Not too long ago, patients relied on word-of-mouth referrals from family and friends when looking for a healthcare provider. Others would browse through the Yellow Pages and find a hospital or practice closest to their location. Today, however, the internet has become a major force in patient decisions.
With volumes of information available online, it has empowered prospective patients to find the care they need in the moments that matter most. Patients no longer have to rely on their gut instinct, guesswork or their friend’s advice.
If you want to reach new patients, then you need to know how patients are looking for providers online. Use them to your advantage to convert those searching prospects into patients.
Social media
More than 3.5 billion people are using social media. 54% of them use it to research products, services, and even healthcare providers.
Although word-of-mouth still ranks high as a method for finding healthcare providers, social media largely contributes to how patients choose one. Many prospective patients, millennials in particular, are apt to solicit input through social media. They put a lot of trust in unbiased opinions and recommendations from other patients.
According to a PwC Health Research Institute report, 41% of patients said that social media content impacted their choice of physician or hospital. Always bring value to your patients and give them a reason to follow you. This is one of the best ways to establish a trustworthy reputation for your medical practice on social media. It can be as simple as giving tips on how to stay healthy, reminding patients of essential vaccinations or sharing information about current illnesses.
Patients turn to Google
The internet is a fantastic source of medical information. When patients do not feel well, they don’t usually think about scheduling an appointment with their doctor. Rather, they would consult Dr. Google first and research their symptoms to learn more about their condition.
Once they have a good understanding of their condition, that’s the only time they would search for a medical practitioner. They would key in keywords such as “cardiologist near me” or “diabetologist in Miami”.
If you want to reach new patients, then you want your page to rank well on Google. That means, your name must land on the on the first page of Google search engine results page. Otherwise, prospective patients won’t find you.
Use SEO to rank higher on Google. Start by dominating long-tail keywords. Research keywords that are relevant to your practice and create content based on that keyword.
Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for as the competition is lower. That means, it will take less time and money to rank compared the big and popular ones.
They read online reviews
Majority of patients would conduct online research even after receiving a recommendation or referral. They want to know what being your patient is like before scheduling an appointment.
88% of patients use online reviews as a step towards finding a new doctor. This helps new patients make a more informed decision about who to choose. They will quickly eliminate providers with poor reviews.
In the age of internet, your reputation is whatever Google says it is. If prospective patients do not find reviews online, they’d think twice about making an appointment. As a healthcare provider, you want to have a positive online brand reputation that earns the trust of patients.
A great way to improve your reputation is to list your practice on doctor review sites such as Zocdoc, WebMD, RateMDs, Vitals, and Healthgrades. These sites that can help you improve your reputation, generate new patient leads, and gain trust.
More positive reviews will ensure that you are listed ahead of competitors in search results and will drive traffic to your website.
Location-based services
Convenience is a key factor in selecting a new doctor. In fact, according to Healthgrade’s data, location is a highly significant consideration when a patient chooses a doctor or a hospital. Majority of them prefer physicians and healthcare providers within their area who can assist them with their needs.
Building your local search presence will help you gain a significant step over the competition. Google My Business is a great tool that can do wonders for your local SEO. It puts your business on the map so potential patients can find you.
It is also a good idea to optimize your website for local search. To boost your local SEO, make sure that you include your location in keyword phrases across your website. Instead of using keywords such as dentist, use dentist in Phoenix.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/How-patients-blog.png10801080Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2020-02-19 09:11:472020-02-18 15:13:13How Patients Find and Select Healthcare Providers and How to Use it to Your Advantage
A question that we get asked a lot by our clients is, how do you create professional looking images for your social media posts and your blogs?
It can get a little pricey if you have a graphic designer that’s creating every single image for your digital marketing strategies. Every social media image, every Pinterest image, every Instagram, every blog. And so, we wanted to talk to you today about a tool that we use for our clients called Canva.
Reasons why you should use Canva
It’s affordable
The one thing I really like about Canva is, it’s really affordable. Now we’re talking about your social media posts and your blogs.
If you are needing images for your website, your branding materials, we highly recommend working with a graphic designer, and a branding expert to really pull in that voice. Once you’ve worked with a branding expert, you usually have a set of thoughts and brand colors that then you wanna be able to incorporate into your social media posts and your blogs.
With Canva, there is a free site and a paid site. I think the paid site is only, $14.95, and I highly recommend it.
Maintain brand consistency
One piece with social media is really to make sure that you have that brand consistency. So whether they’re looking at your website mobile-y, on the computer, they have a brochure, a business card, social media posts, they know that it is your practice from your brand’s colors.
