Social media has become an integral part of many businesses’ marketing strategy. It helps you connect with your audience, increase awareness about your brand, and generate more business.
With so many social media platforms to manage and publish in, it’s important to have a plan and stay organized for what and when you’re going to share on each platform. Having a social media content calendar will make things a lot easier.
What is a social media content calendar?
A social media calendar is a document that is used to plan out and organize future content. It allows you to visualize how your marketing looks like in the coming weeks or months and tweak any scheduled posts as necessary.
Content calendars can come in several forms. It can be a spreadsheet, hand-written calendar or a software. The purpose of a social media calendar is to provide a framework for scheduling out when and which content will be published across different social media channels.
A content calendar do wonders for your business. Here are 5 reasons why you need a social media content calendar.
Save time
You need to post regularly for your business to benefit from social media. But we all know that managing multiple social media accounts can be challenging, not to mention time consuming.
The purpose of using a content calendar is to help you plan out content ahead of time and schedule posts across multiple channels at once. With an effective calendar, you can schedule content weeks or months ahead of time. You no longer have to worry about falling behind if you become too busy or if something comes up.
A content calendar will not only help alleviate some of the day-to-day stressors, but it can also help you reach your long-term business goals. Freeing up more time, you can now focus on more important aspects of the business.
Never forget important dates
Holidays and other important events offer excellent opportunities to create engaging content. With a hectic schedule, it can be easy for important dates to slip your mind. Missing important dates can represent a lost opportunity.
An organized calendar helps reduce the chaos of scrambling to post it on time. Taking note of future events, you’ll have enough time to create the best possible content for the occasion instead of just churning out content at the last minute.
Having a content calendar alleviates the fear of forgetting important dates. Plus, it ensures that your content is being published when your audience is active.
Plan and organize your social media marketing strategy
Providing your audience with relevant, informative, and entertaining content is the key to keep your audience engaged.
When posting on social media, you want it to be a mix of industry news, inspiring content, content from others, and your own content. Using a content calendar allows you to visualize your content strategy over time. You’ll have plenty of time to fill it with relevant topics that resonate with your audience.
Without effective planning, you may run the risk of posting a topic that you have already discussed a few weeks ago. A social media content calendar will help you keep things in check, so you can avoid such blunders.
Brainstorm ideas
Instead of making last-minute decisions about what types of content to publish, you’ll have the advantage of getting feedback from your team members.
Every piece of content start with ideas, and you’ll need a lot of them to fill your calendar. When you plan out your social media content in advance, teams from different departments can contribute ideas, make edits, and plan future content.
They can use their knowledge to fill the space with relevant content that is valuable to your audience. Hence, you can be sure that you’re putting out the best and most relevant content.
Turn chaos into harmony
Collaboration with team members often lead to fresh ideas and greater return on investment. However, it can also be tricky to pull off efficiently. It can be further complicated by remote work.
A social media content calendar is a great way to collaborate. It can serve as a communication tool for the whole team. This is where topics, ideas, contents, and dates are placed. It helps keep every member of the team on the same page and stay on track of publishing.
Having a central place for different teams across your organization to manage social media content allows for a much smoother implantation of your social media marketing agenda.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/5-Reasons-You-Need-a-Social-Media-Content-Calendar-1.png315560Kathlyn Angeles-Timbolhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngKathlyn Angeles-Timbol2020-06-10 10:20:512020-10-02 14:44:545 Reasons You Need a Social Media Content Calendar
Pinterest is one of those tools to build that website traffic, and a lot of people think of it as maybe not a tool that’s right for their business. Often, they think it’s just for recipes or interior design, which yes, it is used for that, but think of Pinterest as a visual search engine.
If your target audience is mostly women 35 to 65, Pinterest’s demographics are your target market! It’s time to see how you can use Pinterest to grow your business!
Pinterest for business
Pinterest is a great tool to use to get people to your website. And you think about when they go to Google what are they typing in? Especially moms, they’re going to Pinterest and they’re searching for different things.
I want to show you what a Pinterest business account looks like, and a tool that we use to manage our Pinterest. It’s really important to have that consistency and that strategy behind, “What are you pinning?” And so, this is where that digital marketing strategy that we’re always talking about comes into play.
Looking at what blogs are you writing. If you’re writing one blog per week or maybe two blogs per month, and they are the longer cornerstone blogs, each blog can have four to six images for that one blog, and you can pin those to Pinterest with links back to your website.
Difference between a personal and business account
Let me just dive in and show you a little bit about Pinterest. If you go sign up and create a Pinterest account, it will ask you if you’re business or personal.
Here we have our Social Speak Pinterest account, and this is the business account. I wanted to show you our profile.
Get access to the analytics dashboard
How you know that it’s a business account is because it will have analytics here. We have a little over 170,000 monthly viewers, which is pretty good for us. We really have worked hard on building our Pinterest account probably about the last year and a half.
We didn’t really take it too seriously before and now we’re seeing that traffic to the website really increase from what we’re putting on Pinterest. That’s a really good thing.
Set up an account with your business name
With a business account, you can set up your account with your business name. Here, we also have our logo. You can change your header images to a different static image. I always have the latest pins for our Social Speak board.
You could have in here a link to your website, a little bit about who you are and what you guys do, and then the most important thing is your boards.
Getting Started: Pinterest Basics
Create a board
You want to think of your boards as those keyword phrases. When you’re putting together your boards, it’s important to look at what are those key topics that you want to be talking about? So, you can have as many boards as you want. I always recommend starting with between five and seven, because you don’t want to be so overwhelmed. But as you continue to grow you’ll always be adding a new board, and so that’s okay, too.
We have different boards for different things, and these can be very specific. Obviously, content marketing strategy is our number one board with almost 800 pins. That and the health care digital marketing tips, those are our two main focuses.
It’s important to make sure that when you are creating a board that you are filling out the description. You want to make sure that you have the title of the board, the description of the board – fill out those blanks that Pinterest provides you. If people search for content marketing tips, then you are more likely to be able to show up here. That’s how that works.
Find and pin content
Now what I like to do is I like to follow certain brands and companies. For example, I really like CoSchedule. They put out some great content. We also utilize Sprout Social. They put out great content.
You can go-to activity and see what pins they have, the latest pins they’ve had. And then, you can either save them to the board that you want, or you can go into Tailwind, which I will get to in just a second.
I like to make sure that you know which brands you want to follow so you can re-pin from them. I love the image, and I think the content’s great. I’ll just click onto that image and look at the website, make sure that it’s something that I want our audience to click through to.
Track your performance to see what works
The most important thing is going to your Analytics. And again, this is just something to look at on a monthly basis. I always go to the overview, and then I look at the impressions, the total audience, the engagement. Any time this number is up, that’s a good thing.
In the past 30 days, we’ve had over 200,000 impressions which is up 36% from last month. We had 178,000 total audience engagement.
The number of engagements on your pins includes saves, close-ups. People that had either clicked onto one of the pins we put up, re-pinned them or liked them. And then your engaged audience is the number of people who had engaged with your pin directly. Meaning that they had liked it, or they had re-pinned it.
You can go down here and look at your top boards, and then you can also look at your top pins. So, we’re seeing that people looking for YouTube sizes and “Seven easiest ways to create Instagram content.” These are our top two pins that we had re-pinned, and people are finding them on our account and re-pinning them.
It’s good to really look at what content is working, so then you can make sure that you are utilizing that data to put more of that content out.
Why you should use Tailwind for Pinterest
Pinterest Automation
Pinterest can be sometimes a little bit of a time consumer. What we’ve used is this app called Tailwind.
Tailwind actually connects to your Pinterest and your Instagram. This is a paid program. It’s only $14.99 a month, I highly recommend it because this allows you to schedule pins out.
What this allows me to do is schedule all of my Pinterest posts for the month if I want to. I’ll just click on a pin, then hit Add to Queue, and it’s going to automatically put it into my queue where it feels it needs to go.
Post inspector
What’s really cool about this, when you are on Pinterest and you click just onto the Home button, it doesn’t tell you how many times this pin had been re-pinned, but on Tailwind it does. So this has been re-pinned 115 times. And again, sometimes things will come up that are not aligned with your business, and that’s okay. You just scroll past them, but you can look to see which ones are getting more pins.
For example, I click on Instagram Strategy. Tailwind shows that this was re-pinned 341 times, and it’ll tell you that it’s 299 times on Pinterest and 42 times on Facebook.
Smart Schedule
With Tailwind, it organizes your posts based on when your audience is on Pinterest, and when you are getting the most engagement. That’s the one thing I love about Tailwind is it’s easy to be able to find that content. You can see the source right here. You can pick as many boards as you want, and then if you don’t like the content, if you don’t like those posts, you would just click More Suggestions, and more suggestions will come up.
Tailwind just helps keep everything organized. And that’s what I really like because it saves you time and it gives you the post that you’re looking for, it gives you the data on what the popularity is, and it also just helps with the Auto-Schedule.
Smart Loop
The other thing you can do with Tailwind is what’s called a smart loop. Now, this is great for your blog posts that are your cornerstone blogs, meaning those are 2000 plus blogs.
We’ve already used our 250 smart loops and what that means is it will pull all of these blogs that we’ve done from a year, two years, three years ago, and it’s going to keep populating them. So it will automatically schedule those out into our plan, and because I’ve said I want these blogs to be scheduled to these certain boards, it will do that.
Schedule Instagram videos
I highly recommend utilizing Pinterest and Tailwind together, you can get the most benefit out of your Pinterest account. You could also publish videos on here as well, that’s a great tool because videos are awesome on Pinterest, and it’s just a great way to really monitor what’s working.
Analytics
On your Google Analytics, you would be able to tell how many people have come to your website from Pinterest. That’s a great way to monitor those analytics.
Is your social media marketing strategy sorted out?
If you need help with creating this strategy for your Pinterest account and utilizing Tailwind and just elevating your digital marketing strategy as a whole, we do offer a free 30-minute consultation. That allows us to get to know what your goals are, what are you struggling with, and what are you wanting to accomplish with your digital marketing. And then we can put up a plan together moving forward from there.
