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How do a Pinterest Audit

Today, we will go through Pinterest, and we are going to do an audit on our account. So we have been working with Pinterest for a long time. We use Pinterest for many of our clients, driving traffic back to their website through a very strategic Pin strategy, posting to different boards, Tailwind communities, and different Pinterest groups, and also through promoted Pins. We were coming in to do this anyway to make sure we’re doing as we say to do. It’s one of those, “Do as we say, not as we do.” [chuckle] We want to make sure that what we’re doing with our clients, that we’re doing for ourselves as well. So as you’ll see, we are in our business Pinterest account. And when you come to your Pinterest account, you want to make sure that it is a business account. And you’ll see your home feed here. The reason why you want a business account is because of the analytics and the ads. So with a business account, there are also a few different Pins you can create. The analytics are very important because they will show you how many views you have each month on your Pinterest account. It will also show you what pins are being saved and have the most engagement, and your ads to promote those ads to drive more traffic back to your website.

Business Pinterest Account

We’re going to go to the business hub. And this is kind of the behind-the-scenes; this will tell you just a sneak peek of our analytics, which we’ll get to first. What our public profile looks like. So over here, on the right-hand side, you’ll see your logo. If this is a personal account you’ve been using, there should be an option that says “Switch to Business Account,” and that’s what you want to do. So a couple of things, you can change this header. You can have a specific header there as you have on your Facebook or your YouTube channel with your business name, what you do, your logo, things like that. We have it just set up to show our most recent Pins. So that’s more of a personal preference. This is a good space for that brand-building, we work with many different types of bloggers, so this may be a great area for your branded images with your mission or topics you cover. If you are a mom blog that works with kids ten and younger or just giving your audience a little insight into who you are, that’s a great place to have it.

Your logo or image here, your company name, and this all depends on your brand. Caitlin and I have branded Social Speak Network, so that’s our logo; that’s obviously what all of our social media is. But as a blogger, you may be branding your name, so this may be your name if you don’t have a business name for your blog. So it depends on what brand you’re using; that’s what would go here. And then your description, making sure it’s apparent what it is that you do. And then you’ll see we have only 635 followers, we’re following 129 people, but we have over 43,000 monthly views. That’s good for us. Pinterest is not a social media platform, It’s important to have followers, but you’re not banking on the number of followers you have on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. It comes down to your Pin strategy. That’s the most important piece.

So you’ll see that these are all the Pins that we have created and that we’ve put up on our account, and you’ll be able to see how many times they have been viewed, and these have just been posted this week, so there’s not a whole whole lot of views on them yet. You’ll see that the ones that we pinned a few months ago have many more views. So what I want to do is look at what the Saved button is, which will change our profile to show the boards that we have. Now, when you think you can click on All Pins, we’ve had 63,000 Pins. And there is a mixture here of what we want to do. We talk a lot about healthcare digital marketing tips. We have social media marketing for small businesses. We have SEO and blogging tips, social media management for bloggers, finding your target market, Instagram marketing tips, Facebook marketing tips.

Setting Up Pinterest Boards

Some of these boards like this one that only has 18 Pins, we have it pinned there for a while, so we can either move those Pins to another board or let that board go if we’re not utilizing it. With our SEO, you can see that we have 663 Pins there and 500 Pins in our healthcare digital marketing. So focus on the boards you’re going to be utilizing the most, and what’s important with those is that you have an SEO-friendly title, so search engine optimization. Remember, Pinterest is that search engine, so what is your audience looking for? Are they looking for how to find your target market? This is great because that is what this board says. And if you click onto the board again, we haven’t used that board a lot because we only had 16 Pins. Then the description. To describe what that board is about and what types of Pins people will be seeing on that board. And again, you want to utilize those keywords here as well.

You can add notes; if you post to a different group of Pinterest boards, they’ll have notes of those rules. That’s a great either way to utilize that Notes section. Doing your Pinterest audit, going through each of your boards, and ensuring that you have a keyword-friendly title, a description, if you click this Edit button, the pencil, this is… So here, I don’t have a description for email marketing, so email, maybe it should be, “Is email marketing dead? No. It is very much alive and works great. In this board, we will show you how to grow your email list and utilize email marketing for your business.” So email marketing tips, you can add a board cover. It’s going to pull up the Pins from that board, and you can pick which one you want, okay? Let’s see; we’ll do this one. Click done. And then if you don’t like that board cover, you can go back, click Edit, and then maybe find this one, and then that looks perfect.

