Healthcare Marketing 101: How to Effectively Use Social Media

Social media plays an integral part in your healthcare practices’ digital marketing strategy. There are many benefits to having a well-defined plan when it comes to your social media marketing.

Learning how to market yourself and your business online will help boost website traffic, promote higher conversions, and encourage patient loyalty. Let’s take a look at the importance of including social media in your current healthcare marketing strategy.

For a long time, there was a question about whether or not social media marketing was effective enough to include in a digital marketing plan for healthcare clinics. According to Social Media Today, social media is working to improve the visibility of brands and build relationships through motivating conversation.

Social media is a great tool, because people already know how to use it in their everyday lives. Mastering the art of social media and defining its role within your organization is the trickier part.

New social networks are popping up all over the place due to the recognition of the need for specific niche communities. However, jumping on every new ‘generic’ social network out there, without a proven track record may be a mistake. Niche social media platforms, such as Hair Transplant Social are great at helping to create a personal connection with the audience, but they usually lack the user base compared to the established, networks.

There are several tried and tested social networks that have been around for years that most companies look to when establishing an online presence.

Twitter

Twitter has over 300 million active users today. Twitter has a large reach, uses hashtags to start conversations and follow trends, and is available for businesses large and small.

Twitter’s platform is known for writing clear and concise statements. The character count on a tweet used to be 140 characters, but just recently they upped it to 280. It still means you have to be direct with your message.

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social network in the world with over 1.5 billion active users. There has been some scrutiny over Facebook and it’s privacy for private users in the past year. But, the truth remains the same for businesses, if you aren’t on Facebook, do you even exist?

Facebook helps show the world you are an active community, your business is real, and it puts faces to names within your business.

Instagram

Instagram is owned by Facebook, and is arguably the up and coming social media for businesses. It uses images as posts and allows users to comment, share on those posts.

The use of hashtags is also prevalent, and you track trends using these hashtags. Instagram has many business tools available for businesses that want to get started.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an online network of professional users, connecting in business. It is best for B2B communications and marketing.

LinkedIn has groups that professionals and experts join and add in on the conversation about specific topics.

All of the above social media platforms are a great place to start if your practice isn’t currently including social media in its marketing plan. Directing and attracting patients to you helps in a variety of ways.

Brand loyalty and brand awareness are established by increasing your brand presence online. First, you’ll need to understand where your market is. Where are your patients at? Are they business professionals? Are they teenagers or middle-schoolers?

Establish which platform you’ll build upon based on where your target audience resides. If they are teenagers, focusing your efforts on LinkedIn will not be fruitful. Likewise, if they are business professionals, Instagram may not yield the greatest results.

Start by choosing just one or two of the most important networks and focus on becoming a strong brand on those networks first.

There are many things you do to build a great social media marketing plan, but we’re just going to look at the basics to get you started.

Once you’ve deployed these key steps, you’ll be ready to build upon your strategy in the future!

Be Reachable

The number one thing you do is to make yourself reachable. Your social media needs to have your best contact information. This could include your business phone number, email, address, and website.

However you prefer your patients to reach you, you need to display on your social media profile and have readily available on your website. We recommend our clients use either live chat on their website or use a messenger service (i.e. Facebook or WhatsApp) to allow for easy communication.

Use Important Keywords

What types of phrases or words do people search for when looking for a Healthcare practice like yours? Perhaps it’s “Hair Transplant Vancouver” or “Pediatry in Wisconsin.”

Compile a list of keywords that are appropriate for your practice and Healthcare specialty. Start using those keywords in your social media profiles, on your website, or in anything you present online. This way, when patients are searching for you on Google, you’ll be close to the top of search results.

Post Your Hours

Does your practice have special hours of business during certain times of the year? Social media is a great way to let your patients know what your schedule is.

If you have slots that become available due to canceled appointments, posting your availability for appointments that become available are great for those who are waiting.

Patient to Physician Relationship

One of the greatest benefits of social media for Healthcare practices is building relationships with patients outside of standard office visit. Social media can be used to establish physicians in your practice as thought leaders in their field.

Responding to important questions patients ask online, commenting with feedback, and fostering these relationships will teach patients you provide great care.

Promotions on Services

Do you have any promotions on services you offer throughout the year? Perhaps you give free consultations during a specific event. Maybe you discount your services during September.

Whatever promotions or services you have available to your patients, social media is a great place to share with them. Any new treatments you roll out at your practice shared on social media keeps patients in the loop.

Now that you know the importance of social media, and how to incorporate it into your Healthcare practice marketing plan, it’s time to get started.

Identify your target audience and where they are online. Join those communities, build a presence and build-up your profiles using industry related keywords.

Use those platforms to consistently keep your patients in the loop, and raise awareness for new patient treatments. If you’re interested in the steps to take after you’ve done the initial building of your profiles, reach out to us today!