We also just launched our online VIP community, and that’s a monthly membership that allows you to see different handouts, tutorials, trainings on all different things in digital marketing. It’s a great starting point if you are wanting to do things on your own. If you really need help with that next step with your digital marketing strategy, go to socialspeaknetwork.com and click on the “Contact Us” button for a free 30-minute consultation. If you have any questions, please let us know.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Pinterest-and-Tailwind-Blog.png315560Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2020-06-03 10:57:462020-06-04 18:19:29Pinterest and Tailwind Blog
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.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/How-to-Maximize-Your-Social-Media-Presence-During-the-Pandemic.png1200800Kathlyn Angeles-Timbolhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngKathlyn Angeles-Timbol2020-04-29 10:20:472020-10-02 14:46:04How to Maximize Your Social Media Presence During the Pandemic
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.
Listen to the Medical Marketing Podcast
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?”
In this podcast we review the exact strategy Social Speak uses with their healthcare practices to boost new consultations and build brand loyalty online.
Please view the video at Youtube if you would like to see the screen share – click here to access.
The Social Speak Digital Strategy for Medical Marketing (our Roadmap to Digital Marketing) includes:
If you are looking to increase the ROI from your digital marketing in 2020, please reach out to schedule a consultation today! We can’t wait to learn more about your practice.
Listen to the Podcast
Watch the Video
Read the medical marketing transcript
00:01 Caitlin McDonald: Hello and welcome to the Social Speak Network podcast. My name is Caitlin McDonald and I am one of the co-owners over here at Social Speak. So today, we were gonna wrap up the year talking about SEO as we’re moving into 2020. But I’m kind of pulling an audible and I really want to take the time to share the exact strategy that is working right now for our healthcare clinics. Now, this strategy is one that we’ve been utilizing for quite a while. However, it’s really working right now, so I want to make sure that moving into 2020, you’ll be able to implement this for your healthcare practice. Now, we also are available to help out as well. This is our specialty, managing the marketing campaigns for clinics and hospitals across the country. So if you do wanna schedule a free consultation, we’d love to chat with you, see if we’re a good fit, and I give you a couple of tips and pointers to get you moving in the right direction.
01:08 CM: So this strategy really utilizes a lot of different marketing techniques, but it is pretty straight forward. So I’m gonna be… If you’re on our podcast, I’ll be talking through everything. If you jump over to our YouTube channel, you’ll be able to follow along and I’ll be able to show you some of the tools that we do utilize for our clinics and if you prefer reading, the transcript will be on our blog probably next week.
01:42 CM: So let’s get started. Let me share my screen here. And as I mentioned, the first part of our process really begins with the strategy. So when we’re taking a look at the strategy, we want to focus on a few different things. First and foremost, we do still utilize social media marketing. Social media is there to expand your reach and spread your authentic brand voice online. If you’re targeting younger individuals, older individuals, it really doesn’t matter, you need to prove that you are active online and a legitimate business. One of the ways to do this is by posting to social media accounts.
02:28 CM: So doing this builds brand loyalty by staying true to your values. It also helps you stay top of mind. Yes, your posts won’t necessarily reach everybody who’s following you online. In fact, it’ll probably only reach a couple of people, so we utilize ads to help with this as well. However, if somebody is actively looking for you, most likely your Facebook page will show up high in the search results so you wanna make sure that you are active there. And then, Facebook and social media also help you cultivate relationships and attract clients.
03:03 CM: The second piece of the strategy that we follow is blogging and SEO. Creating content, any content isn’t gonna work anymore, it’s creating the right content at the right time for your target market. So what does this actually mean for you? It means creating timely information so that you are found online, and it helps to build trust with your audience. For a couple of practices, what we are doing is doing physician interviews or interviews with your staff and transcribing those in a Q/A format, so that you are answering the questions that people are actually looking for online in a way that’s easy to digest and where they can really start building trust with the physicians in your practice.
03:55 CM: And then the last way is through lead generation. So with lead generation, really, our goal is to capture prospect information. Yes, you have to be aware of being HIPAA compliant, but we’ll dive into that. So here, you need a strategy to boost your new leads, to shorten the sales cycle, or that cycle for actually getting a prospect in the door, booking a consultation, and then also to increase your recurring revenue. So if you know somebody who typically comes in for one procedure, then ends up coming in for follow-up visits for something else, it might be good to focus on that first procedure and getting leads for that so that you can then share information through email marketing or in the office itself to get them booking those follow-up appointments as well.
04:52 CM: So this is where it gets really fun and it’s actually putting together that plan and diving in to do what you need to be doing for your marketing. So this is our roadmap to digital marketing and really goes through all of the different steps. Today, I’m gonna be focusing mostly on this lead generation piece. So, in lead generation, we’re really reaching people during their patient journey. So, as I mentioned, we’re figuring out what symptoms they have, what problems they’re experiencing and how they want to live their life differently if they come in and see you.
05:33 CM: So when we’re doing this, we’re utilizing Facebook ads for brand awareness and to get leads, Google AdWords for search targeting, and this is a great way to get people when they’re making that decision about who they’re gonna work with, and Facebook ads for re-targeting. So here, Facebook and Google really are the ad networks that we are utilizing for this. So I’m gonna jump on over here and I have up Google AdWords. Most of you probably already have an AdWords account. However, if you call… This is kind of a nice little tip, if you’re just getting started, tipping your toes in the water, you can actually call up this number here in the top of the page and a representative can help you set up your first campaign. If you don’t have someone on staff who knows how to set up AdWords, I do recommend utilizing Google’s own network of consultants who can set that up because it’s complementary. And again, a great way just to get started. Now, as you’re building more in-depth campaign, setting up conversion tracking and things like that, I do recommend working with an expert. Our team has a team of experts on staff who can help out with setting up campaigns, restructuring them from what Google originally sets up or what a previous agency has set up to make sure that they’re actually working for you.
07:08 CM: We oftentimes come into clinics and see that the geographic area isn’t quite right, or maybe a mixture of different services are piled into one ad group. All of these things can be detrimental for your practice. So an example of this, I just did a search for “pediatrician, Marlborough, Mass” and there are three that come up. But if you take a look, there’s no ads here. So if you are a pediatrician around there, it’s a great thing, [chuckle] a great opportunity for you. But what you’ll see is there are oftentimes fewer ads than there are doctors and other listings that come up. So that’s a great way to make sure as you are creating your campaign, that you’re showing up up here at the top. I don’t have Facebook up, but Facebook is very similar as well. Oftentimes, a health clinic will come on in… Or, excuse me, a marketing agency will come on in, they’ll set up a Facebook account and, or even someone on your staff. And one problem that we’ve seen is that oftentimes, these ads aren’t targeted for your audience correctly. So you want to make sure that you are being very specific in your targeting at least at the beginning, so that you can learn who’s responding to your messages and who isn’t.
08:42 CM: For Facebook, for example, let’s say you are working with individuals who have non-healing foot ulcers. Typically, this is caused by diabetes, so you can actually target people who have shown an interest in the National Diabetes Association, for example. They’re not gonna say on their profile that they have a foot ulcer, but they are going to be following, or most likely going to be following or have expressed interest in a national organization or a magazine, or another coach or something like that who has targeted them already. So this is a great way to kind of refine your messaging.
09:26 CM: Additionally, let’s say, your practice focuses on, I had pediatrics before, what you can do is you can target people, potentially, who just got married, or who have a toddler or have a… Or following other parenting pages. And this might be a great way to narrow down your target market there. Now, within those ads themselves, there are a few things that you need to really do in order to see a return on your investment. So one of the first things that we utilize is lead pages. Now, lead pages is not HIPAA compliant, however, you can embed a form on here that is HIPAA compliant so that the leads go into your system, the lead capture system, and the landing pages are just hosted on your website, built by lead pages.
10:30 CM: The reason why we do this is because we want them to be very specific and tailored towards that one service and towards that one target audience. So if you’re targeting a, I don’t know, a family member of somebody, who has somebody else in the family who’s suffering from addiction, you’re running ads to raise awareness about the support and resources that are out there, that landing page is gonna be different than what you want to appear or the language that you want to have that’s geared towards that person who’s suffering themselves. So here, lead pages is just the tool that we utilize. You can build a landing page just through WordPress, but we love lead pages because it is very easy to alter the page style, it allows you to do AB testing, so create two different versions of the same landing page, and have lead pages automatically show which one, whichever one, and then over time, you can tell which one is performing better. It also has great graphs. So typically for healthcare centers, we utilize conversion tracking a few different ways on lead pages itself. We want to optimize the number of people who are clicking on a link.
11:51 CM: Here’s a little example right here to schedule a consultation. That will then open up a pop-up, on that pop-up is the form that you create through that third party. So, on lead pages itself, we can’t tell how many people have then filled out the form, but that’s why we use the Facebook Pixel and Google Tag Manager. So here, lead pages, again, it’s just a great, easy way to set up those landing pages and test them. And have it be where it’s just a single page rather than going to… And I’ll just click on, I don’t know, one of these… So let’s say this is your website, this is the UMass Memorial Health Care Center. So if somebody goes to this page from an ad, there are so many other places to click. So we found that that is not good for increasing your ROI and conversion rates. So having a page that they go to where it’s just that single page with the call to action of scheduling a consultation, it works really well. Then there’s a question of what content should you utilize on that page and in the ads. So we actually have a form on our website, and I’ll put this in the description, socialspeaknetwork.com, work with us, onboarding lead generation.
13:27 CM: And this is geared towards kind of a broader audience than just healthcare centers. But you can fill it out and here you can select free consultation is what you’re trying to get. But then we have questions here that really will help you identify those key concerns, key questions, key fears of your patients, your target patients, and we have the questions so that they lead you through exactly sort of what you need in order to create the ad text as well as the text for the landing page. And so, we help you kind of really identify and nail down your target market and then create a story around it. So, in this story, we often do actually start with a sentence or two that’s somebody’s story. It could be your own story, a patient testimonial, or even just a made-up story that fits in with the benefits that you can provide for your clients, for your patients. From there, we go into the benefits of actually coming in to see your practice, and finally, the call to action to schedule a consultation. Creating a doctor video around this as well is also a great way to increase brand awareness.