If you look at any large company, they follow through with that. Their TV commercials to their promotional products, their social media, their website, everything has the same look and feel. And that’s exactly what you want to do with your social media marketing strategy.
You can also upload your brand kit, which is really cool, because like I said, we have those brand colors, those brand thoughts and we want to make sure we have the right logos. So, we can upload the logos in here. You can upload the exact brand colors and your brand thoughts.
In every image, our three brand fonts are gonna be this playlist correct? This one the playlist here and then Raleway. And so on each of our images for our blogs or our social media, you’re going to see one or all three, depending on the text of these fonts. You’re also going to see our brand colors.
Now, if you look on our website, you’re going to see more of these teals and the light mauve and beige. Sometimes what we have is aspect color, so we have a logo that is this yellow and this teal and that helps kinda just make up that image pop, but it’s still within our brand’s color, so we may not use this orange all the time, but we may use it as an aspect color on one of the images. So this is a great way to really stay true to that brand that your design team have put in place.
Create images for your digital marketing
The other thing with Canva is, if you click on Create A Design, they have every size you need. So this makes it really easy. You can do a poster, a logo, a card, you can do brochures, but most importantly, you have all of your digital marketing templates in here too. You have a YouTube cover. You have, if you need help making your Twitter header the right size, or your Facebook page, but most importantly social media.
So, the social media template is what we use for Instagram and for Facebook, it also does work on LinkedIn. Canva does link to Pixabay. So there’s free images in here and there are paid images.
Resize images for you
The one thing that’s also really good about Canva is you can resize them.
So let’s say you want this image you’re doing and you did a video to go with it, but you want to resize it to the YouTube thumbnail. You can click resize and you can either create a custom size Pinterest, you can type in YouTube, so this can be the YouTube thumbnail. It will look just like this, but in the YouTube thumbnail size.
So it’s going to be easy to upload, keep that brand consistency, and not have to recreate that image. Like, okay, what size was this? What did I have here? It does all the hard work for you. So that is a great tool.
Free ready to use templates
So, with Canva it will tell you if something is free, or if you have to pay for it. And they have by categories too. So if there’s something that specific that you are looking for, so let’s just type medical and they have all these different templates already in here.
Now some of them are free and some of them are paid for. One thing that I recommend if you’re looking at, let’s say you love this template, but it is not free, you can purchase it. They’re usually between $1 and $5 and then you can re-use them, but you can also create that image by yourself without having to pay for that template.
How to use Canva
This is my favorite part of social media, creating the images. It’s also the most time-consuming because you want that image to be perfect.
And so, what I always recommend and what we do for our clients is we create different templates. So we may create 7 to 10 different templates for that client. Let’s say these are the recent ones I’ve used, and so, they’re all gonna be within these 7 to 10 templates with their branded colors, their brand fonts and we rotate that.
Choose a template
Start by choosing a template. So let’s say we want to use this one – It’s world day for safety and health at work today.
So sometimes, this is the National Nurses Day, happy National Nurses Day, so sometimes they already have templates in here, and you can come in here and just change the brand colors, so we can just change this to the colors that we would have for our client.
Make necessary changes
As I have said earlier, we can change the colors to suit our brand colors. Then, we can add our logo on to it. We would change the content here, so if we wanted to change this to an accent color, but then keep this message, we can do that, or we can take out this content all together and put in our own content.
Edit texts
Now, the fun part of the text. So February is National Heart Month, so let’s add in this. So we wanna make this larger, so they have obviously different sizes that we can have, maybe I wanna make this really big, and then do this. And then National Heart Awareness Month. And let’s make this larger. So I’m using my brand colors and I can move that content wherever I want it.
So we go back to that template that we liked, we have the content here, maybe we want this to align with that there, and then we wanna have, we want this to come up a little bit, and then we wanna have in our just like our website down here, www.heartplus.com whatever your website is. We want to bring this down here with maybe some contact information.
Pick an image
Now, we obviously need something here. So you can type in a keyword. It will show you that these are the paid ones. If you click on to here, it will say free, and then you can apply filters.
So you can pick any image that you want. And again, this is where it can get a little time consuming, so you do have to play around with this a lot because it’s important to know how to search for the different images.
Play around with templates, images, and texts
I also like using ones that have the image in the back with the text overlay. I think that those are very clean and you just want to make sure that whatever your brand message is, whatever that message is, you just make sure that this image is clean and easy to read.
