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, optimizing online success requires establishing 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 good word about your practice. With social media posts, blogs, tweets, and the like, you can share engaging text or videos that spotlight services, team members, and other practice features. As patients and followers learn more about your practice, you build awareness and trust in your brand.

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 practice and what makes it special while providing information about products or services you want to promote. Remember to be consistent and stay true to your mission and 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 social media post offers an unparalleled opportunity to improve your practice’s online visibility, drive more traffic to your website, and motivate more contacts, interest, and sales. 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

   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 new products or services, emerging technology, and developments in your field.

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 practice and the products or services you provide. Being active in these ways builds your audience, drives traffic to your website and inspires more people to reach out to your practice.

6. Hear concerns and respond to feedback

   Besides offering 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. You can use this information to expand or modify your practice offerings and create content that addresses these areas and satisfies concerns.

   Now more than ever, 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 success stories and practice news

   In addition to current and prospective customers looking for information on certain products and services, they are also seeking stories that detail your customer experiences and outcomes. While maintaining customer privacy, posting brief success stories, before and after photos, and the like are of interest to your audience.

   Featuring office news on research papers, presentations, seminars, and staff also helps 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 book an appointment, make a purchase, and reach out to your practice for other information.

9. Lead generation and new customers 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 customers based on factors that most affect how they select a practice and make purchasing decisions. For example, you can reach target audiences in select geographic locations, specific age groups, or expressed interests.

10. Build connections with other colleagues in similar practices

    Social media platforms offer practices opportunities to share information, consult with colleagues, participate in online forums, and keep abreast of emerging technology, trends, and product developments.

At PIMM-USA.com, we understand running a practice can leave you little time to build and maintain a robust and effective social media presence. From development to implementation and assessment, you can count on our expert team for the most effective website and digital marketing solutions to improve your online visibility and promote practice growth.