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Social Media Overview and Scheduling Tools

Social Media Overview and Scheduling Tools

 

Today, I want to talk about looking at your social media strategy in the big picture. A lot of the questions that we get a lot are, “How do I schedule my social media post? Where do I schedule my social media post? And how do I really just organize my social media post?” And so we’ve done a few videos on this with creating that content calendar and making sure that your posts are organized. And I just wanted to walk you through how we do it on our side, and then also show you a couple of the scheduling tools that we utilize for ourselves and our clients.

Content calendar template

So one thing that we’ve done is a content calendar template. The biggest thing with social media is making sure you are consistent and you have a plan. Most of the time, we get so caught up in work that we forget about what we want to talk about on social media, and whether you’re doing your social media internally, or you have a team like us that’s managing your social media. It’s important to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

Contents ideas for your social media posts:

  • Blog post – You can share your most recent blog  post.
  • Share a tip from weekly blog post with a link back to the blog or website – You can pull information from a past blog
  • Visual image with logo on it – It can be  a motivational quote or tip of the day. You can create that in Canva.
  • Article or blog from outside source – Share articles from other like-minded sources. You want to remember that 80/20 rule
  • Product from website linking back to the page – If you have products or different services that are on the website, you can link back to those.

Switch up the content

What I like to do is the information, the post that go on to Facebook and LinkedIn, I think it’s okay if it’s the same content. I would swap the days, and then I would change around the content for Instagram. So maybe what you used on a Tuesday for a Facebook and LinkedIn post, you can reword it, add some bullet points, add in some hashtags and use it for Instagram maybe the following week. So you want to keep that content going, you can utilize it on other platforms.

I do not recommend putting the same post out at the same day, same time to all networks. It doesn’t give any value. We found that most people that follow you on Facebook are also following you on Instagram. So if you’re posting the same thing the same day, there’s no value there. So you want to be able to switch up that content. And having some type of a monthly overview, we found that to have really helped us and our clients kind of know what topics are coming next. So this is kind of that monthly overview.

Content resources

Now it’s time to write the content. So on the social media calendar, you’ll have different topics that you want to talk about.

You’ll have content resources – different websites for that curated content, the like-minded websites that you’re looking for, maybe it’s newsletters that you’re a part of  – put them in here. This is supposed to be an easy place that you can just go and pull an article from the source you’ve already approved, your team has access to it.

Google sheet

You’ll notice this is all done in a Google Sheet. The reason we use a Google Sheet is because this is a platform that everyone has access to. So I can share this Google calendar with my team. And so the person that’s writing the social media posts, the person that needs to approve them, they know what’s going out.

It keeps everyone together on one platform rather than having to log into something or download, if someone has a Mac and someone has a PC, from Excel to whatever, it’s just too complicated. I like things simple and very clear. So we use Google Sheets for that.

Here, we have the content resources, we have blog topics, so this can be where we organize our blogs for the month so we know what’s going out.

Creating a content calendar

Google sheet

There are two things you can do here. Now that we know what we’re talking about for the month, we need to have a place of where we can write those social media topics.

One thing that we have done is you can, say here like the date, platform, content, image. Now the other thing that we’ve done is instead of doing this, we may say the date and then we’ll say Instagram copy, Facebook copy, LinkedIn copy, and then we’ll either say image, and then on here we’ll put hashtags as well. You can also place the key code, and then you can pull from the content calendar.

So you can change up, you can create this however it works best for you. We’ve seen a lot of different techniques on creating where you’re gonna write your social media post.

It can be blog title and first paragrah. Now obviously, you are going to put that content in here. You’re gonna have the link in here, and then the image, you can actually go to Insert, and then go to Image, and upload the image directly into this sheet.

So this is one way to keep it all in one place to be able to see, “Okay, this is going onto Instagram, this is going out onto Facebook and LinkedIn. Here’s the images that needs to go out to there, the hashtags.”

So for writing, I always like to write posts a week or two weeks or three weeks in advance. So we have our date here, so we would say Monday, then we can have Tuesday, and then through Friday, and have the copy on one sheet.

Google doc

The other way that we have seen it done is through a Google Doc. And this can be the same thing. This can be a week – May 4th to 8th. You can do a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And if you post on Saturday and Sunday, great.

You can insert your copy here and your images as well. Now, one thing that I would do is make sure that you are utilizing your images, you’re creating your images in the social media template in Canva, so they show up nicely on all platforms.

So you know that Monday, May 4th for Facebook and LinkedIn, this is the copy that’s gonna go out to those two platforms. So it’s really figuring out what works best for you.

Social Media Scheduling Tools

Now let’s get into the scheduling tools. Some people like to just go directly into those scheduling tools. They have the overview of the content calendar and they say, “Okay, this is what my month will look like,” and then they go right into the scheduling tools and write their content directly in there. And that’s totally fine too. It’s just figuring out that process that works best for you.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a paid service. The one thing I really like about them is I love that they do monthly reports. So that gives you your activity for whatever platform you have that you’re utilizing on here. It gives you an overview of exactly what posts you have going out.

When you come over here to publishing, it will pop up what posts you have already scheduled for the month, the week, so it’s very clear, and then you can see each platform right here. If you go to compose, you can upload up to four pictures through Sprout Social, which is good because you like to have multiple photos on the different networks. Here, you can drop down and you can click the platforms that you want it to go to.

One really cool thing about this as well is it has this option for Instagram, the Instagram first comment. So a lot of people will have their Instagram content, and then that first comment is where they put in their 30 hashtags. So that’s a really cool feature that Sprout Social has, and then it will preview what your post will look like. Again, if you have Twitter on here, you want make sure you do Twitter separately because of that 280-character count. Now, with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, it will show 1,300. So it gives you that option, if you take off LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram 2,200. So it gives you that option. So you can go right directly into here, write your post, and then you can go to choose a date, time, and schedule it. So that’s one way of being able to just utilize a dashboard like this and be able to have all your posts in one area.

So I really like Sprout Social because of how user-friendly it is, and you’re able to see what you have scheduled. And some days you’re gonna have posts for certain networks that you just wanna go out and not for the other networks, and that’s totally okay. So just, again, figuring out that strategy for you. You can do drafts in here. With Sprout Social, it does automatically post to Instagram, which is another bonus. So it will actually post whatever post is here to your Instagram account.

Hootsuite

The second tool I want to show you is called Hootsuite. Hootsuite has a free version and a paid version. And I believe it’s still free for one or two social media platforms.

Hootsuite also schedules and posts directly to Instagram, which is great, because Instagram I feel is the social media platform that is the most manual because they didn’t have a scheduling tool before. So in here, you’ll have streams, which I really like how these streams.

Besides the reporting of Sprout Social, I love Hootsuite as a overview piece, because I can see what posts have gone out, what mentions people have mentioned us in, what activity, if people have posted to our page or what we’ve put up, what messages we have. And then we can also put on here our scheduled, unpublished, so you can go in here and again, write drafts and be able to see, organize everything in here, and it would show up like this for your scheduled ones.

So I really like Hootsuite because I do think it’s very simple to use. Again, you would go to New Post and you would type in your content, you can upload your image, videos. You’ll just click here to select the platform you want it to go to, the media you want, your text. And I really like this feature. So this is Hootsuite. Again, very simple, very user-friendly.

Buffer

The third one is called Buffer. I think they do have a free plan. It’s still very similar to the other two scheduling tools. It will tell you what you have going out. It can give you some analytics.

Now, with Buffer, it does not automatically post to Instagram. It will give you a notification on your mobile device that you have a post, and then you would need to go into your Instagram and push that post out.

So Buffer is a great tool, there’s a lot you can do with it. Like I said, it does give you some analytics. And we’ll look at the Instagram stories, strategy recommendations, and obviously that is for the paid package, but it does provide a lot of details.

When it comes to a publishing tool, it’s really a personal preference of which one aesthetically you like, which one will be the best for you and your team. And if you choose not to use a Google Doc or a Google Sheet to organize your posts and you choose to use just a platform like Hootsuite or Sprout Social, you want make sure, again, if it’s not just you doing your social media post, you want to make sure that it’s user-friendly for you and your team.

Bonus tool: Grammarly

One thing that I’ve also installed is a plugin called Grammarly.

Grammarly works on:

  • Google docs
  • Hootsuite
  • Buffer
  • Sprout Social

I like it because it  adds that extra layer of making sure that your posts are grammatically correct going out, which is important.  If you put in a misspelling, it usually highlights the spelling mistake.  I will go like, this doesn’t make sense, and then you can click on it, and then it will either to give you a word, “Hey, what did you mean to say here?”

Mistakes happen. It’s not a life or death thing. And I also think that with social media, having that strategy is really good because it will allow you to stop and think about what your plan is and paying attention to those details and making sure when you’re creating the images in Canva.

Final thoughts

We go back to that brand consistency that we’ve talked about. So this is just giving you the overview of your social media strategy, looking at thinking of a month at a time with your social media posts, how many times per week do you want to post, and then what’s the action you’re going to take to create those posts, and then be able to schedule them out?

