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Social media for physicians: Finding who, what to follow

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Social networking is one of the many benefits Twitter has to offer physicians. To make the most of this opportunity, you’ll want to find users who tweet valuable information to follow and, ultimately, engage with.

A great place to start is searching for your institution, medical societies and journals. These types of Twitter accounts often tweet about recent news that you may find of interest. For example, if you’re an endocrinologist, try searching for and following the American Diabetes Association or The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

You may also want to do a general search of your areas of interest, such as “endocrinology,” “diabetes” or “obesity,” to find accounts with similar interests.

Once you start to follow a few accounts, Twitter will pick up on your interests and even make suggestions on who to follow in the side bar. Take advantage of this and let Twitter do the work!

Odds are that all the accounts you end up following follow accounts that share your professional interests, so take a peek at who they follow, and you may find more intriguing accounts.

Another way to follow accounts on Twitter is by creating or following a “list.” A list is a collection of Twitter accounts. Viewing a list will stream tweets only from the Twitter accounts on that list. Lists are beneficial for monitoring conversations on a specific topic, such as diabetes or obesity.

If you want to create your own list, follow these simple steps:

• Step 1: Click on your profile icon, then lists.
• Step 2: Once you’re in the list section of your profile, click on the blue icon in the lower right-hand corner to create a new list.
• Step 3: Name and describe your list and choose whether to make it public or private. A public list allows anyone to view or follow it, while a private list is only visible to you.
• Step 4: To add or remove accounts from your list, visit their profile and click on the “overflow” icon — the one with the three dots stacked on top of each other — and select “add or remove from list” and check the box next to the list you’d like to add or remove the account to or from. You may also follow other people’s lists under the same tab by clicking on “view lists” and subscribing to a desired list.

Now that you’ve built up your list of people to follow, you’re ready to tweet! Learn tips on what and what not to tweet here. – by Alaina Tedesco