So maybe you’re talking about healthy eating. So again, you can just drag this image over on top of the image that’s already there and it will automatically replace it.
So now, you can change out your content here, you can change the background color if you want it to be one of your brand colors, you can do that.
Save the image for future use
So all you have to do is come in here each month when you’re creating your content, and there’s two ways of doing this. If you come back to the main page here and you go to all your designs, you can copy this design for each week.
Let’s say February is National Heart Awareness Month. And so then now you have created this template. So then next month, all you have to do is come in, change February to March and put in whatever March’s National Awareness Month is.
Change out the logo if you need to, or move it down here, add more content, or contact information. So now we have two templates, so we’re going to do the same thing. We’re going go to add new page and go to templates again. Now, if you didn’t like any of these, you can use any of these that you want and change it around.
I always like to be able to look back at the images and especially if you need to make a change, you don’t have to re-create that image all over again. So you can come in to here and you- can, the templates that we have created right here, we can then just click this and do make a copy, and then you can label them every week.
So week of February third, week of February 10th, and then you have five or seven templates in here with the content, so you can just download them.
Canva has templates based on holidays
Again, I would take some time with this to really look at which templates you like. Are you doing a lot of testimonials? Testimonials are a great way to promote your practice. So maybe something along these lines, you can do something like this where you have the testimonial here with maybe pictures of the staff that, that patient is talking about, there’s a ton of different templates in here and the thing with Canva is they’re always adding new templates based on the holidays.
So if you wanted to put out a Happy Valentines Day, you’ll find some templates here. Even if you want to use this template, you can change these colors to your branded colors. And so that’s a really great way to still have that, those posts that are, Happy Holidays, Happy Valentines Day, Groundhog Day, whatever you wanna talk about, but still keeping that brand consistency.
So take some time scrolling through here to really figure out which templates you want, and you don’t have to always just use those 10, maybe you have a brand template of 20 of them.
Final thoughts
Canva is simple, it’s fun to use. It does take a little bit of time in the beginning, but really once you have those brand templates down, it’s just changing the content and being able to download those and implement them in your social media strategy.
If you need help on how to create your branded templates or if you would like help with the management of your social media marketing, we are here for you. You can head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and schedule a free 30-minute consultation, and we would love to see how we can help you with your digital marketing strategy. Have a great day!
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Canva-blog.png315560Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2020-02-12 08:00:212020-02-07 21:01:19How to Use Canva for Your Medical Practice
At this point, it’s no question whether or not your practice needs to be on social media. Almost everyone understands the importance of having a solid social media presence. However, most are overlooking the benefits of Instagram as a marketing platform.
Why Instagram?
Instagram is one of the most popular social networks on a global level. It has grown immensely over the years, with over 1 billion monthly active users.
Whether you’re a dentist, dermatologist, cosmetic surgeon, plastic surgeon or an oncologist, marketing your practice on Instagram is going to bring you the business you seek.
Here are some tips on how to make use of Instagram to promote your medical practice.
Plan out your grid
Instagram is a predominantly visual platform. If you’re looking to turn your viewers into followers, then you’ll need to put aside time to visually plan your feed.
Your Instagram feed is one of the first things a visitor sees when they land on your profile. You want to create a cohesive Instagram aesthetic while still showcasing content that aligns with your field of specialization. This will give visitors a feel of what your brand is about in a matter of seconds. Plus, they are more likely to follow you if they see a visually attractive and cohesive grid.
Share images people can connect with
As a medical practitioner, the last thing you want is to put off your audience with gory surgical images or pictures of intimidating medical equipment.
There are 3 things you want to accomplish when planning your Instagram content:
Engage your audience
Provide content that is informative, interesting, and inspiring to potential patients
Highlight a service you offer.
The goal is to share images people can connect with. If you’re a plastic surgeon, you may use your Instagram feed to show before and after photos. Consistently post photos of your best cases to keep people coming back for more.
With patient approval, you may also post about your patient’s success stories. This can go a long way toward alleviating fears and finding inspiration through a life-changing illness.
Use your captions to prompt discussion
While we agree that photos matter most on Instagram, that doesn’t mean that the caption should be treated as an afterthought.
People like to know that you value their thoughts and opinions. Ask them questions, tell a story or ask for their opinions. It shows you care about them and you’re interested to connect with them. Really get in there and converse with your audience.
It may seem awkward at first but go for it. You’ll be surprised at how many of your Instagram pals will be chatting and engaging with you.
