Social Media for Medical Practices | How to Grow Engagement #153

Your patients are talking, connecting, and engaging on social media every day; but are you a part of their conversation?

It can sometimes feel like there isn’t a ton of value in focusing on social media, but in this blog, you’ll see that it is vital to the life and success of not just your practice, but your overall message and thought leadership.

Let’s dive in and gain some valuable tips on improving your patient’s social media engagement. We’ll take a look at first growing a loyal follower base in the simplest way possible and then some winning strategies that will optimize your content and overall results.

Show Full Podcast Notes

The Value in Social Media for Medical Practices

As a practice, you may feel like you are investing a lot of time and effort with no return or value in it, however, there are ways to get back your invested time and efforts that we will discuss in this blog. 

In the U.S., eight out of ten people who use the internet look for health information online, and 74% of these people use social media.

People keep going back to the social media sites they like best to get the information they need from sources they know and trust. Your goal as a practice is to become one of these trusted sources.

The biggest thing to remember when you’re trying to boost your engagement is PLANNING.

It starts with planning, gains momentum through planning, and it gives a return on investment through planning. 

The biggest value of social media is the ability to create thought leadership.

Thought leadership is the sharing of real, authentic content that is based on the author’s knowledge, insight, and experience.

The goal is to teach others from this knowledge. In your practice, your physicians are your authors, get them to participate and boost your engagement.

Put a face to your content and your brand, physician support is a driving force for your brand in social media marketing. 

Getting your physicians involved can be difficult as they don’t always have a lot of free time on their hands.

This is when planning comes into play.

You need to make the most use of the time they are willing to give you.

Plan out the content you are looking for such as common FAQs patients are interested in and get your physicians in front of a camera and create a nice short video with them answering these questions.

Then spend your time promoting this content on your social media to get your followers engaged.

The key to successful social media for medical practices is consistency.

When you get your physicians in front of the camera, do more than one piece at a time so you can plan out the next post ahead of time and make sure you always have something to post about.

Consistency is vital to keeping your following going. Consistency requires attention, planning, and good content.

How to Grow a Loyal Audience

When you use physician support to your advantage to help build your brand consistently, you gain a loyal following on your social media platforms.

Don’t be afraid to market your big specialty that brings in the most revenue for your practice to keep the numbers coming.

Yes, you want to market those that need some support when it comes to return on investment, but the specialties that are doing well will help you gain engagement.

Have impact. In the healthcare industry, the blood, guts, and gore are what will help you in your social media adventures. Get the proper legal consent for certain procedure images, videos, and information, and use that to show your followers what your physicians do.

This will help draw attention to your platforms and your practice.

Keep in mind that social media should be geared towards education as well. As a rule of thumb, it is important to follow the 80/20 mindset; 80% education and 20% behind the scenes on what your practice does. Patients and viewers like to relate to your content. 

Will your posts get that “Aha!” or “Oh my gosh me too!” moment? If not, it’s time to step it up.

Aim for those responses to help get a return on your social media marketing. Adding value and creativity to your social media posts will help boost these reactions. 

Tips to Improve Patient Social Media Engagement

Once your planning is set in place, your priority will shift to optimizing your content.

It’s important to make sure your content whether it be a video, podcast, or blog, has good readability or the ability to keep your audience listening or watching. 

On your social media platforms it’s important to connect with colleagues, potential new patients, and others within your medical field, and consistently.

This can help grow your following which can lead to increased engagement. 

Make sure those you are connecting with are “active” members.

Typically, those who are commenting or liking other content you are following, are those you will want in your following as well as they will help increase your engagement and help promote your brand. 

To start the engagement, you can use a simple way like a quiz to get people to begin their relationship with you, then to continue this engagement, you can share and comment to help spread the word.

You can share these things in groups you are a part of. 

Groups add value to your social media when it comes to engagement.

Groups help you target specific target audiences whether it be a certain age group, a certain condition, or a treatment, there are many groups out there you can join that relate to your practice. 

Groups are only part of how you give.

As you receive engagement, you need to give engagement as well to get your brand out there to new audiences.

This can help increase your networking to reach those who may not know about your practice. 

Don’t be afraid to get your team at your practice involved.

Your staff engagement like sharing, liking, and commenting, can help boost engagement from people they are friends with on their social media platforms, which most likely will include those in the medical field or prospective patients. 

GO LIVE. Many social media platforms allow you to take a live video. This is probably one of the most useful real-time engagement tools you can use to communicate with your followers live.

You can promote these lives in your groups, on your own social media pages, and more. 

One of the biggest challenges in the healthcare field is topics that people may have many different opinions on.

Don’t be afraid to present these topics to help open a conversation with your many patients, as it can spark a conversation that can lead to a new appointment or more followers. 

And last but not least, try to ask questions in your content so you can increase your engagement on your social media pages.

This may seem silly since your practice is meant to educate, but it may also help you figure out new content ideas and what a lot of your patients’ goals are when it comes to their intentions with following your page. 

Feel free to end your content with a question!

Let your followers know you want to hear from them and open up that initial conversation so they feel the desire to engage with your content. 

Wrapping Up Social Media for Medical Practices

Your team can also help you generate content ideas, monthly theme ideas, and more. Their faces are important too!

Have some of your front desk employees record some video of a day at the office and what walking into your practice would look like.

You can also have them record videos for any promotions or campaigns you run at your practice. 

Social media marketing can be overwhelming. It’s important to not get overwhelmed and hire people to help you with your social media platforms to help you manage the workflow.

Never give up, the return on investment is there, you just need to consistently dedicate time to content creation. 

Are you ready to jump in on your social media content and have some questions on where to start? Feel free to reach out to us and get a free quote today!

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