JMIR Publications

Background:

Many neurosurgeons mirror societal trends by becoming increasingly active on social media platforms. Twitter is the most commonly used platform in neurosurgery. It is not yet clear what factors influence the success of a neurosurgical Twitter account.

Objective:

We seek to understand the factors driving optimal neurosurgeon engagement with the Twitter community by deconstructing the Twitter content of the 100 most influential neurosurgeon accounts.

Methods:

The 100 most influential social media Twitter accounts for “neurosurgery” were identified in April 2022 using the Cronycle proprietary software. Baseline data and Twitter activity were collected from January – April 2022. Each tweet was categorized, and engagement scores were calculated. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the Top 100 influencers. Twitter accounts were stratified and compared according to their engagement (Top 10% vs. Bottom 10%).

Results:

A total of 11521 tweets from the Top 100 neurosurgeons were analyzed. Most accounts (72) were from the United States. The most common subspecialties were vascular (27), skull-base (13), and spine (12). Most tweets were educational (36.6%), personal (31%) and self-promotion (12.6%). The most common hashtag was #neurosurgery (25%). The Top 10% of neurosurgeon Twitter users had a higher tweet frequency (p=<0.001); higher amounts of educational, inspirational, self-promotional and personal tweets (all p=<0.001); and higher quantities of posts featuring pictures, website links, and hashtags (all p=<0.001).

Conclusions:

Neurosurgeons can best optimize Twitter engagement by increasing frequency of their tweets, using more photos, videos, hashtags, and mentions, and recognizing the engagement value of the educational, inspirational, self-promotional, or personal tweet types.

ClinicalTrial:

N/A