Add video to your content
A picture paints a thousand words, they say. But videos can convey even more. Video has been found to drive more interactions and provides more opportunities for you to stand out. It gives you an opportunity to reach a much larger audience, show your personality, and educate your audience.
Videos can be shared in stories, in the newsfeed, and can be used to create a high-converting ad campaign. To maximize your use of video, make sure that the first few seconds of your video is attention-grabbing.
Find something that will set yourself apart
With one billion monthly active users, Instagram has become an integral part of every brand’s marketing activities. If you’re looking to amplify your presence on Instagram, then you need to up your Insta game to cut through the noise.
For instance, Dr. Sandra Lee (aka Dr. Pimple Popper) is a big hit on social media. She has more than 5 million subscribers on Youtube and over 3 million followers on Instagram. She has both entranced and grossed out her followers with her knack for popping.
Find something that will set yourself apart and give your audience a reason to keep coming back.
Hashtag strategically
Hashtags are a great way to categorize your content. It makes it easier for users to find you and reach out to your prospective audience.
Use trending hashtags to get in front of more people. Make sure, though, that these hashtags are related to your niche. You may also consider using a branded hashtag. It could be something as simple as your name or your tag line.
Prompt your followers to use your custom hashtag, and you’ll soon learn just who your superfans are.
Collaborate with influencers
These days, social media influencers are like modern-day celebrities. Consider reaching out to other influential Instagram users if you’re looking to increase your visibility.
When looking for influencers, look beyond the follower count. You want to find an influencer who will resonate with your audience and drive engagement amongst the community.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Instagram-for-Blog.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2020-02-05 08:00:262020-01-31 17:29:29How to Use Instagram to Promote Your Medical Practice
Having a content calendar in place for your overall marketing strategy is key, having a plan will allow you to stay consistent and top of your content. In this video, we go over 4 different types of content calendars, the key here is to find one or pull components from each that you like and would work best for you and your team.
00:00 Amber Irwin: Hello. I am Amber Irwin and co-founder of Social Speak Network. I’m your host today on the Social Speak podcast. It is January of 2020, and we’re almost to the middle of the month already. So, you’re either in one of two positions. Number one, you have all your content planned out for the year, you are on track and have your content strategy put together. Woo-hoo. Number two, not there quite yet. This video and podcast are for the people that are number two that are still struggling to put together that content calendar. I want to talk about content calendars today, because it is the most important piece of your digital marketing strategy, and it is something… Usually, we have our clients do these content calendars beginning of December, planning out for the new year because once the holidays come, it’s just crazy. Time goes by so fast, and then it’s the new year, back to business, and it gets crazy.
01:07 AI: So having a content calendar is really about being able to have a really good overview of what your year looks like. What are the national observance days that you need to pay attention to? What are the seasons? So for medical practices, if you are a pediatrician, you need to pay attention to flu season, summertime, back to school. What are the other sicknesses that kids are dealing with? You may wanna be talking about just tips of handwashing and nutrition. So looking at what you are talking to your patients about. And that’s really the biggest thing is it’s changing that mindset from having these conversations in the office with your patients and taking that… Those conversations and turning them into content and implementing them into your content calendar.
02:04 AI: So, I always recommend having a sticky note, a pad of paper, your phone. Something where, you know, once that patient’s done taking a few minutes and either jotting down questions they had or giving it to a nurse to write down and then being able to take those questions and incorporate them into your content strategy. Because if this patient had that client like’s are, you’re gonna have more patients that have that question, and you wanna be able to be a resource for them. So, I’m gonna give you four different examples of content calendars. There’s no right or wrong way to a content calendar. It’s really what works for you and your team. So if you have a marketing team in-house that’s doing all of your social media, great. You guys are gonna figure out a plan together of what works, what works for them, what’s easy for… Maybe it’s the office manager, the practice manager that’s looking over everything, maybe it’s the head doctor. Whoever that person in charge is that wants to see the overview of everything, what format works for them?
03:13 AI: If you’re working with a marketing team, such as Social Speak, we have an intro call with you. We show you the different content calendars. And then, the last one I’m gonna show you today that we’re gonna talk about is the one that we put together. And we’ve taken bits and pieces from content calendars that we’ve used and the pieces that work for us. So, we have one with everything on there. So, the first two I’m gonna talk to you about are from CoSchedule and HubSpot. And these are more focused around your social media, which is great because a lot of your content that you’re doing for digital marketing is going to be social media, blog posts video marketing. So, these are a great way to just keep everything organized.