You’ll have the name, the description, and then click Done, okay? So go through each of your boards and make sure that you are utilizing the space correctly. Here in our content marketing strategy, we have over 1700 Pins. But here on How to Build an authentic business brand, we only have 10 Pins. These tips can go into maybe our business tips, and we can get rid of that board. You can also have secret boards. We love using Pinterest to get ideas on what other people are pinning. So you can create a board here at the plus sign and click Board, and then this can just be Pinterest image ideas. Keep this board secret. So what this means is as you’re scrolling through Pinterest, you can save images to this board, but they will not show up on your profile, this is just for you to see as an admin, and then you can pull that board up and look at, “Oh, okay, this is what I liked about that image,” and… As you need. So, “Oh yes. Oh, I love how they did that. That’s perfect, I like that image. Oh, this is cute.”

Pinterest Images

Because you’re going to see, there are different styles to Pinterest images and different lengths, and the longer lengths work better. Here’s an infographic. This image here is slightly longer than this one, but it’s a little hard for me to read and seems a little cluttered. I may be more apt to click on this one because it’s cleaner. So look at what types of Pins you like, what images you like, and then save them to that private board so then you can get ideas when it comes time to create content, okay? So now you have these four Pins here in my super-secret board, and we are all set. So after you do the audit on your boards, you want to come over to your analytics. And I always just click on the overview. And now, with Pinterest, you also want to try different; Types of content. Images are number one. Try the square images. If you use Tailwind, you can link your Instagram to your Tailwind, and you can pin the exact images you’re putting onto Instagram on Pinterest. So that makes it easy to monitor those square images. Are they getting clicks?

If you pin them, you’ll need to change the link because they’re going to link back to your Instagram account automatically. If that’s where you want them to go, great, otherwise change the link back to your blog. As I said, the long images. And if you’re using Canva, Canva has a great tool to create Pinterest images at different sizes. So you can try different sizes, as I said but also get creative with your Pinterest templates of adding video into these templates. So that will help increase those user views because you can add your video to this image, customize the colors, add a different change of the content, and then be able to put that onto Pinterest. You would also just have animated images like this that say, “10 Great Places To Travel With Kids.” It stops the scroll on Pinterest. So as you use different types of content, you’ll want to monitor it in your analytics. Looking at your Pin’s impressions, you can look at engagements. And this is just going to be the last 30 days.

And then, and you can see okay, so on Wednesday, I had 85 engagements on our Pinterest account. That’s awesome. What about Pin clicks? We want to make sure we’re driving that website traffic to the right places. So we had 60 clicks on Monday, the 27th. Obviously, on Christmas, we still had 30 clicks, which it’s Christmas Day, and people are still on Pinterest, so Pinterest never sleeps. It keeps going and going. This is a great platform for you to be able to look at to say, “When is my audience on Pinterest, what days of the weeks?” And so that’s where you’re gonna wanna monitor your engagement, what are my top boards? Business tips and social media management for bloggers, we’ve had 5700 impressions, 56 outbound/inbound clicks, and this is no promotion, this is just organic, 31 saves, 111 pin clicks. So this is interesting to be able to see the difference between the boards, what’s working more, and what’s not. And then also here are…

Repinning Pins on Pinterest

Some of these are our original content, and many of them are curated content, meaning Repins from trusted sources, like pin, from CoSchedule, Social Media Today, Hootsuite, Buffer, etc. We look at Social Media Examiner Neil Patel, the people in our industry that we get our information from, and we’ll repin their boards, or their pins to our boards. And then many of them are, obviously, with our logo on it, this is our own. So it’s cool to see, okay, so this one here had 2500 views or impressions, but I can create an image similar to this with our branding and see if it gets even more views. So Pinterest gives you all of the data you need to be successful on Pinterest. Here we have 740, so 6.2% engagement on this pin, 2.2% engagement on that pin. So it’s good to know what people are clicking on, what images they’re finding attractive, to draw them to that, and so that’s really where we want to then focus on, okay, what about this post drew people to it, where it makes them wanna click, and keep going, because this pin was created August 27th, and this is the stats for December to this month, so it’s really cool to look at where… What’s working, and what’s not working.

Then the other part is, if you go back to your profile, you can promote some of the pins or as many pins as you want that you have put up, and this is where it helps drive that traffic to your website even more. So here’s why Pinterest is good at driving blog traffic, I clicked promote, and it’s going to bring me here: what is the destination URL you want, what is the daily budget, and how many days?

I think 84% of Pinterest is done mobile-y, so it’s important to see what it would look like computer view, but that mobile. So that’s what it would look like a computer, this is what it would look like mobile. Most people use Pinterest on their phones. So take time, go through your Pinterest account. If you need help figuring out what board names you should have, how you should be creating those pins, what that strategy looks like, let us know, we do have Pinterest management packages, and we are helping our clients with that creative process, but also more the time management process. If you’re using the right tools you can pin from anywhere from 25 times per week up to 200 times per week, if you’re utilizing the right tools, so… And that’s a mixture of organic content, pulling from your blog post, from your social media post, and then that’s also that repining, pulling from people that you know, and trust, that are like-hearted, and like-minded to your business, and being able to pin their pins to your boards as well.