14:56 CM: So again, work with us, onboarding lead generation, the link is down below. But you can just go through this exercise, and at the end, I believe that we do have, even go through an email sequence that you can utilize at the end, when you click submit, we will send you in an email those answers that you put in there so that you can then copy and paste or utilize them, you could also print out that form if you don’t wanna submit the information. However, we’re happy to chat with you about the process as well. So those story ads work really well on Facebook. And then, on Google, we’re utilizing headlines and short calls to action to contact you.
15:52 CM: Now, once somebody clicks on an ad, they go to lead pages, then what happens to them? If you don’t have to be HIPAA compliant, we recommend utilizing MailChimp. It’s very cost-effective, it’s a great way to get started, and it has wonderful bells and whistles that a lot of the big boys have. So it’s a great way to create those welcome series, as well as quick follow-up emails and everything.
16:22 CM: Now, if you are HIPAA complaint, we highly recommend utilizing Influx MD. It looks like not all the images have loaded on here, however, we have a great relationship with them. And so, a lot of our clients utilize us to help facilitate the creation of emails and everything, and basically, Influx MD takes somebody from being a prospect to scheduling their first consult. From there we’re really able to track the ROI. Influx MD is able to tell through our tracking where the patient or the prospect originally came from. It can automate and systematize the process of sending those initial questionnaires and forms that somebody needs to fill out. And then it can directly sync up with your patient management system. We really like it, just because it helps with the customer relationship as well as the lead management and then it has that sales and email marketing automation as well. So it really reduces the burden on your staff and helps prove how effective the marketing is. So, we utilize this a lot. We utilize Google analytics and we utilize Facebook Pixels as well, just to see where leads are coming from, see the cost per lead and everything like that. So, let me just jump back over here, see if there was anything else. Okay, and this is… It’s actually just a health coach, but it kind of shows you that process with the landing page, they click the button, here’s the form, and then they get a drip sequence of emails.
18:13 CM: So if you have been wondering if your marketing is working for your healthcare practice, maybe you didn’t quite have as good of a year in 2019 as you had projected and hoped. This process is really what we’re seeing to work right now. So we start with the Facebook just having information going out to your accounts to build trust in your brand, then we utilize blogging as one piece, and a physician interviews as another piece of your SEO strategy. What we’ve really been seeing work well for SEO is building back links. And so, submitting your website to different directories, different websites to have the link added to content. We have a whole team that’s working on that. It is a very manual process, but we have seen tremendous results there because you do wanna make sure your organic listing or your website is showing up organically as well as the ads and the map listing and everything. And another piece of that SEO is building reviews on Google and on Facebook, just so that you can have that social proof. So those reviews work really well to make sure that your map listing is showing up higher, as well as social proof.
19:42 CM: And then, it’s running the ads. So we run ads based on interest targeting on Facebook, keywords on Google, and then retargeting ads on both Facebook and Google, to make sure that if we’ve already paid for somebody to get to the site or landing page, we are recouping some of that cost by showing them repeat ads. Of course, we haven’t collected any information about them, it’s just based on the cookie on their website, that Facebook and Google are in charge of. [chuckle]
20:16 CM: From here, we utilize or we recommend utilizing a tool like Influx MD to make sure that you are remaining HIPAA compliant as you are emailing and creating relationships with these prospects who have become leads. And throughout this whole process make sure that you have the Google Webmaster tool… Excuse me, Google Tag Manager, so that you can track conversions, as well as clicks for phone numbers, or map clicks. And the Facebook Pixel installed on your site so that you can really track the ROI from Facebook ads.
20:53 CM: So I hope that this has been helpful leading through the actual techniques and strategies that we utilize for our clients. If you do want to schedule a consultation, we are more than happy to schedule a time for you. And we’d love to learn more about your practice, your target market and what you’re currently working on and struggling with right now. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you in the New Year on the Social Speak Network podcast
According to a report in the Annals of Family Medicine, 45% of physicians receive new patients through referrals. Like any medical practitioner, you want to make sure that your practice is supported by your referral partners and your community.
We know that you are doing your part in referring patients to other physicians whom you feel are the best. But are they returning the favor of referring their patients to you?
If you’re looking for ways to get more referrals, keep reading. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices your office should maintain to maximize the potential of your patient referral program.
Get out of the office
In a fast-paced hospital setting, it can be especially hard to connect with colleagues. If you want to bolster your referral network and keep your business thriving, then you need to make the decision to get out of the office, even if it’s just once a month.
Meet new physicians and healthcare leaders in your community. Reach out to existing providers who you refer to and who refer to you.
Identify physicians you want to partner with. You’ll want someone who is a good match for your practice, share your values and hold themselves to a high ethical standard.
Build a relationship
The best way to grow your referrals is to build, maintain, and improve your relationships with referring providers.
Professional referrals are based squarely on sound relationships and expertise. Doctors and their staff will only refer their patients to people they trust, like, and feel are competent.
Make a continual effort to show your referring doctors that you value their partnership. You can call them up just to see how they and their families are doing, drop by with a frappuccino for them or take them out for lunch.
In most cases, it is not the doctor, but a key staff person who actually handles the referral mechanics. If you want to grow your referral base, then you should take the initiative to get to know not only the physician but also their staff. Be certain to identify and include the key gatekeepers. Capitalize on those connections and they will be more likely to pass your business card on.
Simplify the referral process
Most doctors would simply advise their patients to book an appointment with a certain doctor.
Unfortunately, 50% of professional referrals never result in a doctor’s visit. The referral process should be quick and simple.
Otherwise, you’ll be missing out on a big slice of the referral pie. Even if the referring physician and their staff adore you, they’re not going to send patients your way if your referral process is frustrating, time-consuming, and just plain clunky.
Simplify the referral process by investing in a secure online referral portal, where they can send you the patient’s information, including contact information, suspected diagnosis, and reason for referral.
Since you already have the necessary information, it will be easier for you to decide the course of action and how quickly the patient needs to be seen. As a result, you’ll be able to serve both the referring physician and the patient better.
Make referring physician look good
When doctors refer their patients to you, it means that they trust you. Your office will serve as an extension of theirs, so they are counting on you to provide patients with excellent service.
Often, patients report back to their primary physicians about their experience. Make a special effort to accommodate the referred patient as soon as possible. Also, make sure that you take good care of the patients and treat them right.
Ensure the referring physician that there will always be room for their patients at your practice.
Be grateful
We grow up learning the importance of good manners, and that usually starts with saying “thank you”.
If a patient is referred to you, take the time to call the referring physician to thank him/her for the trust and confidence. You can also send a hand-written note if that’s your style. Let the referring practice know that you appreciate the referral.
Stay in touch with the referring physician
When a patient is referred to you, it is always vital to follow up. This is a crucial step that many physicians do not do.
One study suggests that 40% of patients that follow through with a referral never went back to their primary physician after the care is initially provided. Always send the patient back to the referring physician. The last thing you want is for the referring doctor to feel that their generous referral has cost them a patient.
Let the referring practice know that the patient has already been scheduled and that you will continue to communicate about what transpires. You want to assure the referring doctor that you’re invested in their patients’ health and that the patient will be receiving the best care possible.
In today’s podcast, we talk about how Instagram and Pinterest play an important role in your digital marketing strategy.
Some people may overlook these two platforms thinking either they are for a younger crowd or their target market is not using these platforms, but that’s not true. Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms and Pinterest is being used as a visual search engine, it’s just like Google but all pictures!
I highlight the following points:
Tips & Tricks to utilize Instagram to it’s fullest potential
How to Upload videos to Instagram and Pinterest
Tools to help maximize your Pinterest efforts
00:00 Speaker 1: Hello. Welcome to the Social Speak Network Podcast. I am your host Amber Irwin, and in today’s episode, we are gonna be covering tips four and five, which were Instagram and Pinterest. And I wanted to go over these two together because they really compliment each other in your digital marketing strategy. So, I wanted to show you a tool that we use for Instagram and Pinterest, and really when you’re figuring out that strategy with each of them. So, let’s talk about Instagram first. Instagram is… Instagram and Pinterest are both visual… So with Instagram, links do not work in your content, the only link that you have in your profile is in your bio. There’s a couple of tools like Linktree, that link will be in the bottom, that you use, which is a free tool that allows people to click on to that. So I think ours is Linktree/Social Speak. And, we have multiple links on that platform, so we have a link to our website, to our blog, to our YouTube, to maybe…
01:12 S1: We have different offers up there. So Linktree’s a great free tool to use to be able to have multiple links in your bio. Because otherwise you’re always saying ‘link in bio’, and you have to make sure you’re changing that out. But if someone’s looking through your Instagram account and you’re talking about one product but that link’s not there anymore, it gets a little confusing. So using a tool like Linktree and having a link to different products or services or blogs you’re talking about is a good idea. With Instagram… There’s a couple of different aspects of Instagram that I want to talk about. First is consistency. Just your news feed and with this is… You’re going through and these are just normal posts that are being put up. So this is just as you scroll through your news feed, these are your normal posts, square images that you’re putting up.
02:09 S1: A couple of added benefits to Instagram that you really wanna take advantage of is Instagram stories and Instagram TV. So when you’re doing a video on your feed as just like a normal post, that video can only be one minute long. When you’re doing Instagram stories, those videos are a 15-second long. So, Instagram TV (IGTV) can be 10 minutes, so take advantage of that space. You’re gonna have a different audience on Instagram compared to Facebook or… If you’re using Twitter or LinkedIn. A lot of our clients get a better response from Instagram than they do Facebook, just a different crowd, different algorithms as well. So with your Instagram account, you wanna make sure you have that strategy. And our tip one was creating that strategy. So, in that strategy, you should have put together, what are those topics you wanna talk about? What videos do you want to do? And, it gets a little tricky with Instagram because you can do your videos horizontal, just make sure you’re in the middle of the screen because if you’re talking like this then… So make sure you’re just in the center of the screen when you’re doing them.
