For that don’t know, there’s a really strong chat happening on Twitter each Friday morning around the hashtag #HITsm. The number of people showing up is growing and growing and quite frankly it’s almost impossible to be able to keep up with all the tweets that are flying around along with the back channel conversations with those participating in the chat as well. It’s an hour long Twitter chat where you’re flooded with interesting bits of health IT information.
Of course, some of you might be overwhelmed by the thought of a Twitter chat. The key is to realize that you don’t have to know anything about Twitter to participate. To get started, just visited this #HITsm twitter page and hit the reload as it tells you there are more tweets. This is like turning on the TV and watching what’s on. Nothing wrong with being a lurker of the #HITsm Twitter chats if that’s what you prefer.
Now for those like me who can’t keep their mouth tweet shut, you’re going to want to participate as well. It’s easy and free to sign up. I’m sure many of you are like my Health IT friend Stacey who is fantastic at Health IT, but was a little nervous on how to start down the Twitter path. I told her to just go for it and now you can find her @HealthITgirl.
I introduced her to 3-4 people on Twitter and she already has 19 people following her on Twitter. Those followers will get her started off right and then as she adds more people and interacts with more people she’ll start to find the real value of Twitter.
Let me repeat my most common comment about Twitter: Twitter is about connecting people.
Certainly Twitter can be used for other things, but Twitter’s most powerful function in my opinion is to connect people. The other thing to realize is that you can’t break it, you can’t break the rules, and there’s no right or wrong way to use Twitter. So, just start using it and testing what ways it can be valuable to you.
If you’re on Twitter or sign up for Twitter let me know @techguy and/or @ehrandhit. I’ll be happy to introduce you to some smart people on Twitter too.
[…] use to find stories and connect with people is through social media and in particular Twitter (see this post I did on EMR and HIPAA about Twitter). I guarantee you that Twitter usage at HIMSS 12 is going to be off the charts. There is going to […]