If you need help, head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com today, schedule a free 30-minute consultation, let’s get you pinning correctly today. Thank you so much, have a great day.

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Tiktok 101: 6 Tips for Healthcare Professionals and Organizations

Tiktok 101: 6 Tips for Healthcare Professionals and Organizations

Tiktok is a video-based social network that allows users to create and publish short videos. The app has been downloaded more than a billion times worldwide and is now considered the trendiest social media platform.

Some of you might be rolling your eyes right now, thinking it’s not suited for you. Sure, it isn’t a serious platform. But as of now, it’s the social media platform with the most opportunities to go “viral”. It provides a great opportunity for you to build a solid online presence and position yourself as an industry expert.

Here are some tips for marketing your practice on Tiktok.

Choose a username that reflects your practice

Your username is one of the most important aspects of your social media account. When you create a profile, make sure that your username is catchy and easy to remember. If possible, try to drop subtle hints about what you do.

Dr. Kim Chronister, a licensed clinical psychologist in Beverly Hills, is a great example of a healthcare professional who’s also an influencer on Tiktok. She’s known as @drkimchronister on the platform. She’s killing the keyword game by making it obvious of her expertise.

Create content that drives traffic

The key to going viral on Tiktok is to create content that your audience finds valuable. So ask yourself, “What are the problems your target audience is looking to solve?”. Now create video content that would help them solve that problem.

You can leverage the platform to attract new people to your Facebook group, get more Youtube subscribers, revive your Instagram account, or drive traffic to your website. You can say something like, “if you want to learn more about this, check out my Instagram or visit my website.”

Engage with your audience, especially the younger ones

Once people learn about your profession, they’ll start asking you health-related questions. Some will even ask for tips and advice. You can use the platform to answer these questions and provide solutions to their problems.

Dr. Jones, known as @MamaDoctorJones on Tiktok, is a gynecologist who uses the platform to educate teens about sex education.  Her contents are engaging, and her willingness to be a bit silly on the app helps her get her message across.

In one of her popular videos, she talked about what you should do if a condom breaks during sex. The video has racked up over 11 million views. If the teen demographic doesn’t get adequate education about sex, then you can use the platform to provide reliable information.

Keep the “duet” feature in mind

While scrolling on Tiktok, you might notice two videos appearing side-by-side on the screen. It’s called a “duet”.

Duets allow users to collaborate, respond, or interact with other’s videos. You can create a video with a colleague or an influencer. Or better yet, invite your audience to join you on screen. This is a great strategy if you’re looking to grow your following.

Address misinformation

Living in the digital world, we have access to a wide range of information. Unfortunately, not all of this information is reliable.

With so much information available online, it can be difficult to separate the facts from fallacies. Tiktok is a great way for doctors and other health professionals to reach their younger audience. Use it to educate people about illnesses, general health, and much more.

Rose Marie Leslie, a medical resident better known as @drleslie on Tiktok, shares valuable information about vaping or birth control on the platform. With studies showing that vape use is at an all-time high with teens, Dr. Leslie often talks about vaping and vaping-related illnesses.

In one of her videos, she showed the chest x-ray from a patient with vape-related lung injuries. Dr. Leslie said that she’s been receiving tons of messages from teens who have stopped vaping after watching her video.

In another video, she debunks douching and other scented vaginal products as “a load of medical bologna”. She emphasized that these products can actually increase the likelihood of yeast infection and bacterial vaginosis.

Use Tiktok to humanize your brand

Many of the content on the platform is funny and entertaining. This is why a lot of professionals are hesitant to create an account on Tiktok. But you don’t necessarily have to dance or crack jokes to capture the attention of your audience. You just have to show them your human side.

Remember that your audience are humans and they want to speak with real humans too. People are more likely to trust you if they can connect with you on a more personal level. Make an effort to talk to them as you would with a friend.

By letting your personality shine through your videos, you become more approachable and relatable in the eyes of your audience.

Final thoughts

More and more healthcare professionals are flocking to Tiktok to teach teens and young adults about health issues that matter to them.

As of now, there is very little competition on the platform. This presents a massive opportunity for you to reach a wider audience at a relatively low cost. So if you’re looking to build a solid online presence on the platform, now would be a great time to start.

Tiktok 101: 6 Tips for Healthcare Professionals and Organizations

Tiktok 101: 6 Tips for Your Family Medicine PracticeTiktok 101: 6 Tips for Your Health & Wellness PracticeTiktok 101: 6 Tips for Your Mental Health Practice

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6 Doctors You Should Follow on Youtube

6 Doctors You Sholuld Follow on Youtube

When people talk about social media, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are usually the first thing that comes to mind. A lot of healthcare professionals and organizations use these social media platforms to reach a growing number of potential patients online who are looking for medical information.

While Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can undoubtedly help them achieve their goals, there is one platform that most healthcare professionals tend to forget — Youtube.

