<p><strong>OBJECTIVES: </strong>Social media use is associated with developing communities of practice that promote the rapid exchange of information across traditional institutional and geographical boundaries faster than previously possible. We aimed to describe and share our experience using #neoEBM (Neonatal Evidence Based Medicine) hashtag to organise and build a digital community of neonatal care practice.</p>

<p><strong>MATERIALS AND METHODS: </strong>Analysis of #neoEBM Twitter data in the Symplur Signals database between 1 May 2018 to 9 January 2021. Data on tweets containing the #neoEBM hashtag were analysed using online analytical tools, including the total number of tweets and user engagement.</p>

<p><strong>RESULTS: </strong>Since its registration, a total of 3 228 distinct individual Twitter users used the hashtag with 23 939 tweets and 37 259 710 impressions generated. The two days with the greatest number of tweets containing #neoEBM were 8 May 2018 (n = 218) and 28 April 2019 (n = 340), coinciding with the annual Pediatric Academic Societies meeting. The majority of Twitter users made one tweet using #neoEBM (n = 1078), followed by two tweets (n = 411) and more than 10 tweets (n = 347). The number of individual impressions (views) of tweets containing #neoEBM was 37 259 710. Of the 23 939 tweets using #neoEBM, 17 817 (74%) were retweeted (shared), 15 643 (65%) included at least one link and 1 196 (5%) had at least one reply. As #neoEBM users increased over time, so did tweets containing #neoEBM, with each additional user of the hashtag associated with a mean increase in 7.8 (95% CI 7.7-8.0) tweets containing #neoEBM.</p>

<p><strong>CONCLUSION: </strong>Our findings support the observation that the #neoEBM community possesses many of the characteristics of a community of practice, and it may be an effective tool to disseminate research findings. By sharing our experiences, we hope to encourage others to engage with or build online digital communities of practice to share knowledge and build collaborative networks across disciplines, institutions and countries.</p>

<p>Social media is emerging as key solution to increase collaborative discourse between individuals, institutions and countries. Although evidence of social media’s impact on health policy is limited, its potential to promote knowledge dissemination and provide open forums for critical appraisal of evidence-based literature is increasingly clear. Social media in many ways is the definition of dissemination. It can be an active tool for spreading evidence-based information to a target audience (population) via determined channels (social media platforms) using planned strategies. Social media has a heterogeneous array of definitions as it can describe particular platforms of use (ie, Twitter or Facebook) or a particular methodology of connecting users. Social media in medicine can be defined as any digital media that enables widespread connectivity between users using a defined methodology of approach (ie, blog, podcast and so on).</p>