Ten Ways an Active Social Media Presence Benefits Your Practice

If your practice is not taking advantage of social media marketing, you're missing out on a valuable way to reach a larger audience and bring more patients to your door.

In today's world, growing numbers of people spend more and more time on social media platforms to network, establish relationships, and share information.

Consider the following facts:

• Across the globe, 4 billion people use social media.
• In the United States, 70% of the population maintains an active monthly presence on social media networks.
• Facebook has well over a billion users each day
• Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter have hundreds of millions of users each month
• YouTube is the second largest search engine worldwide

While these numbers represent boundless opportunities for marketing your practice, many health professionals have not yet established an active social media presence.

If you haven't done so already, it's time to "get social."

With an effective social media strategy, your practice will reap the following ten benefits:

1. Get your message out there

It's essential to spread the word about your practice. With social media posts, blogs, tweets, and the like, you can share engaging text or videos that spotlight particular office features, procedures, technology, or team members. As your patients and followers get to know more about your office, it establishes your practice as a trusted source for care.

2. Build your brand

Define your practice and present a consistent message that resonates with your target audience. It's essential to identify what's unique about your office, what makes it special, and the key features, services, and messages you want to convey. Be consistent and true to your mission and your story across all social platforms.

When building your brand, create a logo that helps identify your practice across all communication channels and social media platforms. Remember to use high-quality content and attractive imagery in your website, posts, emails, and other communications. Great visuals tend to generate more social media likes and shares.

3. Increase your online visibility and expand your reach

Every post on social media offers an unparalleled opportunity to improve your practice's online visibility, drive more traffic to your website, and motivate more contacts for care. Dynamic, relevant, and compelling content that generates shares or comments that link back to your postings helps build your authority, thereby improving your search engine visibility.

Keep in mind that posting on social media is far from a one-and-done endeavor. A successful social media presence that drives traffic to your website requires consistent posting and quality content. It's a good idea to set up a schedule, post at effective times, and use an abbreviated link format. It also helps to establish links from your social media profiles back to your website.

4. Share knowledge, raise awareness, and establish authority

With 7% of Google searches each day related to healthcare questions, building an active social media presence that provides relevant and authoritative information positions you as a thought leader and expert in your field. Social media offers an excellent platform to share articles on medical conditions, emerging research, and advances in care.

5. Engage your audience in conversation

In addition to making posts and videos, you can also join forums and online discussions to answer questions related to your specialty and the conditions you treat. Being active in these ways builds your audience, drives traffic to your website and inspires more people to reach out to your office for care.

6. Hear concerns and respond to feedback

Besides providing an avenue for your posts and responses, social media platforms provide valuable input from your audience. With all the information sharing on social media, you get to see what's important to your audience, including their common questions or concerns, and comments on care. You can use this information to expand or modify your practice offerings and create content that addresses these areas and satisfies concerns.

It's essential to be mindful of generating positive reviews on social media and appropriately handling any negative comments that may come your way.

7. Feature cases, stories, and office news

In addition to current and prospective patients looking for information on certain conditions or treatments, they are also seeking stories that detail the journey and outcome of care. While maintaining patient privacy, posting brief case presentations, before and after photos, and the like are of interest to your audience.

Featuring office news on research papers, presentations, seminars, and spotlighting staff also help to build stronger relationships with your audience.

8. Handle requests promptly

Today, it's possible to receive and handle requests via social media. It offers yet another avenue for online visitors to reach out for an appointment or contact your office for other information.

9. Lead generation and new patients with paid advertising

While it's essentially free to get involved in social networking, one of the most effective ways to target audiences and generate new patient leads is with paid advertising. As a digital marketing strategy, paid advertising on select social media platforms helps optimize your advertising budget with an approach that's conversion-based and offers measurable results.

Paid advertising on social media networks allows you to zero in on prospective patients based on factors that most affect choices in care. For example, you can reach target audiences in select geographic locations, specific age groups, or ones with expressed specific interests.

10. Build connections with other healthcare professionals

It's also worth noting that most healthcare professionals today use social media to interact with their colleagues, other specialists, healthcare institutions, and the like. Social media platforms offer providers opportunities to share healthcare information, consult colleagues, participate in online forums, engage in continuing education, and keep abreast of developments in pharmaceuticals, technology, and research.

Social media interactions also help establish and deepen relationships for patient referrals to or from your practice.

While you focus on patient care, the experts at DoctorsInternet.com take care of it all!

Maintaining an effective social media presence takes time and effort. For this reason, it's wise to team up with experts in the field.

At DoctorsInternet.com, we understand the provision of top-quality care leaves you little time to build and maintain a robust and effective social media presence. As a company run by healthcare professionals, along with experts in the fields of technology and digital marketing solutions, we know just what it takes to get your message out there and inspire business growth. From development to implementation and assessment, we provide digital marketing solutions that improve your online visibility and promote your practice.