Youtube is one of the biggest social media channels in the world, with over 2 billion active monthly users. If your goal is to educate your audience and attract new patients, Youtube would be a great place to start.

If you’re still on the fence about starting your own Youtube channel, don’t fret. We listed down some of the best medical Youtube channels out there. Hopefully, you can use them as an inspiration to start your own.

Doctor Oz

https://www.youtube.com/user/DoctorOz 

Doctor Oz was one of the first healthcare professionals to create a Youtube channel back in 2006.

He has a popular daytime television personality whose show is now on its 12th season. He has also appeared as a health expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show for five seasons. Being a celebrity doctor it wasn’t difficult for him to grow his channel. As of writing, he’s racked up over 1.5 million subscribers and over 230 million channel views.

Dr. Oz uploads snippets of his show on his Youtube channel. Each episode has segments on health, wellness, and medical information, including true crime stories and celebrity interviews.

Dr. Mike

https://www.youtube.com/c/DoctorMike/featured 

Dr. Mike is a board-certified Family Medicine physician. He has been rocking the social media game for a while now, with over 9 million followers across all channels. He’s the perfect example of a physician who’s leading the way on Youtube.

Dr. Mike taps into his expertise and discusses a wide range of health topics. He also offers tips on how to reduce cancer risks, improve nutrition, and how to live a better life. His videos aren’t all about health tips. He also reacts to popular medical shows and points out discrepancies. This makes him relevant to everyday users.

With his charismatic vibe and undeniable wit, it’s no wonder that Dr. Mike is now considered as a celebrity influencer.

He now has Youtube 6.5 million subscribers 450 million views since starting the channel in 2016.

Dr. Dray

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrDrayzday/featured 

Dr. Dray is a board-certified Dermatologist and skincare expert. She’s a skincare enthusiast with a passion for skin and a healthy lifestyle. Her channel is an absolute goldmine of skincare advice and educational videos.

Considering the number of skincare products available on the market, it can be difficult for the average user to decide which ones to buy. Dr. Dray makes the process so much easier, as she uses her channel to review skincare products and give product recommendations. She also talks about the ingredients, costs, benefits, and more of each product she reviews.

Dr. Dray’s channel has almost 1 million subscribers and 70 million video views.

Dr. Josh Axe

https://www.youtube.com/c/drjoshaxe/featured 

Dr. Josh Axe is a doctor of natural medicine, chiropractor physician, and clinical nutritionist. He specializes in how the right nutrition has a positive influence on people’s health.

His passion is to help people eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle. If you’re looking for tips on how to cure common ailments using natural remedies, then you should definitely follow Dr. Axe.

Dr. Axe started his channel in 2010. His channel has grown since then, with roughly 2 million subscribers and 160 million channel views.

Dr. Eric Berg

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrEricBergDC/featured 

Youtube still presents a huge opportunity for you, even if you’re a specialty doctor. Let’s take Dr. Eric Berg as an example. He’s a chiropractor who specializes in Healthy Ketosis & Intermittent Fasting. He’s also the author of the best-selling book, The Healthy Keto Plan.

Dr. Berg uses his Youtube channel to educate his audience about keto, intermittent fasting, as well as the use of his products. He started his channel in 2006. As of writing, he has over 4 million subscribers and 230 million channel views.

Dr. Hope’s Sick Notes

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrHopeSickNotes/featured 

Dr. Ed Hope is an Emergency Medicine Doctor and a Teaching Fellow in the UK. Initially, he created videos as a learning aid.

As a teaching fellow, he wanted to help medical students make learning easier. Today, his contents are centered on educating the public while keeping them entertained. Dr. Hope’s most popular video – a look at the medical scenes in Marvel film, Dr. Strange – garnered over 6 million views.

He created his channel in 2018, and he now has over 450,000 subscribers.

6 Doctors You Sholuld Follow on Youtube

6 Doctors You Should Follow on Youtube6 Doctors You Should Follow on Youtube

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7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways to Attract New Followers

7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways to Attract New Followers

Everybody loves prizes and freebies. And when it comes to social media marketing, there is no easier way to win over your target audience and grow your following than running contests and giveaways. After all, it’s the season of giving, right?

Capitalize on the holiday season by running a contest or giveaway. When done right, it can serve as a free advertisement for your brand. This is great, especially if the nature of your contest is to encourage people to share your post, which can help you build awareness. Soon, you’ll have a very strong following.

Here are 7 holiday-themed contests and giveaways you should try to boost your social media presence.

Photo contest

Ask your followers to submit their best holiday snaps to your social media page. Put the photos together in one album and feature them on your page.

Consider adding a voting component to add a little extra buzz around your contest. Get your community involved by voting for their favorite entries. This type of contest works well in helping you grow your following. In most cases, participants would share the photo with their family and friends, and ask them to like their photos.

Video contest

Video contests are similar to photo contests, except that people are asked to submit a video instead of a photo.

