In the digital marketing world, social media is one of the more tangible elements that drive your online campaigns. Unlike the more “behind the scenes” work done for SEO, social media can be seen by the masses almost immediately. This means that you’ll want to keep the material you post up-to-date and share engaging content for your current and potential patients. Since we know this is just another thing to add to your plate, here are a few tips that might help you along the way!
Let Your Followers See Behind the Scenes
People like to see how your team interacts with each other when they’re not there as a patient. This helps them generate notions on what the personalities of your staff and providers are like. Giving a (HIPAA compliant) glimpse into your practice can simply mean posting photos of your team together in the office, videos of them doing something fun (think high fives, birthday celebrations, anniversaries, etc.), or bios as a “provider spotlight” sort of scenario. Each of these things are fairly simple and can be done within a few minutes, but can lead to a big impact not only in attracting new patients, but generating engagement from your existing patients. After all, if you’re their favorite doctor, they’re probably going to share the fun video you posted to a few of their friends, or at the very least comment on it. This is just another way that social media can act as word of mouth!
Create Strong, Relevant Infographics
Infographics require a bit more work, but if done properly can have a very big impact on your overall engagement. Although people tend to come to social media to view real-life updates from friends or communicate with long lost acquaintances, they also visit for education purposes. Infographics are an easy and attractive way to help generate more traffic from education seeking users by giving them something easy to digest. For example, if you’re a urologist attempting to educate your users on BPH treatment, you can give them a long paragraph to read OR you can provide them with a colorful infographic highlighting key points in an easily readable manner. Not only will your current followers appreciate it, but there’s a far higher potential for them to share the post with others, thus generating more engagement and ideally new patients for your practice!
Follow Trends and Use Popular Articles
Although infographics are certainly a good way to go, there are times when using resources that are already available is a great move. If you follow trends, you may find that there are a great deal of articles available for you to use and share on your social media. If you’re properly researching the articles, you have the added benefit of knowing they are coming from a respected source, which is helpful as it saves you time. Not to mention, if the article is already somewhat popular or has been shared on another source’s social media, you may pick up a bit of engagement from simply clicking the share button. While some social media experts aren’t big fans of outbound links, in healthcare we love them. Adding variety to your posts and making sure that not every single one goes back to your website or is directly from your practice helps prove that you’re there to fully educate your patients no matter where that information may come from.
Push Your Followers to Take Action
Sharing information is a must, but getting your followers to actually engage in your post and take action is where you’ll see the most impact on your social media accounts. Use a few of your posts each month to drive your followers to do things like take a quiz, post a photo, or leave a review for your practice. Of course, you’ll definitely have people who just want to scroll through your Facebook page just to see what you’re up to, but there are a number of people who will be quick to jump and leave you a review or take your quiz. Again, two added benefits as it could lead to a better reputation or patient lead generation. Keeping your users active is a great way to improve the overall health of your social media.
Hire an Expert
Certainly the easiest tip we have is to hire an expert like Practis to help you out! While there are a lot of things you can tackle on your own, your focus should be on improving the internal functions of your practice. Let us help you create a robust, engaging social media presence that leads to better online visibility by contacting us today!