There’s tons of other tools out there. These are just three scheduling tools that we have used and we enjoy using. And there’s a lot of different content strategies out there, but again, it’s finding the one that works best for you.

So if you need help creating that strategy and putting together that content calendar and getting one of these scheduling tools set up, we are here to help you.

Social Media Overview and Scheduling Tools

Social Media Overview and Scheduling ToolsSocial Media Overview and Scheduling Tools

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How to Maximize Your Social Media Presence During the Pandemic

How to Maximize Your Social Media Presence During the Pandemic

The unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak has holed up a huge chunk of the global population in their homes. It has created a healthcare crisis alongside an economic crisis. Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to say when the COVID-19 outbreak will end.

With emotions high, it is important now more than ever to put extra thought into what messages you share with your target audience.

Here are 6 ways healthcare providers can maximize their social presence during the COVID-19 crisis.

Educate your audience

Studies suggest that nearly 66% of internet users get their news online, specifically from social media.

Information is powerful and can help save people’s lives, especially during this pandemic.

COVID-19 cases have surged across the globe, so does the number of people searching for information about the virus. People need answers to questions like:

  • What are the symptoms of COVID-19?
  • How will I know when it is time to seek help at a hospital?
  • Should I stay home if the symptoms are minor?
  • Where can I get tested?
  • How do I avoid infecting others?

As a healthcare professional, you have enormous potential to educate your community. Your first step would be to provide answers to combat those concerns. Write a blog or record a video, and then post it on your social media page.

Beyond the fact that it is the right thing to do, sharing valuable, accurate information can help you grow your authority and build your organization’s thought leadership.

Counteract misinformation

Living in the digital world, information is just a mouse-click away. This free information age is a good thing. Unfortunately, false information is rampant, especially on social media. Some people who see them may think what they are reading is actually true, and that could be harmful. Worse, people are sharing “fake news” to their family and friends.

In a step in the right direction, WHO has launched a chatbot on Facebook Messenger to combat COVID-19 misinformation. The WHO Health Alert was developed in an effort to provide instant and accurate information about COVID-19. This movement aims to help people understand the facts related to the disease, protect themselves from COVID-19, and prevent its spread.

Counteract misinformation by sharing factual, accurate information about what is currently known about COVID-19. Another option is to share blog posts from trusted sources such as the CDC and WHO.

Encourage social distancing

Despite the surge of COVID-19 cases across the globe, a lot of people still underestimate the seriousness of the virus.

At this point in time, people’s safety is a top priority. You can use social media to help people understand that this is absolutely serious. Globally, more than 2.25 million people have been diagnosed with the virus, and more than 170,000 have died.

Use your voice to convince people to comply with social distancing, stay at home, and consequently help flatten the curve.

Take every opportunity to engage

With COVID-19 sending people indoors for more hours than they’re used to, many of them are relying on social media to stay in touch with family and friends, consume news, and entertainment.

Your fans and followers are spending more time online than they ever have before, and you want to stay connected to them. Take this opportunity to engage with your audience and deepen your relationship with them.

Social media is a great place to start a conversation, inspire, and spread the good news. Get in front of the camera and talk to your audience. People need hope. They want to see that there is a reason to smile. We all know that it is a difficult time, but you want to continue to uplift and inspire your followers.

By answering questions and concerns, as well as providing updates about patient recoveries and treatment options, you are acting as a resource to those who are anxious and could use some extra help to get through this difficult time.

You still have to comply with HIPAA

There are no dedicated HIPAA social media rules. But as a medical practitioner, you still have to comply with HIPAA regulations.

You must protect the privacy of your patients at all times. That means you should never include information that can be used to identify individual’s patients or their medical records. This includes name, photos, date of birth, medical data, social security number, etc.

Consider telemedicine

Living under lockdown conditions while a pandemic encircles the globe can be difficult. As basic supplies go short and some healthcare professionals get diverted to COVID-19 wards, some patients are struggling to get treatment.

Integrating telemedicine to your practice means being able to see patients who need routine checkups without risking a visit to a medical office. Instead of leaving the house and sitting in a waiting room full of other vulnerable patients, patients can get the care they need at the comfort of their homes.

How to Maximize Your Social Media Presence During the Pandemic

How to Maximize Your Social Media Presence During the PandemicHow to Maximize Your Social Media Presence During the Pandemic

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Why Digital Marketing is Essential for Healthcare

Why Digital Marketing is Essential for Healthcare

It is simply not possible to run a business without marketing irrespective of the niche you are attached to. People only buy products and services from a brand when they know that it exists. Healthcare is not an exception and interaction with current / new patients is needed. The end to end process of marketing is not the same which it was five to ten years back. This is the digital marketing era and people use the internet to follow up on everything. Online trend for buying products / offered services is increasing and people want to make every purchase from the comfort of their home.

Here are some core factors which show why digital marketing plays a strong important role in the healthcare business.

1.    In-depth patient analytics

If you are a part of the health industry, you would be concentrating on a certain sector. For instance, if you run a company that produces oxygen masks, the targeted patients would be people suffering from lung disorders and asthma. However, when it comes to offering correct treatment options, accurate diagnosis is highly important.

For instance, if you are infected with cancer, the treatment would be prescribed after your medical details are interpreted through health calculators. These online tools come in handy as they assess the medical condition of patient on behalf of key parameters. How can you access these tools? You can search for them online and several options would be shown. One of these websites that offers quality health calculators is Calculators.tech.

Apart from core medical diagnosis through online tools, digital marketing contributes majorly towards patient analytics. For instance, by using a keyword planning tool, you can see what people requiring medical assistance are searching for when they end up on your website. This would provide an insight about who searches for the services you offer. By using keyword optimization techniques, you can get more searches successfully directed.

2.    Catering to online health care requirements

Healthcare companies and hospitals have changed the way they deal with patients. Everything is accessed and used online. For instance, is someone has fever, he would browse a health app or search for an online medical center. These days, hospitals store the patient data through EMR (electronic medical records) on cloud based servers so that they can be accessed at anytime from anywhere.

The important thing is making your patients know what you are offering in terms of care? Digital marketing is the best way to accomplish this goal since people access websites and social media pages to gather information. Thus, healthcare companies have to be sure that all their services are known. It is important to understand that most patients have the opinion that a lot of difference does not exist between heath care providers. For them, every brand does nothing unique but produce treatment options.

3.    Working on specific health sectors through digital promotion

The human body requires medical treatment for different areas. Someone who is suffering from cancer would get in touch with a company that specializes in making related drugs. How would the patient know which health care provider to select? He would select an option which is popular and a lot of people know about it.

If you are specializing in a certain category of services, through digital marketing, you would be able to each the desired audience. To sell medical products, you should know who the potential buyers will be. This task is achieved through effective digital promotion. For instance, you can create social media posts regarding a new vaccine for Hepatitis. People who would be interested will get in touch with you and generate queries. This will provide you with details about who wants to buy the vaccine. In addition to that, you would know about the medical profiles of people who need it.

4.    Reach patients on a global scale

A lot of healthcare companies operate globally and wish reach people residing in different locations. Medical products are meant to treat diseases and all categories are not available in each country. Consider that someone living in Africa is suffering from a unique form of eczema and there is no treatment drug available there. How would that person reach you if you have a product to handle this issue?  It is obvious that he would not roam in different countries to see which health companies can fulfill his need.

  • A lot of people opt for online ordering of medicines. In such cases, healthcare brands that have a strong digital marketing strategy prove to be successful. For instance, if a company has a good informative website ranked on the first page, getting orders from different parts of the world will not be a problem.
  • Why is digital promotion better than using conventional standard marketing methods to reach patients? The reason is the set of practices which people follow to find medical services. No one has the time to read through books and medical journals to see what’s available. These days, people even use Google to know about pain killers. If a healthcare firm has all its produces properly categorized and listed, people would not have to spend time on unnecessary searching. In a nutshell, effective digital marketing helps in understanding the needs of the patients and entertaining them in a timely manner.

5.    The best way to gather patient requirements quickly

Marketing a product / set of services digitally works well because it is quick and potential patients are reached in a very fast way. In addition to that, the response from them is fast as well.  Someone who is interested in surgical instruments would get in touch with you by dropping a message on your Facebook account if the page provides relevant information. Hence, this form of marketing produces much quicker results than promoting products through paper brochures.

Conclusion

Digital marketing has changed the face of product promotion and is a necessity for all sectors. Healthcare is definitely not an exception in this case.  Companies dealing in these products have to know about the targeted patients. These days, the face of any service provider is the website and social media presence it has. If someone wants to select a healthcare brand, he would glance at the top rated websites. In this case, the top rated links would do the job.

There are several parameters which show why it has a major impact on the health sector. For instance, it helps in promoting EMR services. The most reputed healthcare companies store these records on cloud based servers so that they can be retrieved without any obstacle.

 

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Top 6 Telehealth Software of 2020

Top 6 Telehealth Software of 2020

Over the last decade, telehealth has gained much traction on a global scale. It is quickly becoming a pillar of modern healthcare and is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years.

