Beyond the Buzz: How to Plan Your Healthcare Tweets for Maximum Impact

In my last Beyond the Buzz column, I shared advice on how to optimize the new Twitter profile for your healthcare marketing. If you followed my tips and have created an impactful profile, please share a link to it via the comments section to inspire others. 

I’d like to continue with the theme of healthcare marketing via Twitter this week, through sharing with you Twitter’s OwnTheMoment tool. The rationale behind this tool is that “marketing in the moment” is more likely to generate viral content (think Ellen Degeneres’ Oscar selfie).

OwnTheMoment allows you to plan tweets around key events using an interactive calendar that tracks seasonal, TV, sporting, cultural and business moments. You choose which filter is most relevant to your market, then select the dates you want to focus on.

How it works

Select which filter you wish to focus on – in this example, I am focussing on the “cultural” filter.

Note: This tool is predominately geared towards the UK market.

I have chosen International Day of Families as my focus.  As you can see when I click on the date Twitter offers me a suggested tweet, but there are many alternative tweets I can think of to schedule around this event.  It provides me with an opportunity to promote awareness of health issues related to families, as well as promoting appropriate action through healthcare blogs, on Pinterest, Facebook, Google+ and of course via Twitter. I can plan my message in advance and set a reminder via Google Calendar or Outlook.

Tips For Using OwnTheMoment

1. Add images to your Tweets.  Photos have been proven to increase engagement by 35%.

2. Take advantage of Vine videos. Vine, Twitter’s video platform, allows users to send out short, 6-second videos that provide just enough time to share some thoughts to broadcast in a Tweet.

3. Schedule your tweets but keep in mind my previous advice when it comes to scheduling in advance.

Conclusion

This is a simple tool which, with a little imagination and creativity, you can add to your healthcare social media mix to good effect.