03:33 S1: Vertical videos work the best on Instagram, so sometimes you are recording for dual purposes, so sometimes I’ll set my phone on my computer vertically and record from my phone and my computer, and then the one that’s on my computer, I upload to YouTube and Facebook, the one that I’m using on my phone, I upload to Instagram. So it just kind of depends, you gotta figure out what works best for you. But taking advantage of Instagram stories… And… Hey, we are the first ones to say, “We were really good at doing Instagram stories for a while and then we stopped, and we were seeing… That’s where a lot of those kinds of behind the scenes, the real-time information is great with Instagram stories; it really allows your audience to see who you are as a person and as a company. It’s great if you did an Instagram take over.
04:29 S1: So maybe you have a different employee each week or maybe a couple of times per week, take that Instagram account over, do some behind the scenes, talk about who they are, what their expertise is; just a fun way to really just let your followers know who you guys are as a company. So that’s a great way to use Instagram stories. They only see it for 24 hours, so if you don’t highlight that Instagram story, it’s poof! It’s gone in 24 hours. So a lot of people will use this Instagram stories area as event promotion or specials like, “Only for 24 hours, we’re gonna have this special. So when this video’s gone off Instagram, that special no longer exists. Get in with your membership today, get in with this exclusive offer.” So people love Instagram stories for that. And when you highlight them, if you go to an account and you see these circle icons, these are highlighted stories.
05:32 S1: And you can have different themes. So based on what you do, if you’re a wellness center and you do chiropractic massage, maybe you do holistic medicine, or naturopathic medicine, these will be different so called boards. And you can highlight different stories at any time. So, once you create these boards… Or these… I’m gonna call ’em boards. Once you create these boards, we have one for core values, for business tips, Instagram story tips, just tips for you. So as we do different stories, I can highlight them to go back to these different boards. And so, it kinda helps people know what it is we do. And especially in that coaching space, it’s important for people to know maybe you have a personal life. Maybe if you’re a wellness coach, you have exercises, eating guides or eating tips, whatever that is. So take advantage of that for your audience to kinda go and get those resources.
06:39 S1: So you have your news feed, you have Instagram stories and you have your Instagram TV. So using all of these pieces allows your audience to really engage with you, and the key to this is just being consistent. So whether you’re posting every single day, three times a week, four times a week, figuring out that schedule. And then with Instagram, direct messaging is really a big thing, so people are commenting or asking questions, making sure you’re responding to them within 24 hours. Have your notifications on or have the team you’re working with make sure that they’re checking those notifications and those messages. Sometimes you’ll get ones that are spam, and you know they’re spam, but other times people are just asking questions. You can use an app called Repost, and this allows you to re-post content from other accounts giving them credit; so that if you’re running out of ideas of, “Okay, what should I be talking about?” then you can use Repost, and it’s just like sharing an article on Facebook, but you’re sharing that post from their account.
07:54 S1: So with Instagram and Pinterest, as I said, they’re both visual, so the biggest thing is making sure that people know what they’re looking at so each image is clear, if you’re having content on it, and let them know what the post is the about. And so moving into Pinterest, being able to utilize the images that you have on Instagram on Pinterest as well. So cool fact with Pinterest, you can upload square images, you can upload the vertical images and videos to Pinterest. Think of Pinterest less as social media and more as a visual search engine. I think it was 65% of women search Pinterest for their needs, whether it’s medical, home, DIY; that is their search engine, that’s their Google. And I say, “Yes because I’m always on Pinterest searching for something, whether it’s content ideas, social media tips, home tips with activities with my daughter, wellness tips as far as we used to do to make our own soap, how do you do that, essential oils, whatever it is, Pinterest, you can find everything on there.
09:17 S1: So Pinterest is that visual search engine. And I want to talk to you about a tool we use that’s called Tailwind, and I’ll put a link to this below, but Tailwind… And I wanna show this to you… Tailwind is a really cool tool that we use. It is a paid tool; this is one tool that we do pay for, it’s $14.99 a month, but this allows us to schedule Pins to Pinterest. And what it allows us to do is with Pinterest, you wanna make sure that you are… You always have Pins going out, anywhere from three to eight to 10 a day; you definitely want that rotation continuing. And so with Tailwind, it will actually monitor to know how many posts you should have each day; some days based on our traffic, based on our audience, we have more than other days. And so the weekends, the beginning of the week are a lot heavier, for us, than the end of the week. And so Tailwind creates this process for you and different times.
10:41 S1: So Pinterest, again, it’s like a Google machine, so people are on there in the morning, they’re on there late at night. And so Tailwind calculates when your audience is on Pinterest, and they schedule those Pins to go out, which is super-cool. The other thing that I love with Tailwind and Pinterest is if you’re blogging, you write this awesome blog, you create your images, you pin it to your board, you put it on your social media, but then what? Like you’re writing a blog each month, but each blog is good to repurpose content; you can create what’s called these Smart Loops, and this… What does is you tell Tailwind what images you want to be… Like we have 230 active Loops right now, which means we have a ton of different images, all from our blog, that will continue to be posted, and that they’re posted to different boards, so they’re always being reused because we’re always gaining new followers.
11:53 S1: So with Pinterest, it’s not necessarily about growing your followers to thousands and thousands like it is with Facebook and Instagram, but it’s more about creating that content that people want to share, and the end goal with Pinterest is really to increase that website traffic, that’s the key, is that website traffic. And by using a tool like this, it allows you to see what are the most popular Pins, what are people clicking on, what are they liking, who’s re-pinning what, so it allows you to really dive into those analytics. And so using Tailwind is a great tool, and it keeps us organized. This is… We do this once a week, and then Pinterest is done; you’re already making those images for your blog, and so if you have… If you’re doing lead generation, and you have a content upgrade, you wanna make sure that you’re creating those images around that; so this is just a good way to be able to help you take your Pinterest account to the next level.
13:05 S1: The other thing why I like talking about Instagram and Pinterest with this is a couple of things; with Tailwind, you can link your Instagram account to Tailwind. So if you’re really, really good at posting to Instagram… We have some clients that are posting every single day, and that’s valuable content. You can click Schedule from Instagram, it’s gonna link to your Instagram account, and it’s gonna pull up all of the posts. So this makes it easy to make sure that all that amazing content that you’re putting on to Instagram also can be shared to your Pinterest account with the right boards and making sure that audience sees it as well. So it’s so easy, all you have to do is click Schedule, you pick the board that you want it to go to, and bada-bing, bada-boom, you’re done.
14:08 S1: This is why I really like Instagram and Pinterest together because they do complement each other. That content that you are sharing to Instagram can easily be shared to Pinterest. So, being able to use a tool like Tailwind, and I will put a link in the description with that so you can see that as well, but having a strategy for each of those is really important and then being able to track your analytics with where that traffic’s coming from. So you gotta think of it like this, with Instagram and Facebook it really is… Let’s just stick with Instagram and Pinterest. Instagram is really about getting the engagement, getting the likes, getting the comments, getting the [14:55] ____ messages, and building those relationships. You may not get a lot of website traffic from Instagram because of how the platform is made. You can’t share an article on there and have a link in the content, and people can’t click through to that.
15:13 S1: As I said in the beginning, you have Linktree where you could say, “link in bio.” They click on that and then go to that blog post. You’re not using Instagram for website traffic; you’re using Instagram to build those relationships. Pinterest, you’re using to drive that traffic to your website. You want people to see your blogs. You want people to click on to them. You want them if you have a website that has product on there, whether it’s digital product or physical product, you wanna be pinning all of those images with the right description, with the link back to that page to Pinterest because as people are searching, especially in the health and wellness industries, because if people are searching for essential oils for better sleep, kids’ fever, or whatever it may be, and you have a line and you keep pinning, this is a resource so people are able to click on it, buy it. I’ve bought so many things off of Pinterest because I follow this person; I look at what they’re pinning. I go to their website. I cyberstalk them. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s what we do.
16:31 S1: So, using Pinterest to the fullest potential is huge. And the other piece with Pinterest is using it as a resource for your audience. And what I mean by that is you’re gonna have multiple boards for your business, so you’re gonna have a business account, you’re gonna have your… Like for us, we have email marketing tips, Facebook marketing tips. You’re gonna have all these different boards, and thinking of those boards as keywords, what are people searching for, and how can you use them as a resource for your current audience? So I always like to use Home Depot, for instance, has a really good Pinterest account because they have backyard ideas, bathroom lighting trends, bathroom project ideas. So, they make this a resource for their audience. And I love that because if I’m always going there, it’s a trusted source, I wanna be able to go and see, “Okay, what can I use to redo this as a DIY?” They’re putting this resource here for me to look at and then all I have to do is click on that, “Oh, and they have it in store. Oh, that’s so cool.”
17:58 S1: So if you are a wellness practice, you wanna create your boards based along your services, but then also think of, what are your clients asking you, what are their needs, what are they searching for, and how can you create a board that is a resource for them? And that content that’s on those boards doesn’t have to be all original content. The content that’s on our boards, we did not write all of that content or make all those images. A lot, I would say 70% of our pins, are re-pins. So we have sources like CoSchedule, HubSpot, a couple of other sources that we love, that we get all of our information from that we wanna share. So having those sources that you’re already maybe sharing on Facebook or you’re going to for your own information, see if they have a Pinterest account, start re-pinning their stuff. So that’s really what Pinterest is about, is that sharing platform.
19:03 S1: So, I hope that in this podcast, that made sense with the Instagram and Pinterest, how they work together and how they really tie in to your overall strategy because they’re both really important to have, and that’s why we focused a lot on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for our clients because I really think that you’re being able to touch all areas of where your audiences are at online. So, if you need help with identifying what these strategies are or how to use Pinterest or Instagram for your business, please let us know, schedule your free 30-minute consultation today; we would love to help you discuss that strategy, those ideas and get you Instagramming and Pinteresting right away because I know once you start doing it, you’re gonna be able to see the results and be able to utilize them as tools for your practice. So, if you have questions, let us know. Please remember to subscribe on either Podbean or iTunes for our podcast. We have a weekly podcast to help you organize your digital marketing life. Until next time, we will see you guys later, and remember, head over to socialspeaknetwork.com and schedule your free consultation today. Have a great day.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/How-to-use-Instagram-and-Pinterest-for-your-Wellness-Practice.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-09-03 08:00:152019-08-22 19:48:43How to use Instagram and Pinterest for your Wellness Practice
Today’s podcast is about Facebook groups and how to utilize Facebook groups to get in front of prospects, to build a community around your services, and really create that brand image where you are sharing valuable information and building conversations with your target market. So Facebook groups really have a few different purposes.
