This presentation shares tips on what to write on Twitter to promote science and academia. It also highlights tweets from leading institutions in the field.

1. Social Media & Science, Part 1:
What To Write On Twitter
Katja Reuter, PhD
Associate Director of Communications
Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI)
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)
Friday, January 18, 2013

2. Half a billion registered Twitter users
generate 175 tweets a day, 11 tweets per second.
Data May 2012
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3. Tweets “Worth Reading”
36% of tweets are worth reading
39% are OK
25% are not worth reading
(Ref. Quality ranking of 43,738 tweets by users www.cs.cmu.edu/~pandre/pubs/whogivesatweet-cscw2012.pdf)
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4. Make your tweets count!
Here are 10 tips: what to do and what to avoid...
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5. What to Share
1. Share links. Tips, novel information, interesting facts, stats, quotes.
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6. What to Share
2. Provide context, insights, perspective.
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7. What to Share
3. Invite questions from followers: Users see crowdsourcing via questions as
one of Twitter’s core functions. (Ref. www.cs.cmu.edu/~pandre/pubs/whogivesatweet-cscw2012.pdf)
Bradley Voytek, PhD, is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco.
Communities Specialist for nature.com.
Friday, January 18, 2013

8. What to Share
4. Ask followers to do something (e.g., answer a question, sign a petition, see a
link).
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9. What to Share
5. Answer questions. Help solve problems, send supportive comments, and
join the chat. Example shows inter-organizational conversation between
programs.
Published via CTSI’s Early Translational Research (ETR) program.
Response from CTSI Communications team.
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10. What to Share
6. Share random thoughts: A moment of introspection to inspire others.
Tweets that are interesting, surprising, and “funny” are rated worth reading.
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11. What to Share
7. Dare to self-promote. Twitter users find self-promotion useful when it
provides helpful information and links. (Ref. www.cs.cmu.edu/~pandre/pubs/whogivesatweet-
cscw2012.pdf)
“80-20 rule”: 80 percent not self-promotional content, 20 percent self-promotion.
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12. What to Share
8. Promote, encourage, and support others.
.
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13. What to Share
9. Add images to your tweets.
Posts with images have double the engagement of those without even though
users can’t see them until they click on them. (Ref. http://mashable.com/2012/06/26/marketers-
failing-twitter-study/)
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14. What to Avoid
What are you doing right now? There is no need to answer this
unasked question.
Puns: If readers don’t know immediately what a story is about they’re less
likely to click on the link. Focus on the facts.
Opinion/complaint: Avoid it, unless the remark is especially witty and
useful.
Conversation pitfalls: Avoid including personal responses in general
tweets. Use direct messages for personal responses. Don’t retweet one-on-
one conversations.
“Butterfly syndrome”: Focus on a topic, theme or question related to
your expertise.
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15. CTSI is a member of the National Institutes of Health-funded Clinical and
Translational Science Awards network.
Under the banner of "Accelerating Research to Improve Health," it
provides a wide range of services for researchers, and promotes online
collaboration and networking tools such as UCSF Profiles.
Friday, January 18, 2013

16. Katja Reuter, PhD
Associate Director of Communications
Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI)
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)
ctsi.ucsf.edu
https://twitter.com/CTSIatUCSF
Friday, January 18, 2013