During this time of the year, people inundate their social media accounts with videos. Capitalize on this and ask your followers to send in their videos. It can be videos of them singing carols or showcasing their holiday spirit. User-generated submissions like these make great content for social media.

Photo caption contest

A “caption this” prompt is a fun way to encourage followers to comment on your photo and engage with your brand.

This type of contest is great for getting feedback from your fans on how they feel about a new product, what your new slogan should be, simply to get interesting user-generated content. Don’t forget to share the winning caption to your social media accounts.

12 days of Christmas giveaway

As the title suggests, 12 days of Christmas giveaway means you’ll be giving out prizes for 12 consecutive days.

For best results, it is best to talk about your giveaway at least a week before the event. Let people know what items you’ll be giving away, how many winners there will be each day and other details. This will help build excitement and anticipation. Plus, it will give people a reason to visit your page each day.

Holiday recipe contest

Everyone is busy preparing their holiday menu by now. Help your audience fill in their menu by asking people to send in their tried-and-tested recipes.

Ask people to share recipes for their favorite holiday dishes. You can also host a family recipe showdown. Another idea would be to ask for specific recipes each week. For instance, you can ask for Christmas cookie recipes this week, and then vegetarian side dishes the following week.

Fulfill a wish contest

People tend to feel generous and thankful during the holidays. Leverage the holiday atmosphere to help those who are in need while engaging your audience.

Give your fans and followers a chance to do something nice for others. Ask them to nominate one person, who deserves to have their wish fulfilled and the reason why they chose that person.

A giveaway like this doesn’t just make you look generous, but it also makes fans feel good about themselves for nominating a friend. It’s a great way to improve your brand image, as well as gain the trust and loyalty of your audience.

Ugly sweater contest

The holiday season is the time to let loose and have fun. What better way to do this than to let people wear their favorite ugly sweater.

The ugly sweater has become a ubiquitous feature of the holiday season. Ugly sweater contests are popular during the holiday. Why not take it online with a holiday sweater contest?

To enter, participants are required to submit photos of themselves wearing Christmas or winter-themed sweater or sweatshirt. The one with the most number of votes wins.

Hosting an ugly sweater contest can help ease a little bit of holiday stress and add some fun and creativity to your social media marketing campaign.

Final thoughts

The holiday season is one of the most important times in your marketing calendar. If you’re looking to ramp up your following and grow your brand simultaneously, then you should consider running contests and giveaways.

Not only will it help drive traffic to your social media pages, but it will also help increase brand awareness. Remember, sometimes you have to give to be able to receive.

If you need help with your holiday social media marketing campaign, feel free to get in touch with us. We’ll help you make the most out of this seasonal spike in engagement.

7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways to Attract New Followers

 

7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways for Your Family Medicine Practice7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways for Your Mental Health Practice

7 Holiday-Themed Contests and Giveaways for Your Yoga Practice

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How to Build Your Followers on Social Media

Growing Your Followers

Today we are going to talk about growing followers organically on social media. This is something that our clients ask all the time: “How do I increase my followers? How do I increase my followers?” And you can do it organically. We’re gonna talk about Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn company pages today, okay so we have a lot to cover.

Twitter

With your Twitter account, you need to make sure you are tweeting consistently. So whatever that schedule is, make sure you’re sticking to it. Maybe it’s one time a day, two times a day, three times a day. Optimize your posting time, so try different times. Thinking of your ideal client or patient, when are they home? Usually, Twitter’s always done by your mobile device, so most likely they’re on Twitter from their phone, so think of lunches, break times, maybe if your patients are parents, maybe later in the evening. Get creative with that posting time. It doesn’t always have to be 9:00 to 5:00. It could be at 6:00 AM, it could be 9:00 PM. So playing around with those posting times and seeing where, what times, and what days you’re getting the most engagement. You may be thinking, okay because you’re open Monday through Friday that that’s when you need to post, but maybe doing weekend posts is a great idea as well.

Post visual content. So Twitter used to be just all text. It doesn’t have to be now. Upload images, upload videos, make it eye-appealing, and utilize hashtags. We will put in the description below different hashtag tools to help you, but Twitter and Instagram, even LinkedIn, they thrive off of those hashtags, and you can follow different hashtags. People are always searching certain hashtags, and those are the people they follow. So look for those hashtags, follow the people that are utilizing those hashtags, make sure that you are Retweeting. So have a list of people in your industry that are like-minded. Not necessarily competition, but maybe it’s news articles. So if you are a OB-GYN, you may wanna look at the Women’s Health Magazine and Retweet stories that they’re posting. Look at those resources and make sure that you are utilizing those Retweets because then their audience will start to see you as well.