You can view them as a forum on Facebook, you can view them as a way for people to connect with a community around a certain topic or even in a specific location. And we have seen great success for wellness coaches, dietitians, nutritionists, wellness centers, healthcare organizations, creating groups were their own prospects and members as a way to make sure that they have more consistent communication with those individuals.
Listen to the Podcast on Facebook Groups for Health Care
Watch the Video about Facebook Groups in Health and Wellness Marketing
Read the Transcript
00:00 Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of The Social Speak Network podcast. I’m your host, the sweet Caitlin McDonald, the founder over here at the Social Speak Network, and over the past couple of weeks, and moving forward into the next, maybe even a couple of months, we’re going to be talking about the top 10 things that your wellness practice Health Care Center can do on digital marketing to see a return from their investment. And so today, I’m going to be talking about Facebook groups and how to utilize Facebook groups to get in front of prospects, to build a community around your services, and really create that brand image where you are sharing valuable information and building conversations with your target market. So Facebook groups really have a few different purposes. You can view them as a forum on Facebook, you can view them as a way for people to connect with a community around a certain topic or even in a specific location. And we have seen great success for wellness coaches, dieticians, nutritionists, wellness centers, healthcare organizations, creating groups were their own prospects and members as a way to make sure that they have more consistent communication with those individuals.
01:42 S1: Now, in order to make this happen, you have to really make sure that you’re not making the group about you. The group has to be about fostering a community, fostering conversations, and relationships and making sure that you’re not just talking about your own services and your own business. Yes, it’s a great way to share content that you create, but that content that you create, as we’ve said over and over again, really needs to be educational information that your target market and your prospects can take and run with. So for example, let’s say you are a health coach and you have new programs that are coming out. And so these programs, you really wanna share to your community. Now, you could go ahead and share them to your Facebook group. But rather than doing that, I would recommend creating a behind-the-scenes information that somebody might be able to find more expansive version of within the group, excuse me, within the program itself. However, you’re sharing just enough to get them started on the right path. This allows people to do it themselves if they want to, or to understand your expertise, so that they can turn to you for help with guidance down the road.
03:09 S1: Now you don’t wanna just be in there, posting about the group, excuse me, posting about your services individually, because this turns people away, it’s not interactive. Instead of doing that, post questions, answer questions, hop on Facebook live just in front of your group members and really try to foster that, those conversations. Now, it is important to note that right here, I’m talking about a group that is specifically to build a community around your services, and your practice. However, there are a lot of other more broad groups that already exists on Facebook. So, before you create that next group on diabetes, let’s say, make sure that there aren’t groups already out there that are doing a great job. If you’re trying to recreate something that’s already out there, it’s going to take a lot more time and effort to get people to join your group, because they’re already invested in these other groups. Now, I’m not saying don’t do it [chuckle] Facebook Groups are great thing to create, for your practice, but it does definitely take more time if it’s already existing in your space and in your specialties.
04:33 S1: Now, what you could do, if there is a group already made in your area of expertise, is go ahead and join that group. Offer guidance and ask questions, comment on other people’s posts and really start positioning yourself as an expert in that space, and as someone who is trustworthy or as an organization that’s trustworthy. And doing this helps you get that brand recognition, but again, you can’t talk about your services in somebody else’s group. Typically, there are guidelines about this, and it’s just not very professional behavior. We call this in, I mean in most industries, coaching clients from somebody else. And yes, a lot of times, your clients may have worked with somebody else in the past, but you don’t wanna be too salesy as you are trying to build that trust, and really come across as a figure in the space. Then the next tip about utilizing Facebook groups, and this is going back to creating a group yourself, is to be really specific about the purpose and to recognize that it’s going to be difficult to manage the group by yourself.
05:51 S1: And so in terms of understanding and being specific about the group’s purpose, this really helps set the expectations for your group members as they’re joining the group, what they’re going to see, what type of content they’re going to see, and how they can utilize the group to help further their own knowledge, education, and health. And so you want to, if you have a specific purpose and you’ve written the guidelines for the group, it’s important to actually stick to those. So somebody joins, they see the guidelines, maybe they answer a few questions before being approved, then you have to make sure that you are really sticking to those guidelines and being truthful yourself as well as holding other people accountable. Then the second piece there, was [chuckle] inviting other admins and managers to the group. So, in a group, you can have multiple managers. We recommend not just having one person in charge of the group. This really makes it so that there’s less… What we’ve seen in our experience is that there’s less interactions if there’s only one manager. When there are more managers you can even help foster discussions between one another, and people always can have their questions answered more quickly.
07:13 S1: So you can either divide the management based on your own expertise and what topics you are comfortable talking about. Or you can divide it by day of the week, or even time of day. Depending on how active your group is, you might even need somebody on call over the weekend to make sure that those questions are being answered. If somebody’s posting something in the group, and nobody is commenting back in replying, people are going to stop writing back. Now, having multiple group member, or excuse me group admin also makes it easier to keep new conversations forming in the group. So by this I mean, let’s say it’s been a quiet week and no members are really posting anything. As a manager of the group, you can then go in and post something to start spurring the conversation. Maybe you have the first week of the month, you have a standard question that goes out and you see how it changes over time. Maybe it’s asking people for their favorite exercise routine or their favorite activity of the season with their family. Potentially, it’s posting recipes that have to do with a single ingredient that’s timely or seasonal. So all of these things are things that you can do to help boost that engagement on the group, and because you are managing the group, that helps you prove your own expertise and position within the space.
08:47 S1: One other thing I recommend is having individuals introduce themselves when they join the group, and by doing this, you are getting people one, committed, two, participating in the group. If the first thing they do once they join is they start posting in the group, typically they’ll keep on doing it. If you don’t ask them to introduce themselves, oftentimes, they’re not going to. And then another thing that you can do is make sure that when somebody’s requesting to join you ask them questions prior to joining. So you can ask them what topics they’re most interested in, so that you talk about those topics, and for their email address. Now, this email address, if you have a disclosure there, you can mostly add that to your newsletter as well, or you can check to make sure that they’re already on your newsletter and they have to be part of on your newsletter in order to then join your group. So it’s a great way just to build your email list as well.
09:53 S1: So above all, the biggest takeaway when it comes to Facebook groups is really making sure that you are being considerate of others. You aren’t selling yourself too much and that your really, your main goal is to build that community and those relationships with the members of your group. So again, my name’s Caitlin McDonald. I’m the co-founder over here at the Social Speak Network. And thank you so much for tuning into our podcast on Digital Marketing for Health and Wellness Practices. Next week, Amber is going to be diving into utilizing on some tools for social media. So be sure to stick around there. You can download and subscribe to, our podcast on iTunes as well as Podbean and it’s also over on our website, the socialspeaknetwork.com. Thanks so much, and I look forward to seeing you soon.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Podcast-Youtube-Image-fb-groups-healthwellness.png7201280Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2019-08-28 13:13:112019-08-28 13:13:11How to Use Facebook Groups to Grow a Health and Wellness Practice
In this podcast episode we talk about how Facebook Ads work and the top benefits for having a Facebook ad campaign running for your wellness business.
The first benefit is getting in front of new people, new prospects. So you’re actually helping your business see an ROI from the social media efforts that you have.
The second thing is that you are nurturing those relationships of people who have heard about your brand or your practice, but haven’t taken that step to come in and learn more or meet with one of your staff. Running these Facebook ads helps you make sure that you stay top of mind to the people who haven’t yet come in.
Then the third thing that it does, is it helps you re-engage with the patients who have been in to see you and just need a reminder every once in a while, that it’s time to come back in and schedule their next appointment.
Take a listen and read the transcript below!
Facebook Advertising for Healthcare – Digital Marketing Podcast Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Social Speak Network podcast. I’m Caitlin McDonald, one of the co-owners over here at Social Speak, and in today’s podcast episode, we are going to be talking about Facebook ads. Facebook ads are really important for health and wellness businesses and for healthcare.
Facebook Ads help you establish brand recognition and brand trust quickly and easily. They also allow you to get in front of the right people at the right time. Managing Facebook Ads for your healthcare business is really to not only build your prospect list, but also to nurture those prospects.
Last week, Amber talked some about creating a social media content calendar and figuring out how many times to post and what topics to post about, and so this is taking your social media presence to really another level.
Types of Facebook Ads for Wellness Center
On Facebook, there are a few different ways that you can advertise your business. There’s organic posting, there’s boosting those organic posts, and then there’s a whole slew of different ads that you can run from the Ads Manager.
In our digital marketing for healthcare we try and focus on the conversion ads. The reason why we do this is because it helps tap into Facebook’s algorithm for figuring out who’s going to be most likely to take that next step, and we’ll get into this in a few weeks, but that next step often is signing up to be a lead on your website.
This is something I’m going be getting into in a few weeks here. However, I did want go through a couple of real life Facebook campaigns that we’ve managed for some of our clients. The reason why I’m bringing up real Facebook Ad campaigns for some of our wellness clients is because I want to set the stage about the amount of time and effort is can take to nail down and optimize a Facebook campaign that’s going to work for your unique offerings and your unique target market. So let’s dive in.
The first business that I want to highlight is a Healthcare Education Association. They provide healthcare resources and education to constituents online and through live conferences and events. This group has a tremendous following, however, they are trying to grow and boost their new members. Over the years, just because of some ideological differences between some of the older members and the newer members, they have dropped some of their old membership base. Now they’re trying to really grow with new members that are more aligned with where their organization stands. This healthcare organization had only ever run boosted posts before. Yes, this does boost an organization’s exposure and engagement, but are you really seeing a return from that investment?
This is where the Facebook conversion ads come in that we created.
