Have you ever considered live-tweeting an event? In the past few years, this has turned into a widespread, popularized activity included in the SEO campaigns of businesses and organizations. Now, live-tweeting has entered the world of healthcare as well, as two doctors in a Texas hospital live-tweeted an open heart surgery for the first time ever on Tuesday, February 21, 2012.
At the Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital in Houston, Texas, one doctor conducted a double-coronary artery bypass of a 57-year-old patient while his colleague made posts on the Twitter handle @houstonhospital to 5,100 followers throughout the procedure, supplementing many of the tweets with pictures and short videos. The procedure and live-tweeting event lasted two hours, at the end of which all of the tweets, photos, and video were compiled into a story using the website Storify.
What is the significance of this event, besides the fact that it is the first live-tweeted surgery in history? This event goes to show that live-tweeting is shifting away from being a media-only activity. At this point many people are familiar with the integration of Twitter into the act of watching television, with live awards shows usually being accompanied by “Twitter events,” on which people tweet thoughts about the show being broadcasted using a certain hashtag so that their tweets can be tracked.
The live-tweeting of this surgery goes to show that you don’t need to be a media channel to host live-tweeting events. No matter what kind of business or organization you run, there are many benefits to live-tweeting an event that you host. One is that you bring a great deal of attention from both individuals and media outlets to your event. A second benefit is engaging with Twitter users, which often increases your number of followers, which leads to a greater presence on the web, and increased SEO value.
Take the time to think of a strategy to incorporate live-tweeting into your business or organization’s next big event.
