There are many ways organizations can market their businesses, but social media is one of the most effective. A recent report by Statista states that as of the third quarter of 2021, Facebook has reached 2.9 billion monthly active users. Facebook has grown exponentially, and so has its value for targeting an audience.
Using social media as part of any medical practice marketing is a necessity. By using a social platform to communicate with current or prospective patients, healthcare providers can highlight vital procedures and any essential information people might need to know.
Using social media to market medical practices is becoming increasingly popular. It has become an effective platform for sharing informative content, news, marketing, and other forms of communication. These tips will provide you with insights into how you can use social media to market your medical practice.
Using social media as part of your marketing strategy can grow your medical practice.
The following social media marketing strategies will market your brand to prospective or current patients and will place you ahead of other medical practitioners within your area. Using them can result in a larger patient base and help retain existing patients.
1. Develop Your Brand Voice
The first step in planning your social media strategy is to stay consistent with your brand by posting content on your social media platforms with the same brand voice. It’s essential to keep it light and engaging—avoid monotonous posts. Having an interactive approach, where you encourage participation through comments or polls, can help your team engage with users to build your brand.
For example, suppose all of your posts focus on how you can help solve customers’ problems. In that case, you should mix it up with a position that is something engaging—it could even be non-medical related, maybe an upcoming event. Avoid making too many promotional posts. Your patients don’t need to read about every service or product you offer.
Patients also want to feel that you’re listening to them or that their opinion matters. For example, you can use Facebook Polls to gauge people’s opinions on medical-related news. Give your patients both fun and educational content to explore, and your brand will become synonymous with a positive social media experience.
2. Connect With Your Patients At the Right Time
According to recent data compiled by Pew Research Center, 81% of YouTube subscribers and 69% of Facebook users use the platform every day. Consequently, you want to update your practice’s page on Facebook and upload informative videos on YouTube as often as possible — daily being ideal.
You must be strategic about when you post to get the biggest reach. Use scheduling tools (available on most platforms) to post throughout the week at different times, track which time slots get the most engagement and schedule posts for those peak times.
3. Keep It Short and Avoid Medical Jargon
If you have a refined new procedure that you’re proud of, you can post it on social media, just keep it simple and tailored to your audience. This means steering clear of medical jargon. Unless your target audience is medical experts, you’ll do more to confuse them instead of impressing them.
4. Raise Awareness and Answer Common Questions to Boost Reputation
Social media is vital to raise public awareness about new, emerging health concerns and treatments. Raising awareness can be as simple as reminding your patients about standard health practices or addressing common healthy lifestyle concerns.
In today’s fast-paced environment, changes happen quickly. That’s why social media serves as a critical way of ensuring the public is aware of the latest news, issues, and advisories. An excellent way to announce the information is to share it directly in your social posts.
Raising awareness about credible sources makes it easier for your patients or your social media followers to counter inappropriate and inaccurate healthcare social media claims they see in posts from their social connections.
Responding to your followers’ questions can help your practice differentiate itself from others. Patients will remember your page more when you constantly interact with your audience and answer all of their questions.
5. Always Be Present
According to a survey conducted by Convince & Convert, 42% of social media users expect a response within 60 minutes of sending a message. If you are paying attention to social media channels and responding to patient inquiries quickly, your patients and prospective patients see that you care, building trust.
While responding to all of your followers’ questions is necessary, as per HIPAA regulations, you must avoid sharing any protected health information on social media. If there are any sensitive health-related concerns, let your patients know to contact your office instead to answer their concerns. Keep your medical staff on the same page by setting a time goal for a response and holding the team accountable.
6. Feature Your Community Service
You can create an event page to drive users offline to enhance your social media presence. You may post informative blog articles about the campaign or event and post images and videos. It further aligns your practice as a contributor to your local community.
7. Take Advantage of Paid Promotions
Posting content on social media is free, so paying for ads may seem unnecessary to some people. However, if you utilize social media’s paid ads feature and the audience insights tool, you can target the users you specifically want to reach. Social media ads and paid promotions can help your practice reach your target demographic, whether your focus is on lead generation, website traffic, or brand awareness, to engage with more qualified leads.
8. Analyze Your Results
Make a point to analyze the achievable goals you set every month. Analyze how people interact with your posts—think of what type of posts gets the most likes (reactions) and comments. Measure key metrics like engagement and reach to determine what works and eliminate what doesn’t.
The benefits of mastering these social media marketing strategies can effectively market your healthcare practice on a different level. Improving your social media presence can attract younger generations, leading to finding your practice online quickly.
9. Public Health Monitoring
Since there are no limits to what you can post online, people tend to post a lot about their private lives online unless offensive and harmful content. Many of them use health-related hashtags on these posts. Hashtags are great and can reveal what people are talking about online. By using hashtags, you can actively contribute to discussions regarding that topic.
You may also join trending topics within your city or worldwide for a wider reach. When you post on Facebook or tweet on Twitter, people can interact with you by responding to your tweet—allowing them to engage more with your practice. For example, a 2020 study found an association between the number of Tweets mentioning telehealth and the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in a particular state. With the proper social media monitoring tools, public healthcare providers can even get a sense of the severity of symptoms.
By following these social media strategies, you can boost your practice’s social media ranking in no time. Make sure to follow HIPAA guidelines while implementing these social media strategies. If you’re looking for another way to improve your social media strategy, contact us today.