Through telehealth, patients are given the option to consult a healthcare provider at the comfort of their home. This translates to happier patients, more revenue for your practice, and improved workflows that save you time. In order to facilitate these virtual visits, you will need an intuitive interface and a secure system.

What is telehealth software?

Telehealth software is the platform used by healthcare providers to provide remote clinical healthcare when they cannot meet in person. Through this software, healthcare becomes more accessible and cost-effective.

Telehealth software is not just a simple tool. Healthcare providers will need a secure portal where they can conduct remote patient examination, collect data, as well as store, share, and analyze confidential medical information and records.

There are literally hundreds of HIPAA-compliant telehealth solutions in the market. Use this as a guide to selecting the best telehealth software for your practice.

Doxy.me – https://doxy.me/

Pricing: Free for limited services

Professional: $35/month

Clinic: $50/month

Doxy.me is safe, simple, and secure platform that lets physicians meet with patients remotely. The cloud-based system can be accessed via any web browser or smarthpones.

Simple, accessible, and free of charge, doxy.me is on a mission to make telemedicine simple and easy for you.

Features include:

  • Free for all to use
  • Business Associate Agreement (BAA) included on all accounts, even the free version
  • High quality audio and video
  • Accessible from anywhere – desktop, laptop, and mobile devices
  • No download required
  • HIPAA, GDPR, PHIPA/PIPEDA & HITECH compliant

Healthie – https://gethealthie.com/

Pricing: Beginnings: $29/month

Small practice: $89/month

Practice Plus: $129/month

Group Practice: $149/month

Organization: Custom

Healthie was built specifically for nutritionists, dieticians, health coaches, and other wellness professionals. It is a web and mobile platform that allows nutrition and wellness professionals run their business and collaborate with their clients. It includes core business features such as scheduling, client education, charting, bills and payments, virtual care and more.

Healthie has all the functionality you need to run and grow your nutrition and wellness business in one software. No more cobbling together different tools.

Features include:

  • Access from any device – laptop, desktop, mobile phones, and tablet PCs
  • Range of customization and white-labeling options
  • Integration resources to fit your specific needs
  • HIPAA and PCI-compliant security
  • Extensive support and resources

Practice Better – https://practicebetter.io/

Pricing: Sprout Plan: Free

Starter Plan: $19

Professional Plan: $49

Plus Plan: $79

Team Plan: $135

Practice Better is a complete, secure cloud-based practice management platform for health and wellness professionals. It is packed with features designed to relieve health and wellness professionals of burdensome adminstrative tasks.

It saves you hours of work, so you can help more reach their health goals. With Practice Better, you can manage your professional recommendations from one secure place.

Features include:

  • Telehealth video chat
  • Record and manage sessions
  • Uncompromising security
  • 24/7 access to files and records
  • Branding and customization
  • Automate tasks and appointment reminders
  • Secure chat and instant alerts

Simple Practice – https://www.simplepractice.com/

Pricing: Essential Plan: $39/ month

Professional Plan: $59

With Simple Practice, you get a secure, fully integrated video solution. Your client communication, notes, calendar, and billing are combined in one system. That means, you’ll have more time seeing your clients, getting paid, and growing your business.

Features include:

  • HIPAA compliant
  • Conduct secure video appointments with your clients
  • Free telehealth resources
  • Automated billing and insurance processing
  • Paperless notes and documentation
  • Share videos, goal tracking, worksheets, and more from your screen
  • Start a video call from anywhere, on any device

Chiron Health – https://chironhealth.com/

Pricing: Independent: $150/month

Enterprise: Need to request quote

Chiron Health is a powerful telehealth software solution that is designed for practices of all sizes.  The system makes it easy to successfully implement a telehealth program in your practice with simple patient features, streamlined workflows, and customized plans. It allows users to schedule appointments with patients based on their availability, updates practitioner calendar.

Chiron Health also offers eligibility checks to verify informed consent documentation and insurance information.

Features include:

  • Streamlined patient workflow
  • HIPAA-compliant
  • Signed BAA for each client
  • Custom patient marketing
  • Patient notifications
  • Co-pay collection

swyMed – http://swymed.com/

Pricing: Not available on the website

swyMed is a patented telehealth software that is designed for community paramedicine programs, emergency response encounters, home and hospital health monitoring.

swyMed’s patented software overcomes traditional connectivity issues. It allows hopitals to use their medical expertise in the ambulance and at the scene of an emergency by delivering reliable, real-time video telemedicine, even in low bandwidth areas.

Features include:

  • Community paramedicine made easy
  • Extend the reach of your hospital
  • Reliable, real-time video telemedicine
  • Connects specialist and patients in live video
  • HIPAA compliant and fully secure
  • Home health solutions

Final thoughts

Considering how much traction telehealth is gaining during the current pandemic, it is important to choose a software that works for your patients and the specialty you practice. The right telehealth software has the power to change the way you provide healthcare for the better.

If you need help finding the right teleheatlh software or you’re interested in integrating telehealth into your practice, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are here to help.

We’d love to offer a free 30-minute consultation call to discuss the ins and outs of implementing a telehealth feature into your practice.

Top 6 Telehealth Software of 2020

Top 6 Telehealth Software of 2020Top 6 Telehealth Software of 2020

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5 Things You Can Do to Increase Your Online Marketing at This Time

5 Things You Can Do to Increase Your Online Marketing at This Time T

Today, I want to talk about five different things you can be doing right now with all this extra time we have on our hands.

Most of us are working from our home offices and trying to move our businesses from an offline to an online service, and that could be a little difficult. We’ve talked a little bit about different things that you can do to help make that transition a little bit easier. And today I just want to give you five more things that you, guys, can be doing at this time to stay top of mind with your patients and keep your marketing going.

Blogs

So, the first thing is the blogs. Usually, blogging is something that gets put on the back burner because we’re so busy. We don’t have the time to sit down and write blogs. Maybe we’re not natural writers, it’s not something we really enjoy doing. And I understand that I am not a natural writer. It’s hard for me to sit down and write a 3000-word blog post. One really cool tool that we have discovered, and we use all the time, is called Scribie. And I’ll put the link below.

This is great because it allows you to do a video recording, just like this, and you can send in the audio file or the video file to Scribie, and they do a transcription of that file. This is a great way because now that video that you did acts as two benefits. You have the video for YouTube, but then you have the content for your blog that’s going to help with your SEOs, so it’s serving dual purposes.

Now, the other thing, if you have an audio file or an audio recording on your phone or different device, then you are able to upload that MP4 file to Scribie as well.

We use Zoom to record the videos, and then we upload the audio file because, with Zoom, it provides you both the video and audio, so that’s perfect. And so I think MP4 is video and MP3 is the audio. So, if you’re just doing an audio recording on your phone, just then upload that MP3 file into Scribie, and it will transcribe your blog. And for fairly reasonable.

Most blog posts are under that $10 mark to transcribe, and then you need to edit them, make sure your grammar is correct, and then you can put them into your blog post and format them with your header tags and your images. This saves a lot of time. This is something that we’ve really been able to focus on, is doing one to two video blogs per week and really making sure that we’re working on that content strategy. That’s number one.

Telehealth

Number two is really considering implementing telehealth. We have recently done a blog on telehealth, and what it is, and how to implement it, but now this is becoming a little bit more of a normal thing. Y

Now that your patients can’t see you face-to-face in your office, telehealth is a great way for them to see you face-to-face via video, whether that is through Zoom or a different tool used for the health care industries. So, really thinking of how can you implement telehealth into your practice to be able to see your patients, continue the business, and make sure that you’re giving them that peace of mind.

Videos

I know you probably are so tired of us saying “videos, videos, videos,” but really right now, your audience, your patients, they’re turning to social media more now than ever, and it’s important that they see your face.

As their health care practitioner in whatever field that is, it’s important that they see you, that they hear you. That gives them peace of mind that things are going to be okay. And I’m not saying that every video you do needs to be around the topics of COVID-19 or whatever is going on, but I would just educate them. Maybe if you’re working with kids, you can do some different cooking, some different recipes that they can try. Since the kids are home, you can give some study tips, maybe some art tips, nutrition tips, things that your audience can find valuable. And that you get creative with your videos.

If your staff is working from home, maybe do a weekly behind the scenes, like “Hey, this is Nurse Becky and this is her dog, Sam,” or whatever it may be. Get creative with your videos, and really allow this time of vulnerability to be there for your patients. You can ask for videos from them, too. Have a contest of the most creative art project or recipe concoction, whatever that may be.

If you’re working with elders, maybe you’re putting out crossword puzzles or word searches, things to keep them active. And that’s where I feel videos are great. They’re building that relationship on a much deeper level.

Ads

People may be wanting to cut costs right now because of that uncertainty, which we understand. One thing that you do not want to cut right now is your marketing.

It’s so important to make sure that you have your Facebook ads running, you have your Google ads running. And maybe you cut back that budget a little bit, but you still are doing business as normal. And especially if you are starting to implement telehealth, that maybe something that you really want to put a little bit of ad spend behind to promote because now you’re able to reach more people and help even more people, rather than just the people in your demographic area or geographical area.

