10 Key Social Media Tips for Your Medical Practice

First things first, I’d like to ask you a question: WHY are you on social media?  And which social media platforms feature your target audience, patients, or procedures?  These are questions that you should know the answers to and if you don’t, it may require starting from scratch with a new social media plan.
You’re all doctors working in busy practices, with busy lives.  Who has TIME for freakin’ social media?  I’m sure many of you view it at best as a thorn in your side, or at worst, a complete waste of time.  So why should you bother with social media?  The reality is, that there are a ton of reasons doctors should be using these platforms.  Social media can be a massively powerful tool for your practice on multiple levels. 

Let’s take a look at several reasons WHY:

• Social media allows you to promote health literacy and become a leader in patient education.
• You can grow your practice exponentially by helping your patients find you (while you may not have time for social media, the reality is, YOUR PATIENTS DO).
• If you DON’T want to grow your business (many doctors don’t WANT more patients), you can harness social media to TARGET patients who are interested in, or need SPECIFIC services or procedures. As in, social media can help you TARGET more of the procedures you want.
• You can manage WHAT patients see about you & your practice (yes, your patients ARE LOOKING).
• You can enhance and manage your reputation and online presence.
• Social media can help you recruit the best partners, associates, staff, and/or residents.
• Social media allows you to share your passion, work, research and/or expertise with others who want to learn from you.
• Social Media plans can help dramatically enhance your SEO.
• You can stay on top of healthcare and research news without having to visit individual sources on a regular basis! Major journals and medical news sources are often on social media.  Now, with a simple click of the “follow” button, you can stay in the loop with much less effort.  And while you may or may not learn new medicine from these links or sources, what you WILL learn is what YOUR patients are learning.  This helps you to be more prepared to answer those pesky questions that always start a little something like this: “I was on the internet and I read…”

There are tons of other reasons why you should be implementing a social media plan for your practice, but you get the idea, right?  You’ll be amazed at the connections you can make, as well as the amount you can learn.
Ok, now down to the nitty gritty.  Now that you know social media is an invaluable tool for your office, we’d like to share some key social media tips for your medical practice:
10 Key Social Media Tips for Your Medical Practice

1. First, carefully consider your target audience and/or target patient procedures. Consider your patient demographics and psychographics and then get laser focused.  Keep in mind, you can always simply ASK your patients which social media outlets they frequent.  And then, focus on your patients’ networks of choice.  And if you’re just starting, keep your social media sites to no more than 3.  Trying to tackle too many can result in mediocre and less effective results overall.
2. Once you have chosen the most effective social media platforms for your practice, have a decisive social media plan that includes: How often you plan to post on each platform, what type of content you plan on publishing, etc.
3. Post consistently. Social media, like SEO, takes time to build and develop and in order to do that, regular presence and participation/interaction is necessary.  This goes back to that social media plan we mentioned earlier.
4. So what should you share? Be choosy with your posts and think quality vs. quantity.  You want to publish consistently, but you also want to offer your followers content of value.  Content that is relevant to your audience, entertaining, or helpful is always a great way to gain a solid following.  Also, studies show that photos are the most popular type of social media content for engagement.  So start snapping away!  Your office staff, team building, holiday parties, procedure pics…go to town!
5. Don’t forget to interact!! Don’t be “that practice” that only shares links all day…the whole point of social media is…well, to BE SOCIAL!  Engaging other colleagues, patients, and other followers includes: @mentions of other people, replying in other people’s posts, “liking” other people’s posts, adding/following people, or “retweeting” (if you are using Twitter).  You want to switch from one-way posts to two-way posts, which encourage engagement and communication.  Ask questions, inspire discussions, be provocative, and respond as quickly as possible to questions/comments or reviews on your posts.
6. While we’re on the subject of following, you should also always follow other doctors and healthcare providers on social media. This allows you to not only keep tabs on the competition, but also provides an invaluable resource for inspiring discussion topics, sharing ideas, knowledge, professional information, education, and tapping into new trends.
7. Watch competitors within your specific area and medical specialty. Are your competitors kicking some serious ass in the social media department?  Do they have a bazillion followers and Retweets?  If they do, start to analyze what exactly they are doing.  Watch what they post, when then post, who they follow, how often they post, what kind of headlines and verbiage they’re using, which are their most popular posts, etc.  When you start to get a feel for the more successful components and strategies of their social media campaign, you’ll want to implement some of what they are doing (or have done) in to your own plan.  This doesn’t mean to model what they are doing to a tee…you WANT to be unique and authentic!  But it may be as simple as posting around the same time of day that they post, or posting more photos (instead of videos or articles), etc.
8. Give potential followers a REASON to follow you. Think about it: why should someone follow YOU?  What is your unique value proposition in relation to each specific/individual social media platform?  For instance, you could share behind the scenes content on Instagram, share discount codes on Facebook, offer customer service or answers to medical questions on Twitter, etc.  But the value you offer should be exclusive to that specific social media channel.  If you’re sharing the same information (ex. discount codes) via email that you’re also posting on Twitter, there’s no added value there.
9. Use keywords in your posts and capitalize on HASHTAGS. Oh hashtags, how we love thee!  If you haven’t already gleaned from our social media posts, we are BIG believers in the hashtag.  Hashtags are truly one of the best ways to organically expand your reach and get more impressions (or views) on social media.  However, in order to effectively use the hashtag, it’s important to implement a more strategic approach.  Don’t just choose random hashtags you like.  Instead, research those hashtags that are popular within your medical specialty (or targeting the specific procedure or service you want to highlight).  You may also use more generic hashtags that are widely used (and thus more popular).  These are the hashtags with a high volume of individuals actively searching for them on Twitter & Instagram.  Bottom line: adding hashtags to your posts gives your content a better chance of showing up in search results.
10. Target your social media posts. Ok, so we mentioned targeting your posts above via hashtags, but let’s discuss this a bit more in depth. Your followers are all individuals and therefore, are not all alike.  Even if your medical practice attracts a certain type of patient or demographic, your audience consists of individuals who may follow you for different reason.  For example, if you’re a plastic surgeon, your audience base may contain 25-year old women interested in breast augmentation, older men interested in gynecomastia, or other doctors, interested in your cutting edge face transplant techniques.  These audiences are clearly not going to be attracted to the same content.  To satisfy these different segments, you want to remember to target and share content specifically for each major demographic.

Social media for physicians and healthcare providers can be overwhelming and somewhat demanding.  Medical Site Solutions offers website packages that include built in social media packages.  Call us today for more information on how we can set you up for success on social media.

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