If you've ever read the Twitter corporate blog you'll know that the social network is no shrinking violet when it comes to promoting itself.

From Sochi to the Super Bowl, there's rarely a large public event that goes by without some advice from Twitter on how the public can make best use of its platform.

Twitter has been far more reticent when it comes to promoting itself to business, particularly in healthcare, but perhaps that is about to change.

The company recently picked one of pharma's Twitter pioneers to highlight both its work on the social network and promoted the use of tweet chats “to increase awareness and engagement in a highly regulated sector”.

The choice of Boehringer Ingelheim for the case study certainly makes sense. It was the second pharma company to join Twitter and arrived on the social network ahead of a number of major consumer brands including Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

Moreover, 2013 was Boehringer's year for tweet chats and it held two of the virtual live Q&A events on atrial fibrillation, one on non-small cell lung cancer and one chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

It's the last of these (#COPDChat) that Twitter uses in its case study, detailing Boehringer's use of promoted tweets to raise awareness and results that included @Boehringer being the most mentioned @username at the European Respiratory Society Congress and a gain of 1,200 new followers, up 7 per cent on to the period previous to the campaign.

2 days to go! #COPDChat Join us to chat about unmet patient/treatment need in #COPD + other hot topics #ERS2013 http://t.co/9fCZDqOQCQ

— Boehringer (@Boehringer) September 7, 2013

Twitter summed up Boehringer's COPD tweet chat work in three take-home messages:

Use events to engage: Events provide a great opportunity to engage your audience on Twitter.@Boehringer drove conversations before, during and after the event using a relevant hashtag

Engage key stakeholders: @Boehringer's communications team operates in a highly regulated sector so it engaged all key stakeholders and worked in advance with them to approve Tweet content

Be innovative: Unexpected ideas often obtain the best results. @Boehringer was the first in the pharma industry to use Tweet chats to encourage awareness and engagement within the medical community around a specific disease.

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