04:00 AI: So, I’m gonna go ahead and show you these two. So, this first one is from, let’s see, this one is… This one here is the one that is from CoSchedule, I believe. And this is outlined very nicely. It breaks it up by platform. So, obviously, you’re only gonna be putting the platforms on here that you’re using. So if you’re not using Twitter, you’re not going to have this Twitter section here. Google Plus doesn’t exist anymore, so you would have Instagram on here instead. Pinterest, we use a tool called Tailwind, and I’ll put a link below for that. But that’s really where all of our Pinterest scheduling goes, through Tailwind. So, I wouldn’t have Pinterest on here, but Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook. So, here you’re gonna have the post copy, the image, so you know what image is going with what post. The hashtags, the destination URL. So is this going to a curated content unit, outside articles? Is this going to a blog, a YouTube video? And then, on this one, one thing I liked was that this actually measures… Each week, you could come back and look at how those posts did. So, how many likes were there? How many shares? How many comments? So, this one is a great way to just get started for social media.
05:42 AI: The other one, this one here, is one that is from HubSpot, I believe. And this one has your overview schedule, what account, the date and time, message link campaign. And then, this one is your monthly calendar. Now, I really like it when… Having this monthly calendar. And this is something that we implement into our content calendar because I like seeing that overview. So again, if it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month or Diabetes Awareness Month, I wanna make sure that I’m talking about that topic each week and in different ways. So maybe we do a video around Diabetes Awareness Month. We’re writing a blog on it. We are getting testimonials. So figuring out how that National Observance Day ties into your practice and your clients, and then how can you deliver that information?
06:47 AI: I tend to be very visual, and same with our social media marketing team, they’re very visual, so we really like when we have this color-coded key, because, as we look at this, we can say, “Okay this is going to a blog post, this is going to a video, this is going to a holiday campaign,” or whatever it may be. But this helps break it down so we can attach that color to that topic. So, overview, we say, “Okay, this week I’m gonna do… Create two videos on this topic.” So it helps us and our team stay organized. The one thing I really like about this content calendar is it has tabs for each platform. Now, if you’re using one of the awesome tools like Sprout Social, Buffer, or HootSuite, it’s easy to put your content in there and share it to all the platforms at one time, which makes it really simple. At the same time, we recommend not doing that.
07:49 AI: So if people are following you on Instagram and Facebook, they’re usually checking both of those every day, and you don’t want them to get on Instagram and see your post and then head over to Facebook and then that exact same post shows up at the same time in their newsfeed. There’s no value there. So why would they follow you on both platforms if there isn’t value? So I like this platform here where it breaks it into each network. So you can see, “Okay, this is what we’re doing for this network.” And even if you have a blog post that you are promoting, you can have that blog post, you can pull different sections from that blog for each platform, it can link back to the same blog, but maybe you have a different image for each post.
08:43 AI: The other thing that you can do is, we are all about reusing content, so what you write for your Facebook posts one week, you can use the following week, or the next week, for Instagram and LinkedIn. So it’s really about writing the social media posts for the month and then organizing them to the different platforms. With Twitter and Instagram, it’s really important that you have those hashtags that you are implementing into the content. With Facebook and LinkedIn, and even Pinterest, it’s not as important. But here you can see what day it’s going out, that you may have two or three posts going out per day on one network depending on how many likes and followers you have.
09:35 AI: So this is the link it’s going to. Now, the next two templates I’m gonna show you, you can actually… With Google Sheets, and I’m pretty sure with Excel as well… You can insert the image into a cell. So we actually put the image in here and then we create all of our images in Canva, and so we can then put the link there too. So, as you’re scheduling them, everything is in one spot, it’s easy to pull from. The head person that wants to look over this, they can see, “Okay, this is the message. That looks good. This is the link. This is what the campaign,” if it’s linking back to a certain campaign. “This is the image. Okay, let’s go with this.”
10:15 AI: So, the other one I want to share is this one. And… Oops. So, here… So this is the one from HootSuite, and I really like this template. Because, again, it… Outlines by the network, which is really important, because, again, that social copy should be different for each platform, especially depending on your audience. So sometimes our clients get a lot more engagement on Facebook than they do LinkedIn or Twitter. So on Facebook and maybe even Instagram, we wanna make sure that we are asking questions, doing posts that are engaging our audience, because that’s where we see the most interaction. So this one here kinda takes that monthly calendar and puts it right into kind of a weekly column.