The Social Speak process with Facebook ads, typically, is having some sort of free resource or free download, even free consultation, that somebody can sign up for when they click on your Facebook ad. We’ve used webinars, e-books, and, in this case, we took articles that the client had previously written and bundled them together in the form of an e-book. Our first ads tested out the interest in this resource, which audiences lead to the most clients and conversions, ad what imagry and text were most effective. In this first go, there were three different audiences, but we did not see anything more than a 1% conversion rate. We spent about $160 in advertising budget spread across our A/B tests and saw one lead come in. Giving these tests a rest, we moved to the next digital project.
When optimizing Facebook ads for your wellness practice you shouldn’t just work on testing how you position your free resource or content upgrade, but also what offer is going to align most closely to the needs of your target market.
At this stage, we moved on to their next resource that we could offer and we did this a few different times, and we came across a quiz that they had. After repackaging the quiz so that it lived directly on their website we were ready to capture the leads directly into their email system rather than going through a third party. With this quiz, we found that through running the leads ads on Facebook rather than sending somebody to a landing page, we’re able to get the cost per lead down to almost $2. Additionally, we tried two different other campaigns, one for a fact sheet, and one for an e-book, focusing on a different topic, a different service that they provide from the first e-book, and each of these were able to get a sub $3 cost per lead as well. We’re still in the process of testing new services to promote new offers to promote, new educational resources to promote for them. We’re building another quiz that has to do with that second topic that we are talking about with them, and through this process, we’re continually able to decrease that cost per lead and get consistent results.
The reason why I shared this one first and kind of that failure story of spending $160 for one lead, is that your whole staff and your whole board needs to have the expectation that optimizing Facebook ads does take time. And so yes, you want to have an end goal of, I want to only spend $10 per lead, $15 per lead, $1 per lead. You need to have that goal, but you need to have the expectation that you’re not going to be there right now. So for this organization, we want that cost per lead to be lower, and we are working to get there. But we are testing out different audiences, different offers, different ad content, as a way to get there. I think in all, we’ve run over 100 or 150 different ads for them, that maybe it’s the same ad text but a different picture, different ad text, same video, or different audience, same audience, merging audiences together. And so it really is a process where you need to let the data speak for itself. And if it doesn’t stick on the first try, try again. So have kind of that budget in mind and that end goal right into the forefront.
The next client I wanted to share is a dietitian and health coach. She has been working with us running ads for over the past year. For any ad campaign, we do recommend giving it at least six months to make sure that with that first example is process that you are giving it time to really figure out if you’re getting results or not. Afterwards you have to then convert the leads into actual folks who are booking appointments with you, coming in, signing up for those paid services, or purchasing a product from you. So with this health coach, this dietitian, she has been running ads long before we even first sat down with her. And for her, our technique is really to focus on each of the different e-books, downloads, free offers that she has. She is very geared towards sharing educational resources, as are most of our clients. And for this client, we’ve had a few home run offers, timely offers, holiday diet tips and back to school tips and things like that, that have worked really well; with landing pages getting 60-70% conversion rates. However, the cost per lead has still been a little bit higher.
In this recent campaign, she had a great idea of grouping all of the resources together and having a complete resource library that folks who enter their name and email would gain access to. We created a new conversion campaign for this and a new landing page. And rather than creating individual ads for each of the different items that we want to test, we used Facebook’s, it’s not new, but newer feature where you can actually test multiple headlines, bodies and calls to action in each of the ads that you’re running and images or videos. And then Facebook will automatically pair and match and test the different items for you. So it takes a lot of the guess work out of creating those 100 or 200 different ads to make sure that you’re testing all of the different combinations. So for her this new campaign, we’ve been able to bring her average historical cost per lead from about $3-$4 all the way down to $0.50 cents. Now at this 50-cent mark, she is just pushing money towards this campaign and we’re continuing to see Facebook’s algorithm lead to better and better results. Now for her, because she is getting this quantity now, we are making sure that we still have that quality.
We’re working on that next part of the campaign, which is that email marketing follow-up. And here, we’re testing to make sure that that open rate and click rate on her emails actually is going up rather than going down as we’re getting more quantity in there.
Setting Goals for your Healthcare Facebook Campaign
The goal for your Facebook campaign should be within the first, I’d say, three months to really start seeing movement in a positive direction. And that could be starting with a cost per lead or conversion of $60 and working it down. But you don’t want to throw all your money at something until you see that upward momentum towards positive return. So for this dietitian for example, we are telling her to throw money at the campaign because it is currently working, and she’s getting conversions from it. If it was that first example that I gave, we did not spend their whole monthly budget until month three [chuckle] when we were finally able to push the dollars behind a campaign that was getting the results in the price point that they needed.
Always start small, test multiple things at once, and utilize Facebook’s ability to really optimize the campaigns for you.
A trick for optimizing a Facebook Ad Campaign
Now, one of the tricks that we have for tapping into how Facebook can optimize this is utilizing a landing page or a lead page sort of alternative. You can put this directly on your WordPress website or Square Space website. We typically use LeadPages, which is a software to build the lead pages. You can send an automated email afterwards and test to make sure that it really works. I recommend doing this for your business, your healthcare center as well. But of course, if you need any help, we are here to help.
As I wrap up, let’s just talk again about those top benefits for having a Facebook ad campaign running for your wellness business.
The first benefit is getting in front of new people, new prospects. So you’re actually helping your business see an ROI from the social media efforts that you have.
The second thing is that you are nurturing those relationships of people who have heard about your brand or your practice, but haven’t taken that step to come in and learn more or meet with one of your staff. Running these Facebook ads helps you make sure that you stay top of mind to the people who haven’t yet come in.
Then the third thing that it does, is it helps you re-engage with the patients who have been in to see you and just need a reminder every once in a while, that it’s time to come back in and schedule their next appointment.
In terms of what to expect, don’t expect results in the first day. Yes, you might get lucky and you might find that combination where they are coming in right away. Most likely it might take upwards of three months. Now, don’t spend your whole marketing budget in those first three months. Wait for you to see that upward momentum and that path towards getting a positive ROI. From there, give it another three to six months to really run its course and make sure that you are getting after you get that lead, that prospect, that you are then getting someone in the door.
In health care, yes, there are services that need immediate bookings of appointments and somebody needs to come in right away for a consultation or even a surgery. However more often than not, for health and wellness, it’s about educating, teaching people why they need to come in and getting them to know, like and trust your brand. Again, my name’s Caitlin McDonald. This is the Social Speak Network podcast. You can follow us on Podbean, on iTunes or head on over to our website to check out our blog posts and social media as well. I’ll see you next time on the Social Speak Network podcast.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Podcast-Youtube-Image-healthwellness.png7201280Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2019-08-14 02:50:032019-08-13 23:05:46Facebook Advertising in Health and Wellness
As doctors, you tell patients all the time that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Although we often use this axiom when referring to health, we believe that it also applies to your marketing strategy.
Knowing how to market health care services is important, even if you’re happy with your current patient volume. With so much information available online, patients no longer feel the need to visit clinics or hospitals near them. They can easily switch health care providers anytime. The last thing you want is to find out your patient database is nearly empty.
You are not guaranteed to keep up your patient volume forever. Having a planned medical marketing strategy will help keep your brand at the forefront of people’s mind.
Here are some tips on how to market health care services and grow your practice.
Referral marketing
Doctors and other medical practitioners aren’t entirely clueless on how to market health care services. In fact, many of you have been using this marketing strategy for years.
In order to make referral marketing work for you, you have to unleash your inner extrovert and put yourself out there. Make sure you get some face time with physicians, massage therapists, yoga instructors, health coaches, naturopathic doctors etc. These people can be great resources for referrals.
Professional referrals are based squarely on sound relationships. Patients, health care professionals and their staff will only refer someone they trust – someone they feel is the best. You have to make them feel comfortable about you – both as a health practitioner and as a person.
Referral marketing is not just about getting more people through the door. Rather, it’s an ongoing process of finding, attracting, and retaining patients.
Establish or enhance your social media presence
Social media marketing requires a lot of time and effort, and we know that time is something you may not have in abundance. But the benefits of social media are simply too great to ignore.
Advertising your practice on social media can help new patients find you with less effort on your part. It also allows you to connect with other professionals and your patients.
Devote the time to make daily updates and postings. Publish content your audience would be interested to read. Share some tips to educate patients. Share relevant information about your field of knowledge. By educating your audience, they will see you as a helpful doctor who is invested in keeping them healthy.
You don’t have to manually post all your social media content. There are lots of tools out there that will automate your social media publishing and scheduling.
Focus on branding
When we think of a brand, big companies such as Coca-Cola and Apple often comes to mind. As a medical practitioner, you can’t create your brand, can you? Of course, you can!
A brand’s identity is how a business wants to be perceived by its audience or customers. It is how you are currently perceived as a medical practitioner.
Having a strong brand allows you to build a positive image that makes people expect a certain level of quality from you. It helps people trust you and makes them want to work with you. Ultimately, branding can help increase referrals and expand your practice.
Professional website
Today, more and more people are using the internet to research treatments and find health care practitioners of all kinds. They’d want to learn more about you before making an appointment.
If you don’t have a website, then you’re seriously limiting your visibility online. It will be difficult for potential patients to learn about you and your practice. This puts you at a disadvantage.
Having an up-to-date professional website allows you to represent your brand the way you want it to be. Plus, it allows you to easily communicate with potential and existing patients about new services and offerings. Ultimately, it reduces the amount of time your staff spends on the phone by providing basic information and answers to commonly asked questions.
Final thoughts
For decades, medical professionals have gotten by without spending time and money in marketing and advertising their practices. Living in the digital age, having no online presence is simply not an option.
The internet has changed how people experience health care. They would turn to the internet to research health-related topics and treatments, and even shop around for health care practitioners. If you know how to market health care services, then you’ll find that there are lots of opportunities to grow your practice and reach new patients.
The Social Speak Network Podcast recently went into more detail about digital marketing for health care services, as well.
Top 10 Tips to Increase your Digital Marketing Presence in the Health & Wellness Industry
In this podcast episode, Social Speak Network co-founders discuss 10 Tips to Increase your Digital Marketing Presence in the Health & Wellness Industry. Over the upcoming weeks, we will be diving into each of these in more detail.
