How to Share Your Stuff in the Great ICD-10 Discussion – And Any Other Topic Too!

This is the last of a 3-part series on Using Social Media to Participate in the Great ICD-10 Discussion. In Part 1 I shared some info about who I think are leaders in the ICD-10 Discussion.  In Part 2, I shared some ideas, techniques and tips I use for acquiring ICD-10 information via popular social media channels.

In this 3^rd and final part, I’ll share some ideas and tips about making the information you share on Twitter more easily identified, consumed and shared with others.

Share Well – It’s Going to Be Around Forever

1. To paraphrase what Carl Natale stated: “Understand what you share because you can’t pull it back.”

It’s ok to call out the value of what you share, add an opinion and/or point out possible contradictions – don’t be shy! Just remember that what you post on Twitter does not go away - even if you delete it.

2. Integrate hashtags into your tweet – if it makes sense

By integrating hashtag(s) into your tweet sentence on a contextualized basis, it may read better and you will also save space; therefore you can include more info.

Ex. “Using ICD-10 Testing Accelerators” http://bit.ly/11dcAhC #icd10 #testing  

could be... 

       "Using #ICD10 #Testing Accelerators” http://bit.ly/11dcAhC

Tidy Up Your Tweet Before You Share It

3. Cover your tracks!

You may want to remove tracking tags and keys from the URL’s you share – especially if any personal information like your email address is embedded in the URL.

4. Leave room for others to RT and share your information

Keep your tweets to about 115-120 characters so it can be RT’d by others without them having to edit your tweet. Be concise. Remove unnecessary words like “the” “a” “is” “are” – and use a link shortener

5. Validate links before posting them

At a bare minimum, click on links you intend to share and make sure they lead to something – even if it’s not the content you think it is!  There’s nothing worse than a “404 – Page Not Found” error! :)

Point People in the Right Direction

6. If a link leads to a site that controls access to the content, inform user of the need to login to access the content. 

Add “(Login Reqd)” to the Tweet.

7. Identify special digital media formats at the end of the tweet

– Is it video? A huge document?  A Podcast?

8. When sharing a large media source, point to specific locations within the document, video, or podcast that you want to call out.

i.e. “See page 18-22” or “See 3rd paragraph” or “Starts at 1:35”

Tag It!

9. Use hashtag(s) to help categorize your content and make it easy to find.

Hashtags are also used by certain web services to summarize and index tweets – making your content more likely to be read. But don’t use too many hashtags!

Example: "#Free #today #icd10 #testing #tips for #payers and #providers”

10. Don’t use punctuation or special characters in hashtags. 

Using “#ICD-10” results in a hashtag of “#ICD”

11. You can use a question mark orexclamation point as the last character in a Tweet as it will be ignored.

Using “#ICD10?” results in a hashtag of “ICD10”

By incorporating some or all of the above tips and approaches into your Twitter shares, you’ll make it easy on your readers and improve the value of the information shared.

For more info, Follow me on Twitter.