11:21 AI: And so if you are doing five posts per week onto Facebook, this post is gonna be the new blog post, curated content, evergreen blog post, a live video. So, with Facebook, doing live videos, if that’s what works for your practice, maybe it’s a weekly FAQ with a doctor, maybe it is a weekly kind of a health tip and one of the nurses can just jump on and do that. So I think it’s a great idea to implement those live videos, and then your promotion if you are running a promotion. Now, these content types will change based on what topics you and your practice wanna be talking about, but when you move down to Instagram, you wanna make sure that you’re implementing stories, sharing content, creating those images because it is visual. So this content calendar is great. Now, this just has one sheet, and this is just for social media. So each week you would put the date here and then have your content on here. So, this is another great way to stay organized. You have noted here, image links, where you need to pull that image from, but this is a great way to stay organized for your social media.
12:44 AI: The last content calendar that I want to show you is our content calendar. So, we’ve taken a piece of, as I said, different content calendars that we’ve used, different needs that our clients have had, and what we’ve done is, the first tab is that full content calendar. So we have our color-coded key here, so we can see each month what this looks like. Now, what we may do is I may duplicate this, so this may be the January content calendar. So I may do one for January, February, March, April, May, or I may have this due January and then copy below here for February. So it’s all on one sheet, but sometimes you wanna go back and look, “Okay, what did we talk about in January?” So then when you’re coming up for the following year, you know, “Okay, this is what really worked. These are topics that we talked about what we need to implement again.” And then what we do is here…
13:48 AI: Here are our social media topics. So, this is the little notes I told you to keep track of. This is where you can say in here like, FAQ and then the questions that people had asked. So, you know, “Okay, this is what we need to be talking about. We need to create social media posts or blog posts or videos around this topic, and then also like a link.” So, if you are on, let’s say, WebMD’s newsletter, and they send out a really good newsletter with some great tips that you wanna implement into your social media strategy as curated content. You can put that topic, you can even put the title of the article and then the link so as you need content, you can come back to here and pull from there. And you can also add it to what we have is the content resources and this just builds that list for curated content.
14:45 AI: Sometimes, it’s easier just to go to Facebook and share from WebMD’s Facebook page or American Heart Association’s Facebook page to your Facebook page and the same thing with Facebook, but you also may wanna use their blogs as resources or other… They may have other tips and tools on their websites that you wanna share. So, just having one place where you come in, put the name of the source and the link, so when you are writing that social media content every week, it’s right here. And then, the next sheet would be the blog topic, so you could tie in the month, the blog title, the topic, the due date, when you published it and the link. So, you can pull from here, come back to your overview of the content calendar and be able to say, “Okay, on this week, this blog post is… ” And then, the title so you know.
15:47 AI: Now, one thing you do not see on our content calendar is the place to actually write your content. So, the way we do our social media is we have found that it is much easier to have a content calendar like this as an overview that you can refer to, look at. “Okay, what do we have coming up? What videos do we need to make? What blogs do we need to write? What social media posts are we gonna be talking about?” And then, what we do for our social media posts is we actually then create a Google Doc. So, our content calendar is in Google, and our weekly social media posts are in Google. I like it better because Google Docs works like a Word doc or like pages on Mac, but everyone that has access to that article or to that document can look at those posts. So if you have… This is just kind of a side note, but if you have a Mac and you don’t have Microsoft, then that Word document gets translated into a page and then vice-versa. So using Google Drive and Google Docs is just kind of a universal way. Anyone that has that link that you share it with can open it, can make edits, can see it. It also checks for grammar, spelling. And so, I like to put all of the social media posts into there.
17:16 AI: I think that makes it look very clean, you know what the content is, the hashtags. So on the content calendar, we are very clear on what day, what that needs to be, what hashtags we need to use, so then we can just transfer that to our Google Sheet, have the image on there, and then be able to put that into whether it’s Buffer or HootSuite. If you are… I will always recommend our clients scheduling all of their posts through Facebook rather than using a third-party app like Buffer or HootSuite or Sprout Social. Facebook likes when you use them. And then using those tools for LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. HootSuite does Instagram so that’s great. Tailwind, it does Pinterest and Instagram. So, it’s just important to figure out what works best for you.
