Medical Social Media Marketing Tips

Top Medical Social Media Marketing Tips to Grow Engagement – Podcast #106

More and more people are using social media to share their thoughts and learn about their health and healthcare providers.

As of now, about 80% of Americans use at least one social media platform. This means that medical practices must use social media because if you use your social media platforms to their fullest, they can be powerful tools that help you advocate for your medical practice and patients.

Medical social media is a powerful tool that doctors can use to market their practices and reach more patients.

Using medical social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is a way to interact with people and spread the word about your practice. Another platform that Dr. Jonathan Kaplan says has changed his practice, is Snapchat. It’s so easy to use and helps you show the world what you do daily. 

Post on Social Media to Help Your Medical Practice

Post! Post! Post! Posting regularly on social media is one of the easiest ways to keep people interested in your website and, in turn, your practice.

Remember that there are many platforms, and some are better for marketing healthcare than others. Before you jump in, take the time to figure out which platforms will work best for your practice. Once you’ve chosen your platforms, you can use them to tell your patients about:

• The medical services and procedures you provide
• Information about how things work, like your office hours
• You might want to tell people about new doctors
• You might want to honor doctors who are retiring
• How your practice helps the community or supports events or teams
• In addition to other accomplishments and goals, your doctors and practice may have won local or national awards
• Renovating the office or moving it to a new place
• Fun times are when the office is decorated or when people dress up for the holidays
• You can post videos of your procedures with patient consent

The goal of social content is to get and keep people’s attention.

Facebook says that people look at a post on their mobile feeds for an average of 1.7 seconds. This is because people scroll through their social feeds quickly and only stop when they see something interesting. With this in mind, take a moment to think about the best ways to get people’s attention.

Healthcare video marketing is a must-have these days if you want to make those mysterious social media algorithms happy.

Tips for Social Media for Medical Practices

Finding new patients for a medical practice can be as easy as going to the places where people spend the most time. For years it has been a recommendation to use social media. Here are some tips to help your practice be successful:

Focus on Quality, Not Quantity of Social Media Followers

Instead of focusing on how many followers they have, medical practices should use medical social media marketing to do two main things.

The first and most important goal of social media in a medical practice should be to educate and connect with potential patients.

Start by figuring out what the most important questions are that patients want answered.

Usually, this will take the form of content about conditions, treatments, and frequently asked questions. Getting a good name for your practice, doctors, and staff is the second goal.

Basically, this is what happens when you do a great job with education and engagement.

Your healthcare social media posts should do the same things that build trust with patients: show your authority and expertise, show that you care, and respond quickly to their interaction efforts

Video is a must for Medical social media marketing success

One of the best ways to get people to stop scrolling and look at what you have to say is to use video.

It’s also better than static images at a very important thing for healthcare providers: making people feel empathy. Video is the best way to build trust and tap into the emotions that make people make decisions.

Dr. Jonathan Kaplan suggests using video from the start, even if it’s just a simple walking-into-the-office video describing what your schedule is like for the day

Build a doable medical social media strategy for you

One of the easiest ways to start your content strategy is to pick a few content subjects or themes that you can write about over and over again. For example, most medical offices might have the following content pillars:

• Conditions: Conditions that patients are actively researching

• Treatments: The things you do to help fix these conditions

• Philosophy: Your unique point of view on patient care

Focus on only a couple platforms to perform well with

Find out which few platforms are most relevant to the patients you’re trying to reach, and start by doing those few really well.

For instance, if you run an orthopedic office where most of your patients are older, you should start with Facebook.

Why? Because older patients are more likely to be on Facebook. If you run an aesthetics business that offers lip injections to people in their 20s and 30s, you might want to start with Instagram, which is more visual

With the tips above, you can see that social media doesn’t have to be hard.

In fact, most social media practices make things too hard by focusing on the wrong metrics or using too many platforms. By following the strategies and rules above, you can keep your attention on what really matters for the success of your practice.

What are the Benefits of Medical Social Media Marketing?

The benefits of healthcare social media include:

• Raising awareness – The public needs medical social media marketing to learn about new, emerging, and yearly health issues. Bringing attention to health issues can be as easy as reminding people of good health habits they already know. Or it can be as hard as planning campaigns for different times of the year. Social media can also bring more attention to health issues like diseases, trends, and more
• Communicating during a crisis – Social media is a great way to keep the public up to date in real-time. This is especially true when things are changing all the time. Also, traditional media like TV and newspapers may not be able to reach as many people as quickly or as far as social media can
• Answering common questions – Social media sites give people who work in health care a way to connect with the public. People won’t self-diagnose and will feel better if you answer their common health questions
• Educate and share valuable content – How do you keep people interested over time? You should always give your followers useful content that teaches and informs them
• Remain HIPPA and FDA compliant – One of the hardest things about using social media in the healthcare field is that you have to follow a lot of rules and regulations. This is very important for people who share sensitive information to the public. HIPAA and FDA rules must be followed in the healthcare field
• Stay secure – For all your healthcare social media channels, it’s important to have security rules in place. If someone leaves the organization, you need to be able to take away their access

What to Expect Using Social Media for your Medical Practice

Setting up and keeping up a good social media presence for your practice may take some time, but the benefits will be clear.

Doctors and other healthcare professionals can raise awareness of their brand, give their audience educational information, get patients involved, and get reviews that show how credible they are.

With these things in place, social media for medical practices is a key way to get people interested in your practice and help it grow.

Wrapping up Medical Social Media Marketing Tips