tweets with image links are twice as visible as tweets without them, that tweets with any links are 86% more likely to be retweeted than tweets with none, that tweets fewer than 100 characters garner more engagement than longer tweets, that tweets with hashtags generate twice as much engagement than tweets without them, and that Twitter accounts that respond to followers at least once per week have more engagement than those that do not.

Sharing cases is a good way to engage, but all shared material should have no identifying information, should be shared with an intention to teach and should solicit opinions from followers, Alraies said.

He said successful social media engagement includes posting at least five times per week, including on weekends; responding to followers; using hashtags; mentioning people and societies; using links when appropriate and using images to educate. – by Erik Swain

Reference:

Alraies MC, et al. Social media for the cardiologist. Presented at: European Society of Cardiology Congress; Aug. 25-29, 2018; Munich.

Disclosures: Alraies and Sahni report no relevant financial disclosures.