Facebook ad campaigns, you want to make sure you leave them on, that you’re re-marketing people. And that’s something that we can help you with. If you’re confused about how to get that setup or how that works for your practice, we’re more than happy to help you with that, but make sure you have your ads running.

Patient check-ins

Lastly, take this time and do some patient check-ins. Go through your charts. If you haven’t seen anyone in a while, or you have a client that may be a higher risk or you are worried about, just do a simple check-in. Maybe even handwritten notes. I know that sometimes it takes a little bit of extra time even if you put together a newsletter, and you had your patients the newsletter just updating them.

I think it’s really important to build relationships and community right now, and make sure that you are again staying top of mind because that’s what your patients need right now. And so just doing that patient check-in, whether it’s individual… And you may have thousands of patients, so checking in with each of them won’t work. But if you can do a newsletter, where it is individualized to them, and you could say “Go do a video,” but just letting them know that you’re thinking of them and that you’re here for them, and maybe giving them some tips that you can help them, you again maybe introducing the telehealth series and letting them know that that’s an option.

Final thoughts

So, think of your target market and how you can utilize this time in a different way to focus on your marketing and being able to reach more people.  We may have extra time on our hands and most of us are, like I said, working from home.

So If you need help with any of these things, we would love to schedule a consultation with you, head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com, click on FREE consultation, and we will talk to you soon.

 

 

5 Things You Can Do to Increase Your Online Marketing at This Time

5 Things You Can Do to Increase Your Online Marketing at This Time5 Things You Can Do to Increase Your Online Marketing at This Time

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What is Telehealth and How It Can Benefit Healthcare Practices

What is Telehealth and How It Can Benefit Healthcare Practices

Over the last two decades, our lives have been slowly taken over by technology. From mobile communication to bills payment to food ordering, people are constantly looking for ways to simplify their lives.

Today, patients crave the same type of convenience when it comes to healthcare. They want an easier way to reach their provider and stay engaged in the medical process without exhausting themselves and their time. Healthcare providers, on the other hand, are also struggling to effectively reach patients in rural areas. This is where telehealth comes in.

What is Telehealth?

Telehealth is the use of digital information and communication technology to deliver healthcare, health education, and other health-related services remotely.

Mobile health apps, remote patient monitoring, and live video conferencing are examples of technologies used in telehealth.

Benefits of Telehealth Program

If you’re wondering whether adding telehealth to your practice is worth the time and effort, keep reading. Here are some of the top reasons for adopting telehealth for your practice.

Expand your patient base

Telehealth can overcome barriers to health services caused by the distance between a healthcare provider and a patient. It allows physicians to connect with patients outside of their geographic region.

In today’s healthcare world, convenience is key. Adding telehealth to your practice makes you more accessible to patients and give your practice a competitive advantage over similar practices in your area.

Elderly, working parents, patients from remote areas, and those who are less ambulatory during post-operative recovery can receive the best possible care even when hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities are hundreds of miles away from their home. The convenience it affords can help you retain current patients and attract new ones.

Saves patient’s time and money

Patients in rural areas need to travel for several hours just to reach specialists in urban areas, not to mention the time spent hanging around in the waiting room. The cost of travel, childcare, parking, and taking time from work can easily add up. Some patients would skip treatment entirely due to the burden of excessive travel.

Telehealth is a cost-efficient alternative to in-office visits, especially for patients with a chronic condition that requires frequent appointments. It allows patients to receive care in their own home instead of traveling long distances. That means patients save on time as well as transportation costs and child care.

With telehealth, appointments can be scheduled before or after work or during lunch hours.  No more hanging around in waiting rooms. No need to worry about taking time off from work either.

Stay connected with patients during challenging times

As the number of COVID-19 cases skyrockets across the globe, people are asked to stay at home and maintain social distancing. But for patients with a pre-existing medical condition, doctor’s visits cannot be postponed indefinitely.

Since a telehealth visit can be done form the patient’s home, there is no risk of being exposed to the coronavirus or other pathogens. It keeps patients safe by keeping them out of doctor’s offices and emergency departments.

With the ease and convenience of telehealth, you can see your patients and provide follow-up visits, reinforcing treatment adherence, and offer specialty services during challenging times.

Integrating telehealth into your practice

Patients want the ease and convenience found in telehealth programs. In fact, one study revealed that 80% of patients want access to virtual care. Despite the increasing demand, many doctors are still reluctant to try telehealth in their practice.

Many healthcare providers are worried that telehealth is too complicated and time-consuming to implement in their already busy practices. But the truth is integrating telehealth into your practice doesn’t have to be complicated.

Review laws and policies

States have their own laws around telehealth licensing, consent, and reimbursement. Call your state medical board to determine what laws govern this service.

Make sure you have the right equipment

As mentioned above, telehealth uses telecommunications technology to provide healthcare from a distance. It is likely that you already have a computer, phone, and internet connection.

If you’re using a desktop computer, then you’ll need a webcam and microphone in order to do any sort of video conferencing. HIPAA-compliant software required for privacy and encryption should be installed on your computer or laptop.

Select a platform

Not all telehealth platforms are created equal. That said, it’s important to do your homework before choosing a telehealth platform.

Ease of use, reliability, and affordability are just some of the key factors to consider when selecting a platform. Also, it is vital to ensure that the platform is:

  • Integrated with your EHR solution
  • Secure and HIPAA compliant
  • Equipped with a method for verifying patient eligibility for reimbursement
  • Easy for staff and patients to use

Test it out

Once you have the technology set up, perform some trial runs. You want to make sure that you and the staff are comfortable and properly trained in using the technology. Otherwise, you won’t be able to use it effectively with your patients.

Encourage your staff to log in on the telehealth app and practice accepting and arranging visits. Get comfortable starting and ending calls, inviting others onto the platform, and adjusting audio and video. You can also try it out with a couple of patients and get feedback.

No matter how expensive your equipment or how reliable your software is, it won’t help your patients if your staff does not know how to use it.

Set-up your workflow

To prevent misunderstandings, make sure that all your staff is on the same page. Bring them up to speed and include them in your training and workflow discussions.

Start by asking these questions to ease telehealth into your workflow:

  • When will the visits occur?
  • Who will be involved in scheduling telehealth appointments? Who is responsible for coordinating follow-up care?
  • What information do you need to gather from the patient before a meeting?
  • How will you bill patients?

Market it to patients

Inform potential clients who may benefit from this kind of technology. Let them know that video visits are an option. Be sure to explain the advantages of telehealth and how it works.

You can post articles on your website, put up signage in your office or you can bring it up to patients during in-person visits.

What is Telehealth and How It Can Benefit Healthcare Practices

What is Telehealth and How It Can Benefit Healthcare Practices

What is Telehealth and How It Can Benefit Healthcare Practices

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Ty Allen SocialClimb Interview

Ty Allen Social Climb Interview

Today we’re going to be joined by Ty Allen, the CEO of SocialClimb. SocialClimb is Ty’s fourth successful business in the marketing and technology space. He is passionate about building systems that actually grow practices and improve patient experiences.

SocialClimb enables thousands of physicians to automatically attract new patients to their practices by building their online social reputations and automatically targeting ideal new patients. Delivering more than one million patient per customer interactions every month, SocialClimb helps practices transform themselves inside and out.

Ty and his wife have five beautiful daughters and live in Alpine, Utah. Ty enjoys golfing, and mountain biking, and we’re so excited for him to be joining us today as he shares insights into how your medical practice can benefit from reputation management, and reviews, and directory listings online.

In this interview we discuss:

  • Why reviews are so important for a medical practice
  • Where reviews should be posted (what directories are most important for healthcare)?
  • How can office administrators solicit reviews?
  • What technology exists for getting reviews?
  • Once you get a review, what should you do?

 Listen to the Medical Marketing Podcast:


Caitlin McDonald: Wonderful, thank you so much, Ty for joining us on our podcast today. To get started, we’d love to learn a little bit more about your story, and SocialClimb’s story.

Ty Allen: Great, thanks, Caitlin, I really appreciate the opportunity to participate in the podcast today, and maybe just to share a little bit about why we started SocialClimb and the reasons we’re so passionate about what we do for practices, is I think a great way to start.

So, my personal story behind this is six years ago, I was involved in an accident wherein I fractured my neck and at C4, and had a spinal cord injury. At the time of the injury, of course, I didn’t know what had really happened in my neck. The ambulance took me to the hospital, and the emergency room doctors did a great job, they quickly diagnosed my issue, and they knew that the fracture was there, and that I also had what is called a central cord syndrome.

And at that level in the neck, I was pretty lucky that I was still able to breathe. But when I first had been injured, I actually felt like I was a quadriplegic and then over the next half an hour, I started getting some sensation back and some functionality back, but I was actually in a lot of pain by the time they got me to the emergency room. So I remember vividly laying on a backboard after the doctors had gotten the diagnosis, and they came to me and said that my case was too complex for the small hospital that I’d been taken to and that I needed to either go to a larger hospital north of me or a larger hospital south of me, and the ER doctor said, “These are the names of the two physicians, spine surgeons, who are on call, one at each of the hospitals. I need you to choose which hospital, therefore which spine surgeon is going to do your surgery. You have five minutes to make that decision.”

