Using Twitter as a medical writer
Twitter has served medical writers as a source of news, professional contacts and research ideas. Its usefulness depends on choosing relevant accounts, participating in conversations and keeping the volume of information manageable.
Professional uses
A medical writer can use Twitter to direct prospective clients to a website or professional profile, connect with people in related industries and discover resources through the accounts followed. The network can also support keeping up with industry leaders, finding client contacts and developing relationships with colleagues.
Real-time discussion offers opportunities to interact with scientific colleagues and opinion leaders who may not be connected to the writer elsewhere. A company or brand account can provide an organisational presence as well as an individual one. One medical copyeditor maintained separate accounts for her business and two professional bodies on whose behalf she posted.
Choosing and reading a feed
Searching for a person or organisation by name, then reading some posts before following, helps determine whether an account will be useful. Searching by topic can reveal other relevant people and organisations. A medical copyeditor used journal feeds to skim news, articles and blog posts, following the links that mattered to her work.
A varied feed can include research organisations and funders, medical journals, evidence-appraisal groups, publication ethics and editing bodies, publishers, science journalists, language specialists, health-policy commentators and freelance-business advisers. Different perspectives can include both publishing-industry representatives and critics of medical claims or industry practices.
Reading a feed need not mean reading every post: skimming, responding and sharing can be done as time permits. Topical lists can group relevant accounts around projects and interests, making useful material easier to find in a fast-moving stream.
Signs, sharing and discussion
A hashtag consists of a keyword or set of keywords preceded by # and groups discussion around a topic. The @ sign identifies social media user names or handles. Hashtags such as #clinicaltrials and #medcomms can help focus attention on a particular subject.
Searching for interesting posts and replying to the people who shared them can start conversations and relationships. Sharing another person's post with followers, traditionally called retweeting, can introduce useful information and accounts to a wider audience. Adding credit and a short comment can contribute to the exchange.
Conversations can connect people from different parts of a writer's network, although the absence of tone and body language makes online interaction harder to interpret. A science communicator described his feed in 2020 as a hosted gathering where participants could learn and contribute, with disruptive interactions managed through muting or blocking.
Useful posts and audience reach
Useful posts can offer short lessons, explain medical writing terminology, highlight resources and point to information on diseases or demographics. Images and video can encourage sharing and interaction, while hashtags can target a particular audience.
A 2013 study of Twitter's role in scientific publication reported the following:
- Twitter increased the size and diversity of professional networks.
- Of academics using Twitter, 55% had received their doctorates less than five years earlier.
- Followers of academics were 55% scientific professionals, degree students or representatives of scientific institutions and 45% nonscientists, often including media workers.
- Academics' median follower count was 7.3 times the median size of a university department.
- At the 2011 International Congress for Conservation Biology, 176 participants sent 1,731 tweets reaching 110,000 users.
Research ideas and professional relationships
A writer can ask followers for research ideas and save useful links against future articles, courses or workshops. One infectious-disease communicator used an international network of virtual colleagues to fill knowledge gaps when entering a new therapeutic or clinical area. His network also supported client projects, portfolio development and learning across subjects.
Posting during scientific meetings can extend relationships beyond those attending in person. In a 2014 account, a communicator reported that his posts from a microbiology meeting had been shared to all 50 US states and 25 countries, with his handle among the meeting's 25 most frequently tweeted words. In-person gatherings of people who had met through Twitter also led to friendships and working relationships that benefited his freelance practice.
Topic-specific monitoring
During the West African Ebola outbreak, an infectious-disease communicator and a physician built a list of accounts providing timely, accurate information. They began with mutual contacts, evaluated recommendations from those contacts and used the list to distinguish useful information from misinformation and improve their blogs. Journalists subsequently sought introductions to their sources and broadcast comment.
The communicator used similar networks during dengue, chikungunya and Zika outbreaks, crediting them with helping him research emerging issues and prepare information for clients and colleagues. Reports of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan in December 2019 prompted a further outbreak list, including public health bodies, scientists, epidemiologists and journalists. He credited those contacts with helping him prepare for the pandemic, update information quickly and distinguish emerging evidence from anecdotes or misused data.