One great thing with all social media is that famous little search button on every single social media platform, whether it’s in the right-hand corner or in the middle, up top. Usually, it’s always up top. With Instagram, there’s a search icon when you open up the mobile app and search for certain people. If you are looking for… If your office is only within a 25-mile radius in that location, search for people in that location. Start following more people, and set a goal to maybe follow 20 people per week. One thing with all platforms and this is just a personal preference, but when you’re following people, don’t go follower happy, okay, and what I mean by that is you’ll look at some accounts and they’ll say they’re following 1000 people, but they only have 60 followers. Well, that ratio, it just seems kind of spammy, so when you start growing your followers, follow people, but do ’em in low numbers. So follow maybe five a day, 20 per week. Figure out what that looks like and make sure that those people are following you back. The more people that you follow that are in your niche, in your target market, they’re more likely to follow you back. Okay. So those are just a few tips for Twitter.

Instagram

Let’s go into Instagram. So again, you’ll see these… The same tips are, again, staying consistent, making sure that you’re posting at least once a day on Instagram, utilizing different content, trying live videos, doing Instagram stories, doing Instagram TV, along with just your regular posts. Share content from other users. So it’s user-generated content, so mentioning them, “This is a great article or a great story from so-and-so,” and make sure that you are collaborating with others. So thinking of your referral partners, is there a way where you guys can share a post every week or a couple of posts per month? How can you work with your referral partners on a much bigger scale to be able to help grow each other’s social media? Look at your analytics. Find out… Instagram does a great job with letting you know who’s looking at your posts, what days are your best days and what times, and then also your demographics. So where are they at, are they male, female, what stories are getting the most engagement? So paying attention to your analytics so you can make sure you’re giving that content back to them and that they are engaging with it.

Engage with your fans. Every follower you have… And again, you can search for your target market and follow them, engage with them, take the time to like their posts, to comment on them. Also look at those resources, those same people that you are gonna be retweeting on Twitter or sharing stories on Facebook, look at what they’re posting and start commenting on it because if they are a resource that you like, again, if it’s Women’s Health Magazine, and you start commenting on their stuff on Instagram, their followers are gonna see those comments as well. So being active and engaging with these platforms is a great way to be able to increase your followers. Again, it takes time. It’s not gonna be an overnight success by any means, but to have somebody that’s dedicated to your social media to make sure that they are reaching those correct people, that is key.

Facebook

Facebook, you can always invite your friends to like your page. So that’s always a great starting point. And then really with Facebook having your icon on, and all your social media icons and your email signature, having a sign at the front desk, follow us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, you know, because each person is gonna have that social media platform that they like, and they trust, and that’s kind of their go-to. So giving them the option of where they wanna follow you and engage with you as great.

So being able to put those signs up there, you know, on your marketing materials, but then with Facebook, working on having a little bit of ad spend, and you’ll see with especially with LinkedIn, as we get into that, you know, running those targeted ads, and having like campaigns following, follow our campaigns running, that’s where we’ve been able to see the most growth with our clients. And again, this is a paid feature, this isn’t an organic feature.

Start by inviting your friends and family to like your page. You’re always gonna have more friends because that’s where you most likely started doing Facebook was having a personal profile, and then you created your business page. So you could also have your employees of your company, also invite people to like the Facebook page. So consistency, inviting and then working on some of the paid options of boosting and running a paid like campaign to reach your target market.

 

LinkedIn

Going into LinkedIn, so you have your LinkedIn profile, and LinkedIn company pages are really growing. LinkedIn, what they’re doing with their platform I mean, it’s huge. And it’s a great b2b tool. So again, thinking of those referral partners, and inviting them to like the page, inviting your contacts to like your page, adding your employees to your page. And so they can say, “Okay, but it’s not just this one person, but they have a whole team and what their roles are.

Then for them to share the page to their personal profile, and for them to invite their contacts to like that page. So that process is really important too, is really to get your employees involved with your LinkedIn company page. And so that’s a great way to grow your followers organically with LinkedIn, you know, utilizing LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups as well, finding those targeted groups, being able to… Now with Facebook, you can share your content from your business page into a group, which is awesome. With LinkedIn, you can’t, but you can still post and be able to mention the company page.

Utilizing those LinkedIn groups, inviting your connections to like, following the page, and sharing your content from the company page to your personal profile, as well, is a great way to grow those followers organically.

YouTube

So last but not least, is YouTube. YouTube is a little bit different. It’s not so much of a social media platform, as it is more of a search engine. And really, that’s what it is. It is a video search engine. Google owns YouTube. So having videos on there is great for your SEO as well.

A few things to help your channel be found and to increase those subscribers to your channel is making sure you’re utilizing playlists and that they’re clear. So when people go there, they can see what type, what categories, and that’s really what the playlists are, they are categories that you have of different videos. Publishing longer videos, so having a mix between short tips, you know those three to five-minute videos, and then the longer ones that are 10 plus minutes that are really educating your audience on certain topics.