And my wife was at the hospital at that time and I remember looking at her and neither of us had any idea how to make that decision. Eventually, we made the decision by asking a few other providers who were very reticent to give us any information, but we had to make a decision so we did. And in my process of rehab, so I had surgery, I went into a rehab process that… I was in the hospital for about a month, and went through inpatient and outpatient rehab and… And I’m doing very well today, in a large part to the great care that I received from a lot of providers

But there were probably eight to 10 decisions I had to make during that process about who would be my occupational therapist, who’d be my physical therapist, what inpatient facility would I have myself go to, what outpatient facilities would I use for rehab, who my rehab doctor would be, and just a lot of decisions that I just, as a consumer of Medical care, I did not have the data to make that decision.

So I realized, while, going through this process that there was a problem, that a lot of these practices and physicians don’t know how to tell their story in a way that consumers of medical care today can use it to find the right provider for them. So that’s where the genesis of SocialClimb came from.

We’re really passionate about helping providers, great providers, tell their story, and attract patients in the way that patients seek to find providers today. And that is the story behind SocialClimb. And again, it’s not a story I always tell every potential customer, or every person I talk to, but it is the reason that I personally am so passionate about what we do.

 

Caitlin McDonald: What a powerful story, and thank you for sharing such a personal story about why you started SocialClimb. And as a consumer of healthcare and a marketing agency that helps healthcare practices, we know how important reputation management and reviews are as a way to build trust and really showcase your own medical practice story as a way to bring new patients in the door. Can you talk a little bit about why reviews and reputation management is so important for healthcare centers?

Why are Reviews and Reputation Management so Important for Healthcare Centers?

Ty Allen: Sure, yeah. One of the things that I learned pretty quickly is that I’m not unique in the way that I seek for care, when I wanna buy a product, I take my phone out and do a search. I go to Amazon or Google and I do a search. And I do the same thing for medical care. Today, it’s a great thing that now we have a lot of this data available to us online. But it wasn’t the case even six years ago, a lot of it wasn’t available

So getting a physician or practice’s data online in the right way, so getting the listings, the optimization of those listings, and the reviews from real patients out there is super critical because the next potential patient is simply gonna take their phone out and do a search, they’re gonna ask Google in most cases, “Where can I get help with problem X? Or where can I find a provider that can help me with problem Y?

And if those reviews from patients are not out there, and if those pages are not owned by you as a physician, you are not gonna show up. Even five or six years ago, most practices and physicians thought, “Look, all I gotta do is get a website set up. My website has to be great, it’s gotta be optimized.” And it’s not to say that websites are not still valuable, it’s just that so many patients today do a search, find a physician because of their reputation online, choose that physician, even make the call to the practice straight from that listing, having never gone to the practice’s website. So a website is still valuable. It’s just that there are so many other ways to now tell the story of the practice, and the physician online in ways that patients actually find… Help find your practice.

 

Caitlin McDonald: And then where should these reviews be posted? What types of directories should a medical practice make sure that they are on?

What Directories Should a Medical Practice Use?

Ty Allen: Great, great question. So four years ago, when we first started this, we saw a lot of emphasis on a lot of different platforms, right. You’d hear people say, “There’s 70 different platforms that you should put your listings on and make sure they’re all correct.” And at the time that may have been a bit true. But today it’s coalescing. So we really think that Google is 80% of the value for a practice. Google is the focus. So, Google My Business pages for each doctor and each office location. In fact, if a physician practices in multiple locations, they really should have a Google My Business page in each location where they practice if they’re more than five miles apart, because local search is what’s going on here. When Google does a local search, it’s very first local.

So a great reputation downtown for a physician does not help somebody in the suburbs find that physician, but if that physician works two days a week out in the suburbs, having a strong reputation out there is really important on Google. Now, Google used to kind of be just the judge.

By that I mean you would do a search and Google would say, “Well, HealthGrades ranks this physician this way, and Facebook does this, and Vitals says this, and RateMDs says this, and Facebook says, or Yelp says this.”

And so, that summation of data from all those other areas would pull into the search for Google. We’ve seen a trend over the last few months, or… Sorry, a year, year and a half that Google is now the judge and the jury. So, Google seems to trust its own data on its own listing’s pages for doctors and practices, more than it trusts that third party data. So when a practice has done a good job helping Google understand that it does find work for patients by getting reviews from patients and optimizing pages on Google, then the Google results reflect that.

So we would say Google, number one. Facebook has some really interesting ways, with Facebook… The way that your patients can go on and they don’t necessarily leave reviews in a traditional way, that they are kind of recommendations. Yelp is often important. HealthGrades is very important. So, probably Google, Facebook, HealthGrades, Vitals and Yelp are the top platforms, that we see really having an influence on how patients find physicians.

 

Caitlin McDonald: So you mentioned Google has become judge and the jury for their own organization of those listings, do you feel as though they take a look at on­site SEO or is it really just looking at your Google My Business listing, seeing if that’s optimized and kind of seeing what reviews you have there?

What Do You Need to Have on Google My Business Listing to Stand Out as a Medical Center?

Ty Allen: Yeah, we see that they do both, actually. So we see that the link from your Google My Business page where you’re connecting basically to a doctor’s profile or to a practice’s profile on the website, if that link goes to a page, that has the same keywords that are in the doctor’s profile and in the doctor’s category on the Google My Business page, we see those pages rank more highly. So it is still very important to have a highly ranking website that you can link to from the Google My Business pages, so that the page, the Google page ranks higher, and if you get those keyword… Kind of that keyword triangle set up correctly, if the category chosen on the Google My Business page, those same keywords from that category on the physician’s profile page on the website, and those keywords also included in the business description on the physician’s Google My Business page, we see a nice synergy there that causes Google My Business pages to rank higher.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Okay, that makes sense. I can see how it all works together there. Now, are you recommending that in addition to having the medical practice have a Google My Business page, that each of the physicians have their own Google My Business page, as well?

Physician Google My Business Listings

Ty Allen: We do recommend that, yes. We’ve seen policy change from Google on that, and we’ve seen it become a really valuable way for a practice to attract patients. Now sometimes a practice doesn’t wanna do that and they wanna just promote their practice as a brand and they don’t really want their physicians to be front and center, and sometimes they’re worried that those physicians will then take that reputation and leave, and it doesn’t strengthen the partnership in the practice, but honestly, it’s more valuable in the search process if a practice will embrace the concept of each of the providers, each of the doctors, we don’t typically recommend this for PAs or nurse practitioners or even PTs, but the doctors themselves, having their own Google My business page, as well as the practice having a Google My Business page, that gives that practice more footprint in the market to attract patients and making those pages highly optimized is also very important.

So when we say that, we believe there are 10 key components on a Google My Business page that really help it rank highly, so when our platform actually sinks a Google page in, it runs a scorecard analysis on each of those components, so the optimization score, and that is completely independent of the number of reviews. We actually see that a page can ranks more highly without any reviews if all the components on a Google My business page are properly configured. Then, of course, you add reviews to that, you add postings, you answer and respond to questions that get posted by patients, you reply to reviews, you do all those great things on a Google My Business page, and it just moves it higher and higher and higher, but the first step is claim a page for each doc in each location, optimize those pages, and then start the process of building a reputation.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Great, so it sounds as though an office administrator has quite a bit of work or they can turn to a service like yours to help them with this. So, what could an office administrator do to make sure that that they are soliciting reviews from patients?

How to Solicit Reviews from Patients

Ty Allen: Yeah, so the basics, and as you said, this can all be done manually. If an administrator has the time, they can go and claim the pages, go through each of the pages and get the pictures, the configuration, the hours, the description, the links to the website, get all of that stuff done, that’s all very doable. You can use Google’s interfaces to do that, to manage these Google My Business pages. And then once you’ve done that, you can say print a little card and hand it out to each of the patients. And on that card it has a link that they could type into their phone or into their computer and click that link and go out and leave a review for the doctor.

All very doable, and something that we highly recommend practices consider doing. Typically what we find is most practice managers or marketing people, or front desk people, and these practices are already overworked. So our approach to this is to automate all of that process. So I’ve already talked through claiming the page, optimizing the page, all those things, but let’s talk about how the best way to get patients to leave feedback.

So we’ve seen groups do everything from putting a computer in the lobby and asking patients to walk up to that computer, log in to their personal accounts on that computer and then leave a review for a doctor, to some groups, even as I said, handing out a card and hoping patients will take the card home and type that long URL in, and then get to a review page. So, most of those things can work, they’re just not as effective as actually sending a message, automated message, via text to each of the patients. So we actually recommend a text message that goes to the patients that has a nice link on it, a picture from the doctor, and an invitation for the patient to easily click the link, leave a review, typically a patient can do that in about 30 seconds.

