Well, it’s the very last week of the year and 2017 is literally a few days away!  And we couldn’t be more excited to announce some awesome news here at Medical Site Solutions!!  We are about to roll out a WHOLE NEW MEDICAL SPECIALTY!!  Drum roll please…..!!  And the new medical specialty issss: NUTRITION!!!!  That’s right, as of January 2017, Medical Site Solutions will be offering stunning new website designs for Nutritionists and Dietitians that (AS ALWAYS) come completely preloaded and ready to go with gorgeous images and nutrition content!  By the way, in case you’re new to the Medical Site Solutions concept, our website design company is different from others because we offer website designs and templates that are literally DONE.  Each specialty has over 20 different web designs to choose from.  And each website design comes preloaded with specialty specific content such as images, the most common services, and descriptions of common procedures.  You can pick and choose images from our specialty specific image libraries, or opt to use your own!! You can also use our pre-written content, or change/edit it to align with your specific practice methods.  Or, feel free to completely delete any descriptive content we offer, and simply write you own content.  It’s totally up to you!  If you do choose to use our pre-written content, it is absolutely imperative that you read thru it BEFORE your website goes “live.”  Not all content is generic and some of the procedure descriptions and protocol may not align with your specific practice techniques or methods.

​Medical Site Solutions is excited about launching and offering Nutrition as one of our main specialties.  Our beautiful new Nutrition website designs will truly knock your socks off!!  If you’re a Nutritionist and decide you want one of these stunning website designs, we offer monthly packages full of innovative services.  Please review our Website Package Pricing page for more details, and choose the package and setup option that best suits your needs.  And as always, we’re here to answer any and all questions you may have about our designs, services, or setup process.  Thank you for your interest and HAPPY NEW YEAR from Medical Site Solutions!!!

Medical Site Solutions would like to take this week’s blog as an opportunity to express our deepest gratitude to all of YOU: our partners, our clients, our social media supporters, and our amazing team!!  As 2016 comes to a close, we feel so honored and so humbled to have been able to serve our wonderful family of clients, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for trusting us with your medical practice, your online reputation, and your business as a whole.  We thank you for taking a risk on us, for choosing us, and for working with us.  Medical Site Solutions is a family business and a dream that all of you have helped bring to fruition.  We absolutely could not do this work we love without each and every one of you.  We wish you and everyone you love an absolutely magnificent holiday season, and an incredible New Year filled with joy and prosperity.  Please don’t EVER hesitate to let us know what more we can do to serve your medical website design needs…remember, we consider you ALL part of our Medical Site Solution family, and are always here to serve you.

We have an amazing new service announcement to make!!!  Medical Site Solutions is now proud to offer educational waiting room videos to our physicians and doctors who already have a website!!  All of our services here at Medical Site Solutions have only been offered as a built-in component of our website packages.  Meaning that, in the past, you could only have access to our services with the purchase of a medical website for your practice.

Now, after popular demand, we are offering ONE service separately for the first time!!  If you already have a website, or if you don’t have a website and simply want educational videos for your waiting room, you can now have them!! WOO HOOO!!!
You can choose from over 1000 educational healthcare videos to use on your waiting room TVs.  Another cool thing: Our videos may be viewed in English or in Spanish.  This can be a pretty helpful feature depending on the demographic of patients you may service.  After choosing your specialty specific videos, Medical Site Solutions can also create a custom playlist for the procedures most common to your medical practice (see pricing below).

These educational videos are an absolutely wonderful way to demonstrate complex medical information in a more accessible, visual approach.  And as always folks, Medical Site Solutions provides this service with absolutely no contracts and no set-up fees.  I’ll say that again, because it’s so freakin’ AWESOME: there are NO CONTRACTS involved with this service.  Dont cha just LOVE the “no contracts” thing?  We do!  No contracts=no risk for you!  If you aren’t satisfied with the service (or any of our website package services for that matter), you can cancel at any time!  We want our clients to stay with us because we offer OUTSTANDING customer service and amazing products!  Not because they’re forced!

​Check out our Patient Education Video monthly subscription pricing below:

Essential $125/mo (Up to 25 Videos)
• Videos for website
• Videos for Waiting Room TV
• Branded printable handouts
• Videos in English & Spanish
• Create your own branded playlist

Premier $199/mo (Up to 50 Videos)
• Videos for website
• Videos for Waiting Room TV
• Branded printable handouts
• Videos in English & Spanish
• Create your own branded playlist

Also, as mentioned above, we can create custom branded playlists for your medical practice for $50 each (one-time fee).  In addition, if you happen to want a branded practice video (which is a combination of images, text, and animation) we can create this for $249 (one-time fee).  For more information or any additional questions pertaining to our health educational waiting room videos, don’t hesitate to contact our office today!

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.