18:15 AI: Sometimes we have a few clients where we just have an open document, and we put our post on there, but they like the format of a sheet better. Like an Excel sheet where they can see the post, they can see the link. It’s all right there. So again, it’s just really figuring out what works best for you and your team. And if you are working with an agency like us, like Social Speak, then being able to know, okay, what system does that agency have in place and is it easy for you to understand? So you know what posts are going out for your practice because you wanna know what’s going on and you wanna know how to make edits. And if you say, “Okay, let’s use this instead of that.” So just making sure that when you are creating this content calendar that you and your team are on the same page.
19:05 AI: So, I will add each of these as links below, so you can make sure you can see each of them and see which ones work best for you. And if you want help putting together the content strategy for your practice and really understanding how to implement that, let us know. We are here to help you. You can head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and do the free consultation. That’s a 30 minutes free consultation that we can walk you through this. We can answer questions for you. And if you are looking for more help from having an agency manage this for you, we would love to have that conversation as well. So, I hope that this helped and really got you on the track of being organized. Even if you do it quarterly, but quarters go by just as fast as weeks. By the end… By the snap of the fingers, it’s gonna be the end of quarter one.
19:46 AI: So, it’s important to have that year even if you just have the topics and your blogs, because the blogs turn into social media content. If you do one cornerstone blog of 3000 words, and you have maybe two videos in there and each blog has 10 images, there is social media content for a month. So, it’s really about maximizing your content and where it needs to go in organizing it. So, hopefully, this gave you some good insights on a content calendar and how it can work for your practice. And if you have any questions, please let us know. We are here to help. Have a great day.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Content-Calendar-FI.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2020-01-15 08:00:182020-01-15 15:54:30Creating Your Content Calendar for 2020
Patient’s interest and behavior change during the holiday season. During this time of year, people are usually focused on shopping, office parties, and family gatherings. There may be a significant decrease in the number of patients, but that doesn’t mean that there’s less interest in health towards the rest of the year.
Stand out in marketing your practice and boost patient engagement with these holiday marketing tips.
“12 days” email series
“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is one of the most popular Christmas songs. During the holiday season, it is heard everywhere – TV commercials, shopping malls, school programs, and even church functions. Why not use it as an inspiration for your holiday email marketing campaign?
Email marketing is one of the best channels to help you stay top of mind and build a lasting relationship with your patients. During the holidays, it would be a great idea to create a “12 days” email series and send them to people on your email list.
You can create countdowns with a different daily message – remind people to book an appointment before the year ends, share healthy holiday recipes, and offer tips for staying healthy through the holidays.
Shine light on a worthy cause
The holiday season is the perfect time to focus on giving and gratitude. Aligning with a charitable cause will put your practice in a positive light and show your community what you value.
One of the best ways for you to get noticed this season is to turn the spotlight away from you and highlight a charity that you support. Participate in volunteer efforts that are relevant to your target patients. It helps you cast a wide net and position you as an expert.
Spread some holiday cheer by sponsoring a local charity event or a fundraiser. Encourage your audience to participate in the holiday giving campaign. You can offer a discount of a particular product or service in exchange for a gift donation. Your patients give back, needy kids get some gifts, and your practice gets more patients. It’s a win-win.
Hold a social media photo contest
Social media contests are great because they accomplish several marketing goals at once. When done properly and effectively, they can help you build a strong following, increase engagement, and really connect with your audience. With Christmas in the offing, it would be a great idea to run a contest that encapsulates this joyful festival.
If you’re a dentist, host a “show us your smile” photo contest with a holiday twist. Have participants submit pictures of their smiling kids on social media. Don’t forget to create a branded hashtag that you can use to collect all those photos.
The prize should be something that is relevant to your practice. For instance, you can offer free cleaning or teeth whitening.
By adding a bit of fun to your marketing campaign, you can convince your clients that they don’t have to dread a visit to your practice.
Film a holiday video
Humans are very visually oriented. Studies suggest that people find video content more interesting, more engaging, and more memorable as compared to other types of content.
Patients like healthcare providers who come across as gentle, kind, and human. Videos are a great way to show your human side and showcase your personality. The holidays are a great time to show off your holiday spirit and capture that cheer on video. You can create a short video to send your patients a warm, heartfelt message. If you are a pediatrician, you can dress up like Santa. Kids will love it.
Get creative and don’t forget to share your video on different social media channels.
Write holiday-related blog posts
This holiday season, you might want to share some tips and information that your audience would find valuable.
If you treat patients with diabetes, it is a good idea to provide tips on how to keep their weight and blood sugar levels under control during the holidays. If you’re a dermatologist, you can offer some skincare tips for winter or how to achieve healthy, glowing skin in time for their office party.