The beauty of that process versus the other two that I just talked about, is those patients receive that text message or email on their phone typically, and when they click the link to leave feedback on Google or Facebook or one of these platforms they’re typically are already authenticated to Google, maybe they already have the Facebook app on their phone, that it opens into Facebook. So make it so that it’s so easy that they could do it in less than one minute, and then you actually get in a high enough response rate that you can really move the needle on the reputation.

There’s a couple of other problems I would point out when you try to do it more manually, is you hand somebody a card. It’s a complex URL, the chances of them actually doing it go way down, they’re not gonna type that in and go through that process. And if you ask them to do it in your lobby on a computer, they’ve gotta remember their passwords to log in, then you’ve gotta remember to make sure that that thing gets logged out so you’re not sharing personal data, so the next patient who might walk up to it. But then the worst thing about that option is if you’re making those reviews, many of them from the same computer, on the same IP address, the platforms start to throw those away, the review platforms start to ignore those because they know they’re coming from one IP address and they think they’re fraudulent. So, the most efficient thing to do is to get a message to a patient, on their phone that they can easily click and move through the review process as quickly as possible.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Now SocialClimb as a platform, this is exactly what you do. We have some clients who utilize SocialClimb and it is very straightforward, and very easy for patients to leave those reviews. Honestly, within a couple of hours of turning on the packages with you, we have as marketing managers of Google My Business pages, we have seen reviews come in, when prior to that, maybe one per month would come in.

And it really is making that process easy and simple for the patients as they’re leaving the practice, they get that text message notification. It’s top of mind and that ease of use is just right in their face. So it does make it very easy and streamlined to get those reviews.

 

Ty Allen: Well that’s great to hear that it’s worked well for your client like that. We see that with a lot of groups and as you pointed out, previous to making an effort like this, to invite patients, you typically only get one or two reviews, very few a month, and really unfortunately, they’re often the patient who wants to complain. So, what we’re really doing is enabling that silent majority of happy patients who walk away from a cycle of care with a practice, or a physician, who are very happy, right, they’re the happiest of the patients, but they don’t turn around and say thank you.

They don’t think about it, they’re not passionate about saying, “Thank you,” like a person who’s mad is passionate about saying they’re mad. So what we’re really trying to do is get 10%, that’s the goal, 10% of the happy patients, and we’re asking every patient whether they’re happy or not. Let’s talk about that in just a second. But, get 10% of those happy patients to turn around and say thank you by leaving a social media review for that practice or that doctor. And that adds up really fast and really makes a practice look… Or a physician look great online, because they typically are making 99% of their patients extremely happy.

And we ask those questions, when we invite a patient, we do not gate them. We don’t say, “Hey if you’re happy, leave a public review, if you’re unhappy, don’t do anything or leave a private review.” We ask the question per the policy of most of these review platforms to just invite everyone to leave feedback. The reality is most unhappy patients, given a chance, if you’re asking them how their experience was, they’ll actually turn around and wanna tell you without giving you a bad name online.

So, our process is, “Would you please leave feedback at these public review sites?” If they say yes, they’re taken to the public review sites, if they say no, they’re given an opportunity to say something that comes right back to the practice. So that’s the way to appropriately invite patients to leave feedback, and we typically see that great care providers get great reputations online through this process.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Now, one thing that across all industries, by opening up yourself to getting reviews online do is that you are opening yourself to get bad reviews. And one thing that’s always good to do, especially in the medical industry, is to think about what those responses are going to be for those negative reviews as well as positive reviews as commenting back on any review that you get can help show that you are also an active participant, and really care about your patients. Do you have any tips or insights about how to go about formulating those responses to negative reviews specifically?

 

Ty Allen: Yes. So your point is very, very accurate from my opinion. You wanna respond to any and all reviews. Really, we recommend that a practice responds to all the positive reviews, thank those patients. That is a courteous thing to do in normal human interactions. It’s also a very positive thing to do from Google’s perspective. If you’re getting lots of reviews and you’re actually responding to the reviews, you actually then rank higher. Getting a lot of reviews is great but getting a lot of reviews, that you respond to seems to cause your pages to rank even higher. So, our positive reviews, it’s an easy thing. We actually have a suite of replies, both positive and negative, that are built into our platform that are HIPAA compliant, that we recommend that a practice use.

So now let’s talk about negative feedback. So when you do get negative feedback, our suggestion is to think of it in two ways. First off, you wanna get this conversation offline. So you wanna reply in a respectful way that asks the patient to contact you privately so you can have that conversation offline, and you wanna do that so that everyone can see that you’re proactively and quickly responding to negative feedback. So, you don’t wanna wait a month, you don’t even wanna wait a day. If you get a negative review, you wanna reply within minutes to hours, and then you wanna get that conversation offline, and that helps the next patient who comes along that looks at your feedback then understands that sometimes things do happen

Something out of your control can happen but you care as a practice, and so you respond quickly. And then when you get that patient into a service recovery opportunity, which is what we recommend how you think of these, we actually have a process in our platform that makes it easy for you to track what you’ve done there, make notes on it, share it with your team and even build a little process around it, so that everybody in the organization understands what you got feedback on that didn’t work and that kind of socializes within your organization and also shows how many of those have been resolved.

So when the physician looks through all the feedback, positive and negative, that’s come in for them throughout that month or that week, they can see that anything negative has actually been dealt with or is in the process of being dealt with. So you have several different constituents you’re worried about here. Of course, you are worried about the patient, and responding to them, but as an administrator, you also want to make sure that your physician understands what’s going on, the feedback that’s being brought in, and that you’re actually dealing with it, and kind of solving those issues for them.

 

Caitlin McDonald: That’s such great insights and information there. Ty I see that we are running short on time. Are there any other tips or pieces of advice that you would like to give to our listeners today?

 

Ty Allen: Yeah, actually there is. So we’ve spent this time, it’s been great talking about the importance of building a practice or a physician’s ratings and reviews, and how that can then help them be found more easily online, and that that data is clear. We have thousands of physicians using our platform who see a significant uptick in their visibility and inbound calls and clicks. But to me, the most exciting thing is once a physician or a practice has built a great reputation online, there’s now a new emerging option that lets you take that reputation and easily leverage it to target more specifically, the patient types that you want in the areas where you want them.

That might be a topic of conversation for another podcast at some point, but what I’m really talking about is the ability that Google has recently made available to take a Google My Business page and convert it into an ad that carries that doctor’s great reputation into a targeted ad campaign that can easily be delivered into certain zip codes, or certain cities to go get the patients that a physician wants as they grow their practice.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Yes, and that actually would make an excellent future podcast. We truly believe in the Google Ads interface, and their ability to optimize on the different ad sets and utilizing Smart Campaigns to really tie into the the Google My Business listing. So I would love to tap into your insights and your mind on that as well, and to hear how SocialClimb is able to utilize Google Ads campaigns as a way to further reach the right people online. I think that that’s very powerful for medical practices, and again, it shows how you can get all of these different tools working together to reach new patients and get new patients in the door.

 

Ty Allen: Yeah, awesome, let’s find a time to have that discussion at another time. I really appreciate the opportunity to have been here today, though.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Wonderful, well, Ty, you have shared such great insight talking about why it’s important to be on different directories and solicit reviews, what tools and technologies are out there, as well as what to do once you do get a positive and a negative review. So we really appreciate your time today. Listeners, if you are interested in learning how SocialClimb can benefit your practice, head on over to their website, SocialClimb.com. Ty, you have social media sites as well so I’m sure they can jump on over to Facebook to learn more about your business and the great work that you’re doing.

 

Ty Allen: Great, thank you.

 

Caitlin McDonald: Wonderful thank you so much!

 

Ty Allen Social Climb Interview

 

 

Ty Allen Social Climb Interview

Ty Allen Social Climb Interview

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6 Strategies to Increase Patient Referrals

6 Killer Strategies to Increase Patient Referral

In today’s competitive healthcare environment, it is important to have a strong patient referral base. As a healthcare provider, you are probably aware of how powerful referrals can be for generating new patients and growing your practice.

When done right, a patient referral program can add years of income to your practice. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices your office should maintain to get new patients through the door.

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Build a strong relationship with referring practices

Professional referrals are the lifeblood of every healthcare organization. Building and nurturing those relationships is essential for bringing in new patients.

Always keep the communication lines open with the referring practice and let them know what steps you will take to address the patient’s condition. Email them, call them from time to time, or arrange lunch appointments with them. Quick updates to the referring physician about the condition and progress of the patient tells them that you are committed to patient care.

Don’t forget to thank anyone who refers a patient to your practice. This will motivate your colleague to refer you more often.

Improve customer experience

Not all referrals come from other practices. Happy patients are more likely to give you good feedback as well as refer you to their family and friends.

To create a memorable experience, it’s important to get your internal house in order so it’s ready to welcome new patients to the practice. You want to ensure that patients feel comfortable and cared for, both in the reception area and exam room. You and your staff should pay close attention to the concerns and queries of your patients and make sure that they are cared for.

