Tweet for the cure: A snapshot of Twitter usage by 3 U.S. oncologic professional societies

Medical societies are incorporating Twitter to communicate with their members and connect with patients. This study compares the online presence of 3 major oncologic societies.

All available tweets in 2014 by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) were collected. We analyzed whether posts were original content or retweets. The monthly tweet rate was followed to assess trends. We created 2 new metrics, supporter ratio and tweet density, to correlate online presence and engagement with offline membership breadth. The supporter ratio is the number of people following the organization divided by the number of registered members of each society. The tweet density is the total number of posts divided by the number of registered members of each society.

In February 2015, ASCO, ASTRO, and SSO had 36,385; 10,899; and 2721 members, respectively. ASCO's Twitter handle had 33,974 followers, with a supporter ratio of 0.93. A total of 2563 original tweets and 1416 retweets were estimated, which represents a tweet density of 0.11. @ASTRO_org had 5445 followers and a supporter ratio of 0.50. In 2014, ASTRO posted 415 original content tweets and 9 retweets, with a tweet density of 0.039. SSO had a supporter ratio of 0.91 on the basis of 2481 followers. In 2014, SSO posted 207 original tweets and 190 retweets, with a tweet density of 0.15. An increase in tweets and retweets was seen during the month of each society's annual meeting. ASTRO's 61% increase in September 2014 was smaller than SSO's 462% and ASCO's 84%.

ASTRO's use of Twitter lags behind ASCO and SSO. Although all 3 societies show increased Twitter use during their annual meetings, they should work toward more meaningful engagement throughout the year. The new metrics of tweet density and supporter ratio will serve as benchmarks for member engagement in future studies.