With the way that social media has exploded in just a few years, we’re more connected than ever before. That means it’s become a necessity in the world of digital marketing. Social media for doctors is just as important as it is for any business. At Crystal Clear Digital Marketing, we know how important social media is in terms of helping your medical website gain more traction.
Personal Social Media vs. Social Media for Doctors
These days, almost all of us have at least one account on a social media platform. Many of us have more. “Social media” is a term that we come across nearly every day, so we’re familiar with it to some extent. That said, there are a few key differences when it comes to our personal social media accounts and the accounts a business or medical practice might use.
When we log into our own social media accounts, we usually like, share, or post any number of links without much thought as to where it might go or who might see it. Social media for doctors, however, is a different story all together. There always needs to be a strategy—and this strategy is so important that it can even make or break your online presence.
At Crystal Clear, we focus our social media marketing strategy on four very important platforms:
We’ve found that by approaching your social media strategy from these four directions, you can reach the largest and most diverse audience. This is because each site lets you take control of your social media strategy from a unique angle.
Facebook is the largest social media site in the world. With over 200 million users in the United States alone, there’s no mystery behind our choice to make your Facebook presence one of our top priorities. With a solid Facebook following on your side, you’ll get to advertise the services you want to as many people as possible.
Facebook takes control of one hugely important factor when it comes to success within social media for doctors: reader engagement. When you keep your Facebook page active with regular posts and updates, your patients and potential patients will be able to communicate with you directly, and vice versa. With Facebook, you can harness the power of reader engagement, images, videos, and content all at once. This is one of the easiest ways to build brand awareness and maintain brand loyalty at the same time.
With a 140-character limit, Twitter lets you get the most important part of your message across while attaching it to an engaging image or videos that are sure to grab your readers’ attention. Twitter is a great example of how you may only need a sentence or two to drive more traffic to your website.
Like Facebook, Twitter helps you connect to your readers in a more personal, meaningful way. Users can leave comments, re-tweet what you’ve posted, or share one of your posts with their own followers. It’s a direct connection that helps you build brand loyalty in one of the quickest ways possible.
LinkedIn is usually associated with job seekers looking to establish themselves in the professional world, but it’s also a vital part of a business’s social media presence. This is due largely in part to the fact that LinkedIn often the most effective approach when it comes to generating new leads—even more so than Facebook. Simply put, LinkedIn is the go-to social platform for businesses, doctors, and medical practices alike. Almost anyone looking to expand their professional network will put platforms like LinkedIn on their list of sites to visit.
As with Twitter and Facebook, you can also create posts on LinkedIn that direct back to your blog or one of your main web pages. From purely a marketing viewpoint, anything that builds awareness of your practice helps you gain more patients.
LinkedIn offers another advantage over other social media platforms. While sites like Facebook and Twitter are multi-purpose, meaning they can be used to either promote a business or to share interesting posts with your friends, LinkedIn is purely professional. Everything you add to your profile can be used to solidify your brand.
Pinterest
Pinterest is often seen as the most interesting site on our list of social media platforms, but rest assured that we include it in our marketing strategy for a very important reason.
For those who aren’t familiar with Pinterest, it works a little differently than most other social media sites. Instead of a wall or traditional page, users share anything they’re interested in via a “board” that showcases an image and an attention-grabbing tagline.
Research has shown that when it comes to converting readers into clients or patients, few sites are better at it than Pinterest. Like many other social media platforms, Pinterest can be used for either business or pleasure. Medical practices that take advantage of Pinterest as a powerful marketing tool often reap the benefits of their efforts quite quickly. That makes it a must for those who are looking to learn more about the essentials of social media for doctors.
In addition to the influence that comes with Pinterest, it also helps you reach an even larger audience. In general, different types of people are drawn to different social media platforms. It only logically follows that if you approach your social media strategy from multiple platforms at once, you’ll be able to easily reach out to the largest, most diverse audience possible.
Why Is Social Media for Doctors So Important?
As with any business, small or large, social media for doctors takes advantage of the fact that followers share the things they’re interested in with other followers. This is true of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, or just about any other social media platform out there.
Simply put, if you’re not taking advantage of social media, you’re ignoring some very important—even vital—online resources. The main difference between these resources for a medical practice and a personal account is the end goal. In the case of social media for doctors, the end goal is to actually bring your readers to your website rather than keep them on your social media accounts. With the right approach, you can accomplish exactly this.
Social Media Accounts That Build On Each Other
Utilizing multiple social media platforms at once also allows you to bring more attention to each of them individually. For example, you can use a Twitter post to link to your blog, which increases your chances of gaining a wider base of readers.
In fact, if you have both a Twitter and an active blog for your practice, it’s strongly recommended that you do exactly this. When you enter the world of digital marketing, you’ll come across the term “search engine optimization” (SEO) quite a bit. SEO is what drives your website to the top of search engine results. It should be what most, if not all, of your digital marketing strategy centers around. This is especially true of blogs and social media. Both can act as resources that support and build on each other to help you reach the goal of attracting more website visitors.
On Linking from Social Media to Blogs
Linking from one site to another creates a positive snowball effect on your online presence. A Twitter post that directs to a blog post will, in turn, direct the reader towards the main pages on your website that give more detailed information on what you have to offer. In addition, every blog post you create should link to a contact page and a page that explains what your practice does and who’s on your team.
Why are we spending so much time talking about blogs in a post about social media for doctors? It’s to drive home the point that every single component of our approach is a very important piece of the digital marketing puzzle. The plan works as smoothly as possible when you take advantage of every resource that is available to you.
This type of internal advertising can be used in just about every platform you decide to include in your social media strategy. It doesn’t just have to be a link from Twitter to a blog post; you can get creative with it! If you’re feeling stuck, don’t worry. Social media for doctors is just one of our specialties.
Your Social Media Strategy Handled by One Professional Team
The more social media sites you include in your arsenal, the farther your patient outreach. If keeping an active social media presence seems like too much to handle at once, you don’t have to tackle it alone. Social media for doctors is just one of the many ways we help your practice or medical spa flourish at Crystal Clear. If you’re ready to find out what we can do for you, contact us today to speak to a dedicated member of our team!