A percentage of your new patients should come from referrals by existing patients. If not, then you may need to address your customer service policies. Remember, unhappy patients won’t refer you to their family and friends. Worse, they’ll tell them to stay away.

Reach out on social media

Many patients turn to social networking sites to establish an ongoing relationship with their primary care physician.

The point of social media is to effectively reach your target audience and connect with them. It gives you a tremendous opportunity to interact with patients in ways that are not possible during appointments and consultations. This is your chance to talk to them and have a friendly relation with them.

Promote engagement by starting conversations on various health topics, providing healthcare tips, and alerting patients to new services and discounts you offer. Sharing your blog posts on social media is a great way to provide valuable healthcare information while driving patients to your website to learn more.

When done right, social media marketing can help you enhance your online reputation, solidify your brand, and bolster your authority among patients.

Be a thought leader

Most doctors go into medicine to help patients, not bask in the spotlight. But there is no denying that being a thought leader can help you attract new patients.

Being a thought leader in the healthcare industry requires lots of knowledge, effort, time, and desire to impact change. To achieve this status, you need to make your expertise and ideas known.

Write blog posts that are relevant to your practice, but don’t just write just to have content out there. Make sure that you produce quality content. But it shouldn’t stop at blogging. You can educate existing and potential patients on your healthcare practice by creating videos, podcasts, and newsletters. You can also offer speaking engagements at local hospitals.

Have a web presence

Many healthcare professionals feel as though their practice should be able to thrive on its own through referrals. But given the certainty of change in healthcare, it is important for healthcare providers to have a strong online presence.

Many patients will go online to acquaint themselves with the practice prior to making an appointment. Making a good first impression starts with a well-designed, patient-friendly website. Not only will it give potential patients an easy way to get to know you, but it also makes your practice look and feels engaging.

By having your credentials, education, services, and procedures on your website, you can help instill a sense of trust in your future patients.

Get more mileage from patient testimonials

Patients want to make sure that they receive care from the best doctors in their field. Testimonials can help build trust in your practice and offer validation for the quality of your services.

Tell your patients’ success stories in a way that people will take notice. Quotes and written testimonials can be powerful marketing tools, but videos can bring testimonials to life.

Short two-minute video testimonials will capture the attention of potential patients and drive more patients through the door. To get higher-impact testimonials, you can guide patients by asking leading questions. If you are an eye doctor, you may ask questions like “How has LASIK impacted your life?” or “Are you happy with the results?”

6 Killer Strategies to Increase Patient Referral

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Five Social Media Post Ideas for the Healthcare Industry

Five Social Media Post Ideas for the Healthcare Industry

In this video, we talk about how to keep that brand consistency on all platforms within your digital marketing strategy and what makes engaging social media content.
We understand that it can be difficult to figure out what to post about on social media and what your audience is looking for. We share 5 types of content you can create to build brand awareness and relationships with your patients.

Today, we’re talking about brand consistency and what type of social media content you should be posting.

Brand consistency and what type of social media content you should be posting

So let’s take a step back real quick, and let’s look at your digital marketing as a whole. Now, we’ve been talking a lot about video marketing, creating that content strategy, how to use Canvas for your images, how to use Instagram and Pinterest.

We cover a lot of topics, and being able to implement all of those is a lot. So looking at your digital marketing as a whole, so you have your blogging, you have your social media, you have your email marketing, you have your ad campaigns for Facebook and Google, you have your email marketing, you have your lead pages that go into your ad campaign, so you have all of these components, plus your website. So you have all these components that are tied in to your digital marketing strategy. And it’s not being a jack-of-all-trades, master of none; it’s becoming a master of all and being able to show that brand consistency on every single platform.

So as you are looking at when you write your blog post, the image that you create for your blog post should have the same thought and color scheme as the thumbnail image for your YouTube video, as the social media posts that are tying in to that blog or just all of your social media content. Everything should have the same look and feel. And this doesn’t mean using the same theme in Canvas for every single image, but it means having your brand identity. So looking at what are those brand fonts, what are those brand colors, what types of images are you wanting to use. This is something that really is a hard thing to overcome, especially in the healthcare industry, is using stock photos versus real photos. And if you are using photos from your center, from your patients, you need to make sure that you have the HIPAA-compliant form signed that they are okay with you using their photo, and that they’re okay with you using it on social media. They may just want to do a written testimonial, and they don’t want to have their image up. Some of them may not mind at all; some of them may say, “Okay, just get the side view,” so really making sure that it’s okay with your patients to use those photos and okay with your staff.

So, I think that, and we’ll get into this on the social media side, of what type of posts, but really showing that personality of your practice is really important. So using original photos, that is key, so that creates the brand consistency. And so, that leads me into what types of posts should you be putting up there for social media.

Here’s some two interesting facts:

That means your audience are looking at what you’re talking about, how often you’re talking about it, if it’s helping them, if they find it valuable, and that it’s a huge deciding factor for them if they’re going to call your clinic and come into your practice for treatment.

So, again, this kind of shows people will do business with people they know, like, and trust, and if they feel that they already have this relationship with the doctor and the staff, it makes it so much easier to build that relationship and that relationship loyalty. So I found that really interesting, how high those numbers were.

So let’s dive into the five social media post ideas for the healthcare industry.

 

Cause marketing

This is huge! You’re in the healthcare industry. You have to have a purpose behind what you do. Let’s say you’re a pediatrician, and your practice is, you see a lot of kids with type 1 diabetes. So maybe you partner up with Diabetes Association and you work with them on how to help kids with type 1 diabetes or type 2 diabetes.

Maybe you are an OB/GYN and your cause is to help premature babies, so you have a fund, you partner with somebody. So really showing that your office is more than just caring for your patients, you guys have a greater cause, you guys are supporting something.

Collaboration

So if you guys partner with a non-profit and maybe you donate services to them or you guys do community events together or a certain percentage of your proceeds goes back to that non-profit or however that works, but that cause marketing and collaboration is a really big piece of your social media strategy.

This shows your audience and your patients that you’re more than just a doctor, you’re more than just, “Okay, take this, do this, you’re fine.” You really care about the greater good. And I think that that’s really important to do.

Brand awareness

It’s important to showcase what you do as a practice. This can be the different services that you offer, maybe a service that’s not very popular. Maybe if you’re a pediatrician, you can also say, “Oh, did you know we do a kids’ cooking class,” or something like that, but that brand awareness, showing behind the scenes and highlighting the staff.

Again, being able to show your practice’s personality, that brand consistency, that personality behind the name, is really… That’s what people are going to connect with, and that’s what your audience will see.

Highlight a staff member every week with something that they love to do. Maybe they are an avid marathon runner. Showcase them running a marathon and also tag that marathon. That’s that collaboration piece as well. So, with thinking outside the box and highlighting a doctor, highlighting a nurse, that’s creating that brand, that shows that you are real. So that is three. Number three is brand awareness.

Education

This really should be the first one, because education is the most important piece. You really want to provide that valuable content to your audienc. Really, that’s what’s going to attract them to you in the first place – if you’re providing that valuable content that they feel, “Oh, wow, I didn’t know that. Oh, that’s awesome.”

Depending on your industry, this could be as simple as, you know, flu season. What’s going on in the news with the flu season? The corona virus is a topic of all conversations right now, and it’s important if you are a pediatrician or if you are a head of a senior retirement living, how do they stay safe from this? Washing hands, antibacterial cream. How can you educate them and give them peace of mind, whether this is if you’re working, again, with people that have diabetes, providing easy recipes that are made for diabetics, maybe it’s helping them with different types of the bands for their legs or the different socks or the different lotions, things that they are already searching for.

As a healthcare provider, you already know these things. So write that content that can help them. What are they searching for, and being able to educate them on that. This can be healthy lifestyle. This is another curated content, so sharing articles from other sources. So, this could be from the CDC website, this can be from Mayo Clinic, this can be from Allrecipes for diabetic… Diabetic recipes. So there’s a lot of different options you have for curated content.

Curated content just means sharing something that’s not from you, that’s not original. You’re sharing it from another source, and this is huge. Facebook really likes when you do curate a content and you’re sharing posts. That gives you kudos on Facebook.

Videos

We just did a blog on why you need to implement video marketing into your strategy. And videos can be time-consuming.

If you have a laptop, if you have an iPhone, you can record on those devices. If you have an older laptop, sometimes the quality isn’t that clear, but there’s options available, you can go on to Amazon. We just ordered cameras for one of our clients. I think they were maybe $45-$60-ish, just a camcorder or a computer camera that fits on here. The picture is very clear, microphone’s clear. Take the time to do your homework to see if the quality of your computer or your phone will work, the more authentic you are.

You don’t need to have a staged space, but these can be as simple as interviewing your doctors, having a nurse practitioner or even the front desk staff. Do one interview per month and asking questions to the doctor. This can be an FAQ.

So, you guys can compile questions every week of what your patients have been asking you, and put into, “Okay, this is our Friday FAQ, these are the questions that been coming in this week. We want to make sure we get them answered for you.”

