What's All The Twitter About

Micro-blogging, Twitter, is more popular every day and consequently it has become one of the biggest platforms on the web. This means there is a whole new emerging market of potential patients just waiting to be networked. A great opportunity indeed to build a naturopathic practice!

For those a bit unfamiliar with micro blogging and more importantly Twitter, let me explain a bit about how it works. Twitter is basically a service that allows you to update your status with short messages, of up to 140 characters. What makes it so special is that it allows users to befriend each other; in Twitter this is called “following.” Whenever you’re following somebody on Twitter you’ll be able to instantly receive their updates and keep up to date with their status. You can follow Naturopathic Economics on Twitter with our Naturoecon username.  Twitter also provides mobility allowing you to update your status via your web page, IM, mobile phone, blackberry or various other third party applications.

It’s been widely proven that Twitter can be easily used as a promotional tool, to pitch your content, services and products. This is done by broadcasting your message, although short, to your followers. Here are a few reasons why Twitter can become an essential tool to deliver your professional practice message to your patients and friends.

1. Practice Traffic. Although at first glance it might seem like twitter isn’t capable of directing any respectable amount of traffic, truth is, if used properly, it can provide your blog or webpage with quite a “few” new visitors. You can send traffic by entering your blog’s url in your Twitter profile or by twitting one of your post’s url.
2. Practice Branding. Just like any other social network, twitter can be used as a powerful tool to build your naturopathic brand and raise awareness. The thing about twitter branding is that it’s a lot more personal, probably thanks to it’s IM like environment, helping you to thin the line between you and your readers.
3. Promote  Your content. A lot of doctors realizing the huge potential Twitter possess leveraging their content, have begun to publicize and promote their blog posts or web pages on Twitter. This means they post their post url, along with a short description so that their followers can vote them. A nifty little twitter tool available is TwitterFeed, a great twitter application that automatically posts your latest blog titles, along with the respective url of course, without any interference from your behalf.
4. Latest News in Naturopathic Medicine. Because Twitter is so instant and spontaneous you can now find out about the latest naturopathic news in any particular field of activity you’re following, within minutes of the actual event. If you thought RSS feeds are a good way of keeping up with news and new content, wait till you try twitter.
5. Correct Misinformation About Naturopathic Medicine.   Your patients are keenly aware of changing trends and the never ending studies which purport to debunk naturopathic medicine.  Through Twitter you can head off misinformation directly to your patients and followers quickly and professionally referencing correct information you have posted on you blog or website.
6. Networking. Twitter is a great way to get to know new patients and like minded individuals, that share your same passions and area of expertise. Following them truly is a pleasure. This way you can see what your fellow peers are up to, open up to mutual promotional work and build future business relationships.
7. Practice Marketing. As it’s the case with most social media services, you can use Twitter to market and pitch your practice, services and products. However Twitter won’t directly help you market your content, but rather indirectly by helping build your brand name and authority. After you’ve established yourself as an authority to your audience, sales will follow as well.
8. It’s Viral. Anything that spreads quickly and easily across a community is a great social service.  Twitter works in a word of mouth kind of way. You as user may twit about something important, your followers will then take the story to their followers and so on.
9. New Video Feature. Twitter has now launched a new feature allowing you to post videos with your Twitter.  This is very exciting allowing you to provide a video message directly to your patients with your Twitter. You can highlight new treatments you are offering, special discounts on products, or general information in a much more personal manner.  All it takes is a Flip camera and a Twitter account.

There’s something special about Twitter that makes it fun. It’s that kind of fun you find in great social networking and Twitter has plenty of it.  If you are new to Twitter I recommend "Sams Teach Yourself Twitter in 10 Minutes."  It's a simple read and walks you through all of the steps to get started.