You know, maybe again, I always like to use the OB-GYN’s example, you know, maybe you’re talking about a eating plan for a pregnant woman or a birth plan or certain tips. These videos can be longer because they’re going to be educational. Maybe you’ll put together a PowerPoint presentation, and you’re walking through that as you’re talking. So publishing 10-plus minute videos is a great way to increase your subscribers.

Promoting your videos on an end-screen. Using those options that YouTube gives you, it will say end screen, you can say subscribe to our channel there, it will also allow you to promote your… Like another playlist, or if you’re doing a video that’s specific to that playlist, you want them to stay in that loop of that playlist. And so utilizing those tools to be able to do that.

Reply to every comment, if you get comments, and a lot of them, not a lot of them, but some of them can be spam. And just, you know, like it, but reply to the comments that need to be… That need to have a reply because those are gonna be the people that are gonna subscribe to your channel. Another one is just making sure your channel’s optimized completely. So having a tagline with your channel, making sure you have your channel app up top, and it’s clear and that they can… YouTube does this where it will show you what it’s gonna look like on a computer, on a TV because smart TVs people are watching YouTube all the time from their TV, and then what it’s gonna look like on their mobile device.

So you wanna make sure that that header is clear so when they come to it, it’s not cut off on every device that they are watching your videos from. They know exactly who it is. Making sure that you have a clear description, that your contact information, your website is in there, so they can reach you if they need to from your channel, but then also each video making sure you have that clear description, that keyword friendly title, the tag words, you know, making sure you have a YouTube thumbnail.

Just going through that little checklist to make sure everything is filled out correctly with your channel and your videos. Then also when you’re doing these videos, we always take our video and we put it onto YouTube and then we take the code from YouTube and we embed our videos into our blog post, which is a great way to get viewers to watch your videos, promote them on social media, have a video within your email signature, use them in your newsletters, people love listening and watching videos. So being able to utilize them in multiple places and having them link back to YouTube is a great way to be able to grow your subscribers.

I know we covered a lot today, if you need help putting together this strategy, this… And again, what we talked about today was really looking at that organic growth. You can run ads on all of these platforms to increase your followers and that we do help our clients with both the organic growth and the paid growth to make sure that you’re reaching your target market. If you need help with that and would like to talk more about the increasing your followers on all these platforms, head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and click on free consultation.

Schedule your 30-minute free consultation today.

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11 Content Ideas to Fill Your Social Media Calendar

11 Content Ideas to Fill Your Social Media Calendar


A social media calendar can help you plan and schedule your social media posts in advance. With an organized calendar, you can ensure no days will go without a single piece of content being published.

Fresh, quality content is important to attract your target audience and keep them informed. But let’s face it. It can be challenging to find fresh social media ideas, especially when you have to post something daily on different platforms.

Next time you think there’s nothing for you to post, think again. Here are 11 content ideas to fill your social media calendar.

Industry news

If you find yourself at a loss when it comes to making updates on social media, sharing industry news is a great idea. Regularly posting informative articles will help turn your page into a trusted resource for relevant information.

Think about what your target audience would find helpful and relevant. Share links to relevant news and blogs.

Blog posts

Do you spend countless hours writing killer, quality content for your blog? Don’t let it go to waste Share your blog posts across your social media accounts.

In addition to giving you something new to post, sharing your blog posts on social media will help deliver a steady stream of visitors to your site. Make sure, though, that you tailor your message to fit each platform and audience.

Polls and surveys

People love answering questions, and polls provide the perfect avenue for this.

Polls are easy to make, encourage interactivity, and get people talking. It allows you to gain a deeper understanding of who your customers are. By reading their responses, you can learn from them directly and better understand their needs.

Videos

Video is the undeniable king of content marketing. In fact, they get exponentially more shares than texts and images combined. Not only are they convenient and efficient for the consumer, but they can also help you create an emotional connection with your audience.

If you aren’t creating video content for your brand or business, now is the time to get in front of the camera. I challenge you to do one this week. You can start by doing a Facebook Live or Instagram story. The first video is usually the hardest, but you’ll get better as you go.

Behind the scenes photo or video

Sharing behind the scenes content gives people an inside look into who you are and what your brand represents. People want to do business with people, not from a company that hides behind a logo. They want to know the people behind your products and services.

Behind the scenes, content humanizes your company and helps you build rapport with your target audience. Trust doesn’t come easily for businesses, but transparency is a great place to start.

Share a tip

Share tips that your audience might find useful. You may also consider turning it into a weekly post. For instance, “Tip Tuesday” or “Fun Fact Friday”. This way, your audience will have something to look forward to.

User-generated content

User-generated content is any content that has been published by fans. Nine out of ten consumers trust organic, user-generated content more than traditional advertising. That means, they’d rather hear from your clients and customers instead of you.

UGCs work well because they’re authentic. Plus, it puts customers front and center. It encourages engagement and helps you grow your audience.

When sharing user-generated content, always give credit where credit is due. Make sure that you tag the original poster in the post.

