I agree. I personally keep separation between my professional and personal social networks. Yes, many of my colleagues are friends of mine. However, I tend to doubt that my professional network wants to see pictures from my family vacation or that my friends and family want to hear about some advances in neuro-psychiatry that may find of interest:) All about the audience and I neither wish to bore or alienate colleagues and friends alike with comments, topics, or thoughts they have no interest in.

Best regards,

Jeremy

Thank you for your comments. I look at Twitter as just one additional, powerful tool in my social networking arsenal. I love LinkedIn as well and use it extensively (especially posting and commenting on the groups I belong too). I have networked with some wonder people and learned a lot about a lot:)

I look at these social media tools within the “hub and spokes” model where certain tools are designed to reach and communicate with particular audiences and topics.

Glad you found my blog and look forward to hearing from you again soon.

Best regards,

Jeremy

Thanks for sending on my post to your colleagues and good luck with your education efforts!

Best regards,

Jeremy

Your event sounds great! You can use email, Twitter Search, a “Follow Me on Twitter” icon on your blog or Website. However, the best way that I have found to gain followers to is post good, relevant tweets which are picked up and retweeted (forwarded) by your followers to their network. Also, retweeting or commenting on other people’s tweets is a good method.

As with any other social media tool, it comes down to whether you are posting good content that your audience and potential followers find useful. Hence why I only use Twitter for my professional communications and use other tools for communicating with friends and family. My twitter network is compromised of like-minded professionals who probably do not care what I had for breakfast this morning:)

Good luck with the conference and let me know if you post any content from the event.

Best regards,

Jeremy

Great post I received @JFahrni – I will retweet to my tribe of followers (ha!)

I used to have my facebook connected to twitter and my fbf’s got sick of my healthcare updates on twitter. I now use twitter for business and find that professional networking (finding my customers and what they care about – who knew?) and also as a good platform for me to tweet on Talyst’s position on healthcare reform. I rarely post anything very personal on Twitter but sometimes try to personalize my tweets as if I were in a business meeting and said something about my family like “my daughter is an awesome softball player” or “my son will be 8 next month!”. My personal rule of thumb is that since you can’t “unfriend” and “retweeting” is rampant – be careful what you say.

So – Facebook for my middle school friends and to monitor my teenage daughter
Twitter for all the reasons you mention.
Linked in still reigns as business connection tool that isn’t intrusive but serves as a good on-line way to keep all my contact together from my various walks of life.

@carlacorkern

Thanks, Barb.

You bring up a good point. My twitter account is used for 100% professional purposes for similar reasons and the network I have developed are all professionals in continuing medical education, e-health, social media, and web technologies. You can find them through Twitter Search, searching for colleagues via their name or email, or by following people that are following others. Check out some of the folks in my network and begin from there.

Happy Twittering and keep me posted on how it goes for you.

Best regards,

Jeremy

I read your blog about the 5 reasons to use Twitter. I am one of those staying away from it. Not because I fear the technology, but I have friends and family who would talk about social/personal things- Starbucks, etc. It’s the reason I am on LinkedIn. You can separate your personal from your professional life there. However, I see the value of being “in touch” with the healthcare consumer as well as those trying to make a difference as a healthcare professional (I include all of us who touch healthcare in anyway).

I am now involved in a number of things:

> CME consulting (focused on providers, educational partners and industry

> Life coaching (focused especially but not exclusively on healthcare industry)

> Patient advocacy (focused currently on assisting those approaching 65 to navigate the Medicare, Medigap, Medicare Advantage, Part D maze)

I do believe that Twitter is where the consumers are talking and sharing valuable perceptions/insights.

I trust you so I have a renewed interest in jumping into the Twitter environment. Any tips on how to avoid the personal tweets and keep it professional?

Great post, Jeremy—Thanks!

Best

Barb