1) Social Media Strategy
2) Facebook Ads
3) Facebook Groups
4) Instagram
5) Pinterest
6) Blogging
7) Lead Generation
8) Videos
9) Podcast
10) Email Marketing
Watch the Episode
Read the Digital Marketing for Health Care Services Podcast Transcript
00:01 Caitlin McDonald: Hello and welcome to the Social Speak Network podcast. I’m one of your hosts today, Caitlin McDonald, and we’re also joined by Amber Irwin.
00:10 Amber Irwin: Hello everyone.
00:12 CM: In this episode, we’re gonna be talking a lot about tips to increase your digital marketing presence in the health and wellness industry. So we work with a lot of different businesses and organizations in health and wellness ranging from Pediatric centers to massage therapists, nutritionists. And they’re always asking, how can we increase our digital marketing, how can we increase our exposure online, so that we’re reaching the right target market? So today, we’re gonna be going through the top 10 tips to increase your digital marketing presence. And then over the course of the next few months, we’re gonna be diving into each of these more specifically. So either Amber and myself, will be really focusing on one of the tips moving forward, and this episode really is designed to be an overarching strategy, that kind of paints the picture for the next few months.
01:07 AI: Exactly. So let’s dive into the first thing that will help you have a clear direction of where you’re going. And that is having that strategy, whether it is just a social media strategy or a digital marketing strategy, again, with that overarching picture of What do you need to do? So, having a content calendar. With social media, and really, digital marketing as a whole it’s… Consistency is key, and if you don’t have that content calendar and that organization of what you need to do and what you need to prepare for, it’s easy to forget about it and not do it. So having a calendar, knowing how many times to post with social media is really important, because sometimes… The other day, we had somebody say, Gosh, three times a week seems like a lot. I think it should just be one time a week and we’re like “No.”
01:58 AI: So knowing your audience, whether that’s every day, maybe it’s just during the week or maybe your audience is on social media more during the weekends, so knowing your audience and knowing when to post and then also what platforms to use. So we’re gonna be talking a little bit about Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, but there’s also Twitter and LinkedIn. So knowing where your audience is playing is really important, so Caitlin, why don’t you talk to us a little bit about the Facebook ads and Facebook groups.
02:27 CM: Perfect. So Facebook is one of those networks that we all wanna forget that it’s there, but we can’t forget that it’s there. [chuckle] And over time, it’s been more and more important to have an actual advertising spend. So you’re not only paying somebody just to manage the account and post the three times or more per week, you also then have to spend money on Facebook in order for those posts to be seen. And so over time, these ads have gotten more and more complex as well, so it used to be that you could just click and boost a post, and now what you have to really dive in and create an ad that’s specific for one segment of your market versus another.
03:14 CM: So let’s say you have some services that are more tailored towards women, or moms, or another section that’s more tailored towards baby boomers or children. You need to create different ads and different audiences for each of those so that you’re really speaking towards the networks they are. Now, in terms of the budget for Facebook ads, really this depends on your service. I think the most important thing here is to pay attention to those key performance indicators. So how much is each lead costing you? How many leads are then converting to schedule a follow-up appointment? And of those follow-up appointments, how many folks are then coming in for secondary services, sending referrals and things like that? So we currently have ads running for some companies where the cost per lead is $20-$30, we have other ones where it’s less than a dollar, closer to 50 cents per lead.
04:16 CM: And these are converting at the same ratio of lead to then signing up for services. However, the person who’s paying $30 per lead is completely fine with that cost, because their service is more money in general. Then there’s the next part of Facebook groups. Now Facebook groups are a great way to find your target audience, in communities that are already formed and it’s also a great way to create a community around your own services or offerings. So, we recommend joining groups and so this could be the admin on your account or the business owner. Maybe someone on the Board of Directors, joining groups on Facebook that align with your target market’s interests and posting on there, commenting, sharing articles that you’re writing and everything like that. And then also having a group that you manage for your own organization that just provides a little bit more information. So that your target audience can continue learning and building that trust with you and you building the trust with them so that when it’s time to come on in for that next appointment, they know where to turn. Amber, do you wanna dive in now to some of those other social media networks?
05:39 AI: Yeah. So let’s talk about Instagram first. So, Instagram is… A lot of people, this… Instagram’s a little overwhelming, I think. People don’t necessarily understand it or they’re… And most of the time, it’s just images and videos. You can’t put a link in the content. You could put links in your stories if you have over 10,000 followers. And below in the comments, I will put down a free tool. That’s called Linktree and that allows you to have multiple links within your profile, within your bio area there. So you have a link to your blog, you have a link to maybe a special offer, your YouTube channel, etcetera. So I’ll put that in the comments below. But Instagram stories are really important to make sure you are doing… And these are fun for… Maybe it’s a tip of the day, behind the scenes, introducing a new practitioner.
06:34 AI: These are just quick 15 second clips, or you can do images too. And they only see it for 24 hours. So this is a great way, if you are… If you have an event, if you are having a special on products, maybe it’s a blowout sale on just inventory you have in the office. This is a great way to just have those stories be more like your VIP area. You can track the analytics on those, so it lets you know how many people watched each story and who those people were. So then another step is follow up with them with a private message of saying “Hey, I saw you liked our story. Are you interested in our products? Or if you have any questions, let us know.” So it’s really about building that relationship.
07:16 AI: Instagram TV is really important. These are for your videos that are anything over a minute, because remember, on your News Feed, your videos can be one minute long. And on Instagram TV, they can be up to 10 minutes long. So taking advantage of that. And what Instagram TV has started to do is any time you upload a video to Instagram TV, it now gives a one-minute clip on your News Feed. So before, we would upload a video and then create a post about it, and now Instagram does that automatically for you. So you can have a cover photo in that, you can have a title and a description and put, “Hey, check us out.” What’s that call to action? So, “Sign up today on our website, check us out on YouTube.” So it’s important to make sure that you’re using all of the bells and whistles that Instagram has for you.
08:06 AI: The more you use… So, on Instagram stories, the more if you are doing like a mention, if you’re doing a gift, a hashtag, a sticker, the things that they already have there for you, they like that. And so, you show up more in the algorithm. It’s kind of silly, but they love it, so do it. And then obviously, the hashtags for Instagram. So make sure you’re doing your research. The one thing I love about Instagram is if you type in a hashtag, it’s gonna tell you… Like, if you search for a hashtag, it’s gonna tell you how many people are talking about that hashtag. And then you can also follow that hashtag and see everyone that’s mentioning it. So, it’s good just for that research.
08:47 AI: Competitors, what are they talking about? What posts are they putting up? What engagement are they getting? And then for you to be able to create content for your audience and see what people are wanting to know about. And don’t always use the same hashtags. ‘Cause a lotta times, you’ll see the exact same hashtags in the exact same order on every single post. Do not do that. You’ll see formatting where it’s the post, three dots, and then hashtags. You can have, we usually say, between five and 10 hashtags per post. And then in the comments, if you do a first comment, you could have up to 30 hashtags. So hashtags play an important role in Instagram.
09:28 AI: So from Instagram, I wanna move into Pinterest, because Pinterest… These are both very visual platforms. And Pinterest, I really think of Pinterest as more of a visual Google. This is really where, if your target market is women, mothers, you have to be on Pinterest because this is where we’re finding our information. Whether it is, is this normal? To home remedies, to stretches, to work outs, to… Whatever it is to home interior design. This is where women are finding the majority of their information. So Pinterest, use it as a resource for your clients.
10:08 AI: If you look at, I’m just gonna throw out Home Depot. I think Farmer’s Insurance does a great job. They organize their boards as resources for their audience. So they have home gardening tips, they have like organic plants. They have all these boards that their audience really wants to know about. And so, using Pinterest as a resource for your clients helps build that value and that relationship. The other thing Pinterest is great for is building traffic back to your website. So, Caitlin’s gonna be talking a little bit about the logging and lead generation. And Pinterest is a great way to build that audience back to… Or that traffic back to your website and creating the right images.
10:52 AI: So again, in the comments below, I will put a really cool tool. Secret, a tool that we use for our clients and it makes Pinterest… It’s amazing. It really helps drive the traffic to your site, it helps you organize and schedule your pins, and it gives you suggestions based on your search history of what you should do. So Pinterest, it’s… I think that it’s something that is just a really great way… If your clients are asking a question and you have what we call power partners or a list of people that you recommend, you can pin from them too. So you can just have a board that says, “Resources” or “Referral partners,” and start pinning from their website to that board. So it gives your audience one place to go, it makes it easy and it’s, again, driving that traffic back to your website and your power partner’s website. So, that is Pinterest for ya.
11:49 CM: Awesome. And Amber mentioned this, but Pinterest really is like a search engine, which brings us to blogging and search engine optimization. And so starting… I guess this isn’t one of the points that we’re really diving into specifically, but I do wanna bring it up. One thing that’s important to remember with search engine optimization, is that there are a lot of other places that your website can be found or your organization can be found besides just your website. So yes, you want your website URL to show up and be kind of in the top 10 results on Google, however you can have your Pinterest boards and your pins show up in Google. You can have your YouTube content, we’re gonna get into videos, but you can have your YouTube content show up in the top 10 points of Google, your directory listings.
12:42 CM: All of these things really work together to help boost your website, but also just boost your overall brand presence online. So really keep that in mind as you’re working on search engine optimization, that it’s not just about doing one thing, it’s about doing a little bit of everything in a very smart way. [chuckle]
13:06 CM: So let’s jump into blogging. Blogging is one of our favorite tactics when it comes to boosting your presence in digital marketing and in the digital world. And basically, what this means is creating a well-written article and publishing it on your website. Long gone are the days where you can only write a post of 350 or 750 words. These articles should be a lot longer, meaning, between 1500 and 5000 words, and there are tools to figure out what’s the best length for a specific topic. And they should include lots of different types of media such as videos, Pinterest pins, little snippets of text that are easy for somebody to click and tweet. And so, you wanna make it as easy as possible for this blog post to then be shared to different networks.