Infographics

People love information, but most people lean heavily toward visual content. Infographics are easily read, understood, and remembered. Your audience can easily scan the document and understand the message you’re trying to get across. Not only will they appreciate the new-found knowledge, but they’ll also find your information more credible and compelling.

Your employees

Posting photos of your employees help humanize your brand. It allows them to have a sneak peek of the people behind your products and services.

Go ahead and share photos of people who make your business possible. Without them, you won’t be able to operate.

Customer testimonial

Studies suggest that 74% of consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before they can trust a business. Sharing customer testimonials on social media is one of the best ways to build trust with your audience and add credibility to your brand.

Let your customer’s voices be heard on social media. Create an image with their testimonial or retweet their kind words. Don’t forget to include their name or handle.

Meme

Have you noticed more and more brands are incorporating humor into their social media marketing strategy? It’s because humor sells.

People love humorous content. Infusing humor into your social media content helps show your brand’s personality and get more people to engage with your content. Besides, posting only business-related content is simply boring.

11 Content Ideas to Fill Your Social Media Calendar

11 Content Ideas to Fill Your Social Media Calendar11 Content Ideas to Fill Your Social Media Calendar

 

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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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5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Healthcare Professionals

5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Healthcare Professionals

As socially inclined creatures, humans have embraced technology that allowed us to connect with our family and friends. Today, social has become a prominent part of people’s lives.

With over half of the world’s population now active on social media, it’s not surprising that more and more businesses are using social media to reach their audience. Healthcare is no exception.

As a healthcare professional or organization, you need to step up your social media strategy in order to reach your target audience, boost patient engagement, and improve health outcomes.

Here are 5 tips to get you started.

Choose the right platform

There are lots of social media platforms out there other than Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While social media can help you drive new patient leads and grow your practice, you can’t be active on all of them all the time. You need to be strategic where you spend your resources.

A great way to plan and begin your social media campaign is to identify your ideal outlets. To do that, you need to focus on your core target audience. Find out where they spend most of their time online. Build your primary social media presence around your audience’s platforms of choice. It only makes sense to fish where the fishes are.

Narrowing down your choice to just a select few platforms will not only save you time, but it will also help you get the best return on your investment.

Jump into existing conversations

Take the initiative to be a part of a social media conversation. Join existing chats and groups that offer relevant discussions. See what you can add to the conversation and what you can learn about the current topics. Inspire discussions, ask questions, and air your opinion.

In addition to taking part in the discussions, it is important to track conversations relevant to your field. This raw and unfiltered conversation can provide you with insights from your audience. You may even get new ideas that you can use on your social media marketing campaign.

Don’t make it all about you

Social media is a great place to promote your practice and get more patients through the door. But if that’s the only reason why you signed up, then it won’t be beneficial.

People hate ads. They are turned off by businesses that throw ads but do not engage with their clients. If you want to build a solid social media presence, then you need to really get on there and interact with your audience.

Go back to your core audience. Learn as much as you can about them: demographics, what they are interested in, what they need, what their pain points are, etc. Getting to know your audience will help you interact with them on a more intimate level. Once you start conversing with them, you’ll know how you can help them.

Show them that you care about them and they will feel more connected with you.

Raise awareness and counter misinformation

Social media has become an important health resource. Studies suggest that more and more people are seeking health information on social media. With the amount of information we are bombarded with each day, it is not surprising to find a lot of medical misinformation out there. As a healthcare professional, you can capitalize on social media by providing your audience with accurate, science-backed facts.

Give people a reason to follow and engage with you. Pull from your unique expertise and share relevant, valuable information about your field. Don’t get stuck sharing links to blog posts. Share infographics, videos, interactive pieces, podcasts, and other types of content.

Provide your audience with content they can’t find elsewhere. Sharing fresh and unique content will not only keep your audience engaged, but they’ll also see you as a thought leader or industry expert.

Automate social media posts

You reap what you sow is a well-known idiom. While the phrase is biblical in origin, it also applies to social media marketing.
You can’t expect great results if your page is inactive. The key is to stay active on social media and consistently provide your followers with high-quality content. How can you do that when you spend the majority of your working hours seeing patients? Social media automation holds the solution to this problem.

Automating your social media posts allows you to schedule and optimize posts for maximum engagement. Scheduling several posts in advance helps you save time while achieving consistency in your marketing efforts. Plus, it gives you control over the content you share and how you share it.

Ultimately, it also helps you get more results with less effort. Keep in mind, though, that automation can only help you save time and effort, it is not meant to make social media marketing a completely hands-off process.

Automation tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, AgoraPulse, and CoSchedule will make things easier for you. Whether you’re looking to find new patients or engage existing ones, you need to employ social media strategies that will help you sustain and grow your practice. Contact us today and let us put together a social media plan for you and your practice.

 

5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Healthcare Professionals Pinterest

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