Social media optimization in medicine: A journal's perspective

Twitter, a social media platform, has emerged as an efficient tool for disseminating research findings among the medical community. In a 2014 Nature Social Networks survey, 85.4% of scientists were aware of Twitter.1 Among those, 49.1% used Twitter for “following other discussions on research‐related issues,” 47.3% for “posting content related to my work,” 40.3% for “discovering recommended research papers,” 39.7% for “commenting on research that is relevant to my field,” and 36.1% for “sharing links to authored content (eg, research papers, datasets).” Research about social media has also attained considerable popularity over the past decade. To date, based on PubMed, more than two thousand articles about Twitter (or using it for research) have been published, with more than one‐half produced in the past 3 years.

Authors and editors share a keen, naturalistic interest in maximizing the exposure of new discoveries; they both want work that they publish to be discussed and cited by as many readers as possible. To this end, in this editorial we discuss the procedures and progress of social media optimization (SMO) for the Research and Practice in Thrombosis and Haemostasis (RPTH) Twitter account, @RPTHJournal. Just as we assist authors in crafting their articles to enhance searchability (search engine optimization [SEO]),2 we at RPTH are working on SMO to promote visibility of our authors and their work. A Social Media User Guide is provided to the authors of every accepted article, and can be found on our website (https://bit.ly/2EhcYnp). Combined tactics of SEO and SMO will lead to tangible impact in disseminating work published in RPTH.

RPTH is committed to democratizing science. As a fully open‐access journal published online, RPTH is currently indexed in major biomedical databases such as PubMed, PubMed Central, and Web of Science Core Collection (Emerging Sources Citation Index, or ESCI) hence there are no barriers to visibility of the content by traditional searching methods.3 We want RPTH to be visible in other ways to expand the reach of our authors. We take pride in embodying the core competencies of social media—Credibility, Readability, Open‐access, Visibility, Visual appeal, Discoverability, and Spreadability (“CROWDS”) (Figure 1). In alignment with this, we deploy the following SMO tactics to maximize the exposure of RPTH articles on Twitter.

1. To ensure the credibility and readability of tweets posted for every RPTH article, tweets are crafted and curated by a dedicated team comprised of the editor‐in‐chief, a social media associate editor, and marketing specialists from the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis. A succinct post accompanied by visually appealing graphics that convey the key messages of the article makes an ideal tweet.

2. Each tweet includes a link to the article so that readers can click the link and open the article for reading on any device. Our articles are formatted so they can even be easily read on a mobile phone.

3. Discoverability of each tweet within Twitter is enhanced by incorporating relevant hashtags based on the list of Hematology Tag Ontology or identified from the Healthcare Hashtag Finder, both from Symplur. In addition, we developed a set of hashtags to link together articles of the same type that we are publishing over time (eg, #IllustratedReview, #RPTHReview, #RPTHCommentary, #RPTHMethodology, #RPTHTutorial). Consequently, each hashtag provides a growing digital archive for a specific keyword or category.

4. We hold Twitter polls on trending topics or novel findings to gather opinions and interact with the community. This is also a learning tool—a quiz, if you will—to test your recollection of recently published articles.

5. With the aim of raising “spreadability” RPTH continues to expand its network of followers with researchers, clinicians, nurses, allied health professionals, societies, patients and the general public through exploring and engaging targeted audiences.

RPTH social media statistics from 2018 are illustrated in Figure 2. Based on data from Twitter Analytics, RPTH received 174 retweets (times a user shared a tweet), 288 link clicks (clicks on a URL, photo, or video in a tweet), and 336 likes (times a user liked the tweet) every month. Additionally, RPTH tweets enjoyed an average of 190 000 monthly impressions, meaning that RPTH posts appeared on the feeds of other users 190 000 times each month. These statistics speak to our efforts in promoting dissemination of research findings on Twitter. Along with the aforementioned metrics, RPTH keeps track of the article‐level impact of each article. On the RPTH website, Altmetric Attention Scores are displayed for each article next to the main text under the Information tab. Altmetric Scores are a weighted count of online non‐scholarly attention including mentions in mainstream news, public policy documents, Wikipedia, social networks, and blogs. At this writing, in 2018 articles from RPTH had a median Altmetric Attention Score of 10 (interquartile range, 5‐17), comparable to the original cardiovascular research articles published in the eight highest Web of Science Impact Factor journals (median, 8; interquartile range, 2‐37).4 This high level of attention reflects our efforts to promote the work of our authors. A screenshot of where to find the Altmetric Score, from one of our more popular articles,5 is shown in Figure 3.

Via this #RPTHEditorial we invite readers to join Twitter and follow @RPTHJournal to access the latest science. We recommend that you follow @JTHJournal, @ISTH, and @WorldThrombosisDay to increase your awareness of other ISTH activities; also follow your other favorite journals to join the conversation (they all have Twitter accounts). Your professional network will grow as well if you are active (but that's a topic for a future editorial). The RPTH editors welcome your input and queries at @RPTHJournal or the old fashioned way—by email.