You can have a little box on the front counter that says “Questions,” and you can start building that, again, that brand awareness of, “Every Friday, our doctor is going to answer at least five of these questions.” It doesn’t have to be a long video, but that content can then be turned into a video for YouTube, a video for social media. You can even use a transcription service and have that content put together in a blog for you.

So, those videos serve a lot of different purposes, and video marketing is huge. People want to see who you are, what your values are, and it’s important to highlight that staff, even if it is the front desk. They do a lot at that front desk, they see a lot of patients, they hear a lot of feedback. So, let them answer a couple of questions or give a couple of tips.

This education, the hand-washing tips. You can do a quick video on how to wash your hands, and what’s the right protocols. So think of your audience. Think of the questions they’re asking, think of the information that they’ll be searching for, and create those videos and that content around them, because at the end of the day, it’s about your patients. It’s about what they are searching for and what information you can provide them.

So if you need help putting the strategy together and executing this, let us know, we are here for you. You can go on to socialspeaknetwork.com and schedule a free 30-minute consultation, and we can walk you through this and give you some insights.

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Five Social Media Post Ideas for the Healthcare Industry

Five Social Media Post Ideas for the Healthcare IndustryFive Social Media Post Ideas for the Healthcare Industry

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Website Development For Medical Clinics

Website Development For Medical Clinics

On today’s episode of The Social Speak podcast, we’re going to be talking a little bit about website development and specifically our process for website development for your healthcare clinic.

We specialize in creating websites that capture your brand, your voice, your expertise and best position yourself in your medical practice to be found by prospects. Now, when we build a website, we don’t view it as a one-and-done sort of thing. It’s not a brochure that you print out and then you have thousands of copies to hand out.

Healthcare Website Design and Development

A website is an ever growing and changing, and shifting presence online, where we recommend you are continually adding blogposts, uploading videos, creating resources and interviews to engage your prospects and engage your current patients.

So the reason why I want to do this today, is we just finished up a website for one of our clients and our main contact, the office manager sent over such a fabulous note. She writes, “I am beyond thrilled with how everything has turned out so far, and want to thank you so much for all of the hard work. Prior to starting this project, I heard horror stories from some friends and colleagues who have been in charge of website redesigns and had been dreading the process. You and your team made it so easy on us and we could not be happier with the way things have gone. We really look forward to our continued partnership moving forward.”

So this is just one of the many testimonials that we have from a local clinic who had an old website that frankly, they just weren’t thrilled about. The pages were hard to update, they did not include current information, and it was hard to really adjust the functionality, so that it attracted the right people to their organization.

Listen to the Podcast

 

How we create websites for clients

Now, the process that we follow for creating websites for our clients tries to make it as fun and simple as possible. I got a kick out of designing these websites because really I’m able to visualize what that end goal is.

Analyze your current website

Oftentimes, you start with the website and potentially you just can’t stand the look and feel of it. However if we go into the backend and we look and we see that everything really is set up very strongly for Google and you are getting patients and prospects from the website, we might actually tell you, “You know what, there are better ways to spend your budget rather than doing the website redesign.”

Now, if we look in the back end and things are just as messy as they are on the front end, we’ll let you know and we will help you work through a process that we follow for creating the new websites.

Initial conversation

So the first thing that we do is we have an initial conversation, they’ll be with myself, potentially, my business partner will be on the call as well or one of our account managers, and we ask questions,

  • Do you currently have a website, what are websites you like the look and feel of and what are some that you don’t?

This allows us to see if there are similarities between the ones that you like and the ones that you don’t like so that we can replicate by using your own branding and values and purpose and goals, though with items that you do like compared to the ones that you don’t.

  • What are the top concerns about your current website, what are the top goals for your new website?
  • How will you measure if the site is performing, what is the main call to action?

So new consultations booked, appointments scheduled, email sign ups, increased traffic, things like that, so we can track all of that as well as where they’re coming from.

  • Additional functionality that you’d like to see in your new website

Let us know if there are functionalities you’d like to expand on and carry on from your old website.

  • Questions about your current brand standards

Oftentimes, our clients already do have their branding all set and solidified. They have their logos, their fonts, their colors. However, if you are a newer healthcare clinic or want to go through a complete rebranding of your healthcare clinic, we can definitely help with that as well.

We have a few partners that depending on your niche will make a great fit for that branding side. However, a lot of times our clients come to us, their website is just not performing as it should, they’re all set with their branding, all set with their value selection, things like that and we just take that and move it into the 21st century.

  • What is your target market?

So in order to create a website that attracts this target, we need to understand:

  1. Who they are –  so we wanna know who your ideal patient is and understand some of those success stories.
  2. What were they struggling with beforehand and where did they come out the other side, once they were done working with your physicians, your doctors?
  3. What about you, what about your brand?– We wanna know the values and the passions of the doctors, as well as the admin, the administration, so that we can really understand how to capture your unique voice through the website.

We have some websites that we work through where we are rewriting all of the copy on the website, and running it through your medical director to make sure it’s all approved, and then we have other clients who write the content, or already have the content written and they just wanna make sure that it’s displayed the best on a new website.

We find that branding and layout and content really have to all work together in order to have a seamless website. It can’t just have images, and then content built separately. You need to pull them together. We also love to talk about the benefits of working with you. So what are some of those most impactful transformations that your clients realize with working with you?

Plan website’s structure

So once we have all of this information and we have our website kick-off call, we get to work. And the first thing that our team does and I am actually going to hold up a workbook, right here.

So, if you’re listening to the podcast, you can kind of visualize this basically, it’s just very rough sketches of what pages could look like. And this one right here, it has a header. It has icons, events, kinda scrolling testimonials. And so what we do is we take elements that we see on other websites that you have noted that you like the look and feel of, and we see how we can then incorporate similar items into your website.

We typically have a page layout for the home page, then another page layout for the top level services pages, so let’s say you have one service page for all of the different… Oh goodness, thinking of too many different industries [chuckle] for all of the different dental care options that you have. So that page would have one layout, however all of the sub-pages, that go into dental cleaning surgeries, cavity extractions, and things like that, would have a different layout. So those are three layouts there, a layout for your contact page and probably a layout for your about page. And so each of these pages, they’re going to have a similar look and feel, however we’ve found by differentiating them by layout a little bit helps to make sure that somebody can move smoothly through the website.

As we’re building the site, we also make sure that we really understand your page hierarchy. So, this means how do all of your pages and services relate to one another? How should Google be ranking them and how can we link between the pages to get that best search engine optimization for you?

Search Engine Optimization

While we’re doing that and putting the content on the pages, we’re doing keyword research. Potentially the wording and the language that you use within your practice isn’t what people are actually looking for on Google.

So we wanna make sure that we are writing for search engines, writing to showcase your expertise and then also writing to best position your practice to be the one that clients and prospects then choose to become a patient.

Web design and content approval

Now this whole process, we like to move through it actually fairly quickly, at least that design element. We recognize that it does take time for content to be approved, messaging to be approved. However, our process is typically a one-month turnaround, for smaller website projects.

Turnaround time

Within the first two weeks, we wanna get you a working design, a working layout that you can poke around and see where we’re going for that look and feel. Typically, at this point, we’ll have that home page, about page, main services page, sub-services page and contact page. If I haven’t said that, contact page, all kind of set, ready to go.

Then, if you already have the content and you have minimal additional functionality, maybe a blog on potentially lead capture form and we utilize Influx MD for most of our healthcare clinic websites. If you need that, again, typically a month, we can get most of the site all set ready to go and then just that approval process might take another month.

So we like to have a website started and completed within that same quarter. If you want additional functionality, such as payment center, maybe a more robust directory listing for your physicians, scheduling tools and things like that, might take a little bit longer.

Integrating Influx MD

If we are integrating Influx MD in there, they do have an onboarding process as well to make sure that we are tapping into the systems and processes that you already have and really bringing those to help your administration through the whole process of that initial scheduling.

Influx MD is a HIPAA compliant form system so that it really taps into your current processes, keeps everything secure and allows us to then, moving forward after the website’s done, move into lead collection for your healthcare clinic. And that’s where our ongoing marketing really ties in with search engine optimization as well as running sponsored advertising, writing blog posts, doing doctor interviews and posting to social media, all of which tie into how people that interact and utilize your website to achieve their goals.

Conclusion

So if you have any questions about how your website currently is working, I’d love to do an audit on your website, so we can talk about what your goals are and see if it’s actually accomplishing them. Or a small tweak might be able to better align your website with what you’re hoping to do.

If we find in that process that a new website is going to be the best course of action, I’ll send over that website onboarding form and we’ll schedule a call from there to really dive into what those goals are and that look and feel that you’re going for that website. So I can’t wait to talk with you about your medical marketing website, and I hope that this has been insightful about some of what that process looks like for working with our team.

If you like this episode, and you want to learn more about healthcare marketing, please subscribe to our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel and jump on over to our website to check out the additional blog posts that we have over there.

Website Development For Medical Clinics

 

Website Development For Medical Clinics

Website Development For Medical Clinics

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