I’ve recently really started investigating the benefits of twitter for a chiropractic practice. Personally, I love Twitter. I love the closeness that you immediately feel towards celebrities and just people that are using Twitter in the right way; to build relationships.

How can you build relationships with 140 characters or less? Not the way you’d like or are probably used to. You can tweet over and over again without any response from anyone. You can ask a question and have no one answer. You can begin to feel like no one’s reading your tweets anyway, so what’s the point?

That’s when I think you can finally chill out, relax, and start being yourself on Twitter. Most of my early tweets were professional or I simply re-tweeted an awesome quote that someone else put up there. This does not endear you to anyone.

Suddenly, I put up a tweet about some random thing I’m doing that day — and I get response. “I’m doing that too!” or “Let me know how it goes!” Wait a minute… someone was actually reading what I put up there?

The point of Twitter is to share yourself, to share information, and to respond and reply to other people’s tweets. A little at a time, you’ll start to notice a response here and there. You may even look forward to a particular tweeter’s insights. This is when you can really start to figure out the kind of tweeter you’d like to be.

Most chiropractors will never want to invest the time and energy to really get the benefits that they can. It may seem too silly or pointless at first. So that leaves you with 2 primary uses for Twitter:

• Interact & educate your current patients
• Look for Twitter users that are currently experiencing a problem you can help

If you’re going to engage with your current patients, do yourself a favor and be interesting and helpful. No one wants to keep reading your tweets about a “new patient special.” Try to go beyond, “Did you know chiropractic helps headaches?” It’s just not that interesting to read more than once.

If you want to find Twitter users that need your help, try Twitter Search. It’s at http://search.twitter.com. Go to the advanced search function and start doing searches for things like “need chiropractor” or “back pain” that people in your area are tweeting about.

Here’s where you can reach out and engage with Twitter users. Don’t just say, “We have a new patient special if you want me to look at that.” They were just having a conversation, they didn’t invite you to sit down and start pitching your practice.

Offer a helpful tip and let them know you’re a chiropractor. They will certainly check out your Twitter page to learn more about you – that’s when they can make the choice. You may check back in with them in a day or 2 to see if you can help further.

Twitter is another way of seeing new patients, but it’s not for everyone. If you’re looking to this site to solve your new patient problems – I’d look elsewhere. If you’re looking at Twitter as just one more thing you do, it’s a great addition to any office’s marketing and education programs.