14:05 CM: So our typical process for writing a blog or an article includes starting with that keyword research. So here, we like to focus on what are the main things that people are looking for if they want to come in and book an appointment with one of your specialists or physicians? So what are the top concerns that they have? What are the symptoms they have? What are the main questions that they have? From here, you can research what people are actually searching for online. And there are a few ways to do this. One of the easiest is just pulling up Google and starting to type in whatever that topic is, and Google will actually put in there related search terms, they are the phrases that people are really using. And so that’s a great thing to put into Google, or excuse me, into your blog post.
15:00 CM: Then, after you have kind of the idea of what that topic should really be… And as I’m doing the podcast episode specifically about this, we’ll talk about some of those tools that our company uses for it. [chuckle] But we won’t get into that now, because I could go on and on about that. But the next thing that you do after you have that basis of the keyword research is actually creating a blog outline. When I create a blog outline, sometimes, I’m already up to 500 or 750 words, and I haven’t written in an ounce of content. All I have are the headers and the sub-headers and a couple of little bullet points under each of them. So it makes writing a longer blog post a lot easier in the long run.
15:43 CM: After this, it really, as we mentioned is about formatting it and then sharing it. And so one of the good ways to share it is to have some sort of call to action in there as well, and so this brings us into the lead generation part of your website presence and digital marketing. And so, for lead generation, we always recommend having some sort of content upgrade or offer that you’re promoting, and so each of the blog posts that you write can then include a little snippet about that content upgrade or call to action, as a way to entice people to take the next step about learning more about your business and organization. For this lead generation piece, we always recommend having really valuable free information or free content that somebody can then gain access to. This could be a resource library that’s just for your subscribers, or it could be something like booking a free consultation as well.
16:46 CM: Both of those work tremendously well in health and wellness. And then, in order to actually collect the names and email addresses, we recommend setting up a landing page, and you can do this just on, let’s say, a WordPress website or a tool like LeadPages or somewhere else, where you collect their name, email address and sometimes phone number, you can play around with kind of conversion rates there, have them download or gain access to whatever it is, and then sign them up for your email newsletter. So we’ll jump into email newsletter later. But we brought up video a couple of times, I [chuckle].. With blogging and social media and everything. So, Amber, do you wanna jump into videos?
17:30 AI: Yeah. So I love that blogging is growing into this so much more than just contact. In a blog, like Caitlin said, you’re gonna have a lead magnet, you’re gonna have an image, you’re gonna have that Pinterest image, so you can pin that back to Pinterest, and you’re gonna have videos. So I… You’re really touching every type of learning, whether they’re kinesthetic, visual, audio. Because with videos, people, and a lot of times, people will watch videos without the sound, so captions are really important, because whether they’re at work or they’re just in a place where they can’t hear, their kids are running around… Whatever it is. So videos are a great way to really allow your audience to get to know who you are.
18:16 AI: And these videos can be on… Again, it goes back to that content calendar that you’re gonna be putting in place the first step. Because, maybe you have a tip of the day in your blog post, whether you have it broken out in different sections, you could have a video for each section, so it just maybe goes into a little bit further detail or showing them how to do something so they can read it and they can see it. And they can put it together based on how they need to. Maybe it’s recipes are really great for videos. So videos are just such an important piece of your digital marketing. And there’s a few things that you’re gonna do with these videos once you have them. Obviously, you’re gonna upload them to YouTube, and when you have them onto YouTube, there’s… And I’ll get in more like Caitlin said… As you go into these videos more in detail, we’ll give you all the tools that we use.
19:05 AI: But with YouTube, you’re gonna wanna create playlists and there’s a lot of little things that you could do with your videos to make sure that they’re getting seen more. So, YouTube is gonna be your hub. From that, you could put them into your blog post, you can upload them to Facebook into these groups that you’re gonna be a part of, but then also onto Instagram TV. So a couple of tips when you’re doing videos. When you’re doing an Instagram TV video, have your phone vertical. When you’re doing a… Most of the time, if I’m recording a video for YouTube, I’ll just have it from my computer or turn your phone horizontal. So it doesn’t matter, even if you do a video vertical for YouTube, YouTube… There’s no more black bars, they have the image back there, so it looks really good, but having these videos on all of your platforms is really important because, again, it just… It brings that name to face and you’re able to answer questions. A lot of times what we see with pediatricians, they will get questions, they’ll take notes of weekly questions that they’re getting from their patients and then at the end of the week, they’ll do maybe an FAQ Friday and they’ll answer some of these questions that the parents had or they’ll talk about a topic.
20:23 AI: So again, it’s listening to what your audience is looking for and asking for and doing those videos around their needs. And this is, again, where those Facebook groups come in, because you can do videos just for that group, based on those questions that are coming in, so you can get really intimate with your clients and then you have ones that are just for YouTube that anyone can view. So, videos are really important, and again going with the videos, taking it a little bit further with podcasts. So Caitlin, let’s talk a little bit about podcasts before we kind of wrap it up with the email marketing piece. Podcasts are hot right now, but everyone wants to do one. What are, how do you start your own podcast and what are a few tips people should know?
21:12 CM: Yeah. So with podcasts, the process is a lot easier than you might think. There are hundreds, maybe not hundreds, but there are a handful of free podcast, kind of hosting companies, or ones where it just costs under $10 per month to sign up for it. We use Podbean. There are a bunch of other ones. With Podbean, we also can hook it up to iTunes. So our podcast is on iTunes. And it’s something that, as long as you’re being consistent, it just provides that extra little piece of personality behind your organization. So, it’s a great place to take the content that you’re sharing in those videos and turn it into a podcast episode.
22:00 CM: It’s also a great way to interview people. So let’s say, you have 10 physicians on staff, go through and interview each of them on anything from kind of giving a little bit of a personal background to who’s in your practice through to their specialities. If you’re an health and wellness coach, reach out to other health and wellness coaches who might have a slightly different perspective and having this podcast and being the interviewer automatically positions you as an expert and also gives you a great ideas for what to do for your own practice if you ever are stuck finding clients, let’s say, or with… Maybe one regimen isn’t working for a client, you always… It always works.
22:45 CM: So tap into the knowledge of the people that you’re interviewing, and see what else they recommend, any other solutions that they recommend kind of turning to. So it’s a really fun, easy way just to have a different piece of media that you can share on your website, and then it also provides a great basis for blog posts. So, [chuckle] you do the podcast episode, you record it for YouTube, you upload it to Podbean or wherever, to iTunes, so then you can share that, you can share the video and then you’d make a transcription of it using one of the many softwares that are available online and you have a full blog post kind of without doing any work that then goes on your website, helps with that search engine optimization and provides a different type of content to share online as well. So podcasts are hot, they’re one of… It’s one of the growing, quickest growing avenues online for marketing your business and practice. So I say jump on the bandwagon, give it a shot.
23:55 AI: Exactly, and then once you have your blogs and your podcast, then that kinda comes into that email marketing piece. And email marketing kinda plays two roles in your digital marketing because you’re gonna have, whether you have weekly updates. We do a weekly digital marketing email or a monthly newsletter and so I’ll talk a little bit about those monthly newsletters and weekly emails, and then, Caitlin’s gonna talk a little bit about how that email marketing plays a role in your lead generation with the automation piece. So when you have and again, everything comes down to consistency. So when you are creating all this content, you can kind of see how it’s this little spider web and how everything connects, but your website is your hub of where everything lands and so, your whole goal is to have everyone, have all these resources back to your website. So email marketing, whether these are patients, people you’ve met at events, people that signed up for your lead generation, you wanna make sure that now you are communicating with them, whether that is weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, it doesn’t matter, as long as you pick what you’re gonna do and commit to it.
25:09 AI: So the worst is you get an email. I signed up for something, I’m so excited. I get that intro email, I love it and then I’m like, “I haven’t heard anything from them. What’s going on?” So making sure that you have that plan and you know what they’re talking about. So again, your newsletters are gonna be more content that’s just for them. So again, this can be a video that’s maybe just an FAQ video. Asking people to join your Facebook group, giving them tips, maybe it’s finding other articles of resources that you have approved that you want to send out to your audience. So, really, it’s tips giving a lot of value, that’s where people… You’re gonna keep them reading. And then at the end you would have your links to your blogs, you would have your links to your social media, but really come up with original content for your newsletter. So Caitlin, how does email marketing play a role with lead generation?
26:07 CM: Yeah, absolutely. So with lead generation, and as Amber just mentioned, somebody is really excited. They just signed up for whatever resource or free consultation that you decided to offer as that content upgrade, and now you need to make sure they know who your organization is and that they… So, know, like and trust you. And so, email marketing and creating automated email campaigns for that first two weeks of your relationship with this new prospect is really important. And so, we recommend not only having that weekly or monthly newsletter, but also having an automated email campaign that every new subscriber’s signed up to. And so with this, you’re trying to be educational, you’re trying to provide even more content that’s gonna benefit this prospect. And then, over time throughout those first two weeks, you can introduce some of your services, you can have a video in there, interviewing one of your physicians or the person that this individual might see.
27:19 CM: And your goal really is to get them to trust you enough, to want to sign up for one of your paid services, or come on and schedule that initial meeting with you. Because, just because somebody signed up for the email list doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily ready to take that next step. So having this email marketing is something that’s really easy to create and have play in the background, and continue building that trust so that you don’t have to sit there and email or call every single new sign up. So, it really helps with getting people to know, like, and trust your brand.
27:55 AI: Yeah, I love it. So as we said, over the past following weeks… Or upcoming weeks, we are gonna be going into more detailed tips and tricks on each one of these points, so you have a better understanding of how it can work for your business and why it’s so important to your digital marketing strategy, because really, it seems like a lot, but they all flow together. So you can’t just do one piece without doing another piece, so we’re gonna show you why and how to do each of these. Until next time, we will see you guys later, if you have any questions, comments, please let us know and we look forward to chatting with you on our next podcast.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Podcast-Youtube-Image-amber-and-caitlin-1.png7201280Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2019-07-24 17:22:552019-09-06 13:36:19How to Market Health Care Services Plus the Top 10 Tips for Digital Marketing in Health Care
