Matt Holland, Library Manager – Library and Knowledge Service for NHS Ambulance Services in England
Background:
As a “virtual service”, the @lksase Twitter account is a key part of our renewed Communication and Engagement Plan. To move things forward, the library invested in a new social media manager package, Hootsuite (other products are available). The Communication and Engagement Plan identified c11 messages we want to push out to users. Currently, @lksase has scheduled posts two weeks in advance on Twitter and Facebook.
The problem:
The answer to how @lksase is doing compared to other NHS healthcare library Twitter accounts? There are tools (Hootsuite, Twitter Analytics and freemium tools) that tell you how your Twitter account performs on engagement metrics. Typically, you can compare to an industry (Healthcare/Wellness) or individual competitors. However, they will not tell you how well your Twitter account performs against our specific sector such as NHS healthcare libraries in England – frankly, that is a bit niche for software that spells ‘analyze’ with a ‘z’.
Measuring performance:
To answer this question, using easy-to-find data from Twitter @lksase created some “new” metrics to benchmark – in an uncomplicated way – where @lksase is compared to other accounts.
Just to be clear, these are novel metrics (I made them up), although a quick search of Google reveals that Tweet Rate (Posting Frequency) turns out to be a real metric, whereas the Audience Ratio is – as far as I can tell – unique!
- Tweet Rate = The number of Tweets over a set period – in this instance, tweets per year
Total Number of Tweets
Number of Years on Twitter
- Audience Ratio = The number of followers expressed as a ratio of a potential audience – in this instance, the headcount of the relevant NHS Trust*
Number of Followers
NHS Trust Head Count*
- Average benchmarks = The mean and median average metrics from a set of Twitter accounts
Methodology:
@lksase searched Twitter for 50 English NHS healthcare library accounts. The total number of accounts is greater than 50 – however, approaching 50, it was progressively harder to find new accounts, hence suggesting that this sample represents a substantial number of the total. The data extracted for each account consisted of the number of tweets, year joined and the number of followers. For each Twitter account that could be associated with a Trust, the headcount was taken from the *NHS Workforce Statistics – October 2023. Two accounts could not be associated with a specific trust(s), probably my failing – I just could not work it out from the Profile information
Results:
The mean average Tweet Rate was 520. Although you can see from Chart 1 that it’s slightly high as some accounts go tweetastic, many others show less enthusiasm. The median average Tweet Rate is around 300, which seems like a fairer representation of the data.
The mean average Audience Ratio was 0.12, despite Chart 2 showing a long tail of accounts that do much better. The median average Audience Ratio is 0.09.
The average number of Twitter followers per account is 860 (See Chart 3).
Just for convenience, the averages are summarized in Table 1, below
| Table 1. | |
| Tweet Rate (mean average) | 520 |
| Tweet Rate (median average) | 297 |
| Audience Ratio (mean average) | 0.12 |
| Audience Ratio (median average) | 0.09 |
| Twitter Followers (mean average) | 860 |
Summary and conclusion:
If you have ever done a management course, you would have met the 2 X 2 box – who can forget the JoHari window and many more? Anyway, some fun was involved in thinking up the labels for the How good is your (NHS health care) library Twitter account 2 X 2 box. Using the averages, you can figure out where you are and make plans to get from there to the top right (if you want to).
The possibly hard-won insight for @lksase is that we have a higher-than-average number of followers, the highest Tweet Rate in the NHS healthcare library sector, but a low Audience Ratio. So, @lksase is wedged in the top left corner, but we want to get to the top right corner. The takeaway is that we need to do better in marketing our Twitter handle – that, as they say, is a whole other story.
Notes:
- X or Twitter – yes, Twitter is now the social media platform known as X. However, a text that is full of Xs looks strange to me.
- Just to mention, I am far from a mathematical genius. All I can say is, it looked right to me on the spreadsheet.
Health Libraries Group 