The organization I am researching is CRISPR Therapeutics. They are a company that uses CRISPR/Cas9 to edit genes for disease treatment. The company has 14.2K followers on Twitter, and their account has been running since December 2014. Jennifer Paganelli works for CRISPR Therapeutics’ media, and she probably runs, or at least oversees, the Twitter account.
Most of CRISPR Therapeutics’ tweets are promotions or advertisements about updates on clinical trials, the company, and its products; news that someone from the company is speaking somewhere or the company is attending a conference; or a post about an awareness day for a disease they research. The other top types of posts are new discoveries and explanation of concept. They also had at least one tweet with an external link to a bio about a new hire, and they had several posts about employees running in various races to benefit disease research that were not really science related. Most of their posts have a short excerpt with an update or information about new data or a conference presentation with an external link for followers to click on to view more about the content of the post.
This tweet is an example of one of the most common types of posts on CRISPR Therapeutics’ account that receives the most engagement.
Their posts do not get many likes or retweets, especially with the number of followers they have. The post with the most likes and retweets on their account is one announcing the Nobel Prize was awarded to their co-founder, Emmanuelle Charpentier, along with Jennifer Duodna for their work on CRISPR. That post had 112 likes, 37 retweets, and 1 comment. The types of posts that get the most engagement are posts announcing new data in their research or clinical trials. The second highest liked post, with 108 likes and 25 retweets, is one in which they announced they received a Gates Foundation grant for HIV research. This is the only funding announcement I saw on their account, but because it is the second most-liked post, it proves “The Science People See on Social Media” article’s point about social media users engaging often with posts related to research funding.
Followers enjoy seeing updates on the company’s research.
This tweet had the most engagement on CRISPR Therapeutics’ account.
The tweets that get the most engagement are promotions and advertisements announcing new data or approvals for different stages of their gene editing treatment research or new research they will conduct. Explanation of concepts is another popular type of post on their account. One post of their CEO explaining how clinical trials for various disease treatments using CRISPR have improved had 15 retweets, 4 comments, and 62 likes. This post includes a tweet from another account with a short video of part of the discussion. That video has 3.9K views.
This retweeted video has a lot of views and is an example of the popularity of posts that explain concepts.
In almost every tweet, they include a link that provides more information about the topic of the post, so people who are interested can click the link to learn more. This is smart because it allows people who are not interested to scroll through the post quickly without having to read a long post. People get annoyed and will unfollow the account when they constantly have to sift through a lot of information that does not interest them. Attaching links allows the posts to be short to keep followers engaged, while also allowing the opportunity for more information. I also like that they tag companies and people they mention in their tweets because it alerts the people they tagged to the fact CRISPR Therapeutics posted about them and encourages them to engage with the post, while also allowing other followers to click on the tag to see more about the person or company they are working with, which enhances CRISPR Therapeutics’ credibility.
Tweets tag other companies and include hashtags to increase the number of people who see the tweet.
I did not see any tweets that were only visuals with little to no words, and according to the readings, those often receive a lot of engagement. CRISPR Therapeutics should include more tweets with purely pictures. Though they have some videos on their account, they should increase the number of videos they include. They should also include a few tweets requiring followers to engage by encouraging them to retweet or comment based on their reaction to the post. These types of tweets are shown to increase interaction and would be beneficial to CRISPR Therapeutics.
