Get social during a winter storm-Part 2

Getting social during a winter storm – Part 2

[This is the second post of a multi-post series on using Twitter and Facebook in your practice.]

What are Twitter and Facebook?

Twitter is a website (www.twitter.com) where users sign up for an account, and then post messages (tweet) of up to 140 characters in length.  These are usually public messages; therefore anyone can view a specific user’s tweets (for an example, click on this link: www.twitter.com/boboakley).  In order to make posts easier for users to search for, tweets can include a hashtag, or pound symbol (e.g. #icd10).  When a Twitter user finds another user whose tweets they want to stay updated with, they can “Follow” that user.  By “Following”, a user will see that other user’s tweets on a list of tweets from people they follow, and they can opt to receive email notifications of new tweets.  Twitter can be accessed via computer, iPad, iPhone, and Smartphone.   Finally, a person does not need to have a Twitter account in order to read tweets.  If you followed the link above to my Twitter account, you can read all my tweets.  However, in order to “Follow” (receive notification of tweets), a user does need an account.

Facebook (www.facebook.com)  is a community where users can post status updates, pictures and other information about themselves.  Users then “Friend” others, which has the effect of letting their “friends” be notified when a Facebook page is updated with a post or whatever.  This should be considered a public space, just as Twitter is publically accessible.  Click this link to see my page:  www.facebook.com/boboakleyconsults

How Twitter and Facebook are different than email and phone

The primary functional difference (for your practice) between Twitter, Facebook, email and phone is that for Twitter and Facebook you don’t need a patient’s contact information in order to reach out to them.  The patient can simply go to your Twitter or Facebook page and get the information they need.  They also have the option to sign up to receive an email notification when you tweet or post.  The effect of this is that it frees you from the need for patient record access in order to reach out to them as a group.

Other features/advantages

Patients can quickly and easily access both Twitter and Facebook from home, office (in most cases), and smartphones.  Because of this convenience, patients receive some peace of mind when they know your office open/close status early in the day without having to battle that busy signal. 

Your staff can get a little more control of rescheduling because they aren’t handling as many calls.  If you stay open during bad weather, you should see a reduction in calls from patients wondering if you’re open.  If you’re closed, in your tweet/post you can state that you’ll contact patients to reschedule.  This should reduce the number of frantic incoming calls as well.  Finally, overall stress to your staff can be reduced by gaining more control over the rescheduling process. 

In our next post in this series, we’ll look at what Twitter and Facebook won’t do, and some cautions on use and control.