Since the majority of people check on their social media accounts on a daily basis, we highly recommend that you share them on your pages. Creating timely and relevant content increases the likelihood that your blog posts will be shared.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/5-Holiday-Marketing-Ideas-for-Your-Medical-Practice-social-media.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-12-16 18:24:112019-12-16 18:35:105 Holiday Marketing Ideas for Your Medical Practice
Online marketing for doctors is essential in the digital age. It provides a way to reach new patients, create a stronger connection with the ones you have, and promote your practice. Unfortunately, many doctors are still unsure about how to make social media work for their practices.
Here are 5 doctors who are rocking the social media game. Read on to find out how they used social media to their advantage.
Dr. Sandra Lee
Website: https://slmdskincare.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrPimplePopper/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrSandraLee/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drpimplepopper/Dr. Sandra Lee is a board-certified dermatologist. She uses social media to showcase her expertise – popping pimples and extracting cysts. Many of you have probably watched or scrolled past her videos on your feed. Dr. Pimple Popper posted a video of herself doing a blackhead extraction 4 years ago, and it took off from there. Although not for the easily nauseated, people seem to enjoy her content. In fact, she has amassed a large following on her social media channels. Her devoted set of fans call themselves “popaholics”. Dr. Lee has over 5.8 million subscribers on Youtube and 2.4 million Facebook likes. Her Youtube videos have been viewed more than 2.6 billion times. Now, she is a guru of skincare with her own TV show and skincare line.
Dr. Kevin Pho
Website: https://www.kevinmd.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevinmdblog/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevinmd
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinphomd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmdDr. Kevin Pho, best known as KevinMD on social media, is one of the most prominent healthcare influencers. He is a board-certified internal medicine physician, an acclaimed keynote speaker, and author. Dr. Kevin Pho is the founder of the blog KevinMD.com, the web’s leading platform where physicians, nurses, and other medical practitioners tell their stories and share their insights. He also shares some social media tips for doctors in his blog. The site receives more than 3 million monthly page views and is regularly cited in major media. Aside from his blog and website, he also has successful social media profiles. He uses these platforms to share articles published on his blog, share the voices of other physicians, and promote events. His largest presences are on Twitter, with 160,000 followers. His Facebook page has over 123,000 likes.
Dr. Mike Varshavski
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/realdoctormike/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctor.mike
Twitter: https://twitter.com/realdoctormike
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0QHWhjbe5fGJEPz3sVb6nwDr. Mike is a board-certified family medicine physician. With an impressive 3.4 million Instagram followers, it is clear that Dr. Mike knows a thing or two about social media. Doctor Mike uses his Instagram account to give people an opportunity to connect with him on a personal level. He regularly posts photos of his daily life – at work, at the gym, sponsored events, and even with his dog. He may be known for his dashing looks and fashion sense, but he also routinely disseminates health and fitness advice to his followers.
Supporting her goal of keeping your family healthy and safe, her content centers on the latest health news, general illness prevention tips, and helpful tips for parents. Her posts are personal and conversational. Hence, she was able to build a close relationship with her patients, in and out of the office. Swanson recently ended a stint as chief of digital innovation for Seattle’s Children. Over the past decade, she gained over 40,000 Twitter followers with her SeattleMamaDoc brand.
Dr. Josh Axe
Website: https://draxe.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrJoshAxe/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjoshaxe/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/drjoshaxe
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/doctorjoshaxeDr. Josh Axe is a doctor of chiropractic, a certified doctor of natural medicine, and a clinical nutritionist. His goal is to help people eat healthily and live a healthy lifestyle. In his website, DrAxe.com, he shares content about topics like natural remedies, weight loss, nutrition, healthy recipes, and essential oils. Following Dr. Axe’s Facebook page is like following your friend online. Here, he shares a sneak peek of his personal life – enjoying time with his wife or cooking in his kitchen. He also uses his social media accounts to share health information, promote events, his book and other products.
With over 2 million Facebook likes, 540,000 Instagram followers, and 43,000 Twitter followers, it is clear that Dr. Axe has cracked the code to building a powerful digital brand that people recognize.
Your practice needs social media One tweet won’t necessarily bring in new patients. Creating a Facebook page isn’t going to help you fill a waiting room. But with valuable content and consistent effort, you’ll be able to create trust with the community, solidify your reputation, and be a helpful resource to patients.
If you’re new at this game and you feel that achieving online success is well above your head, we are here to help. Schedule a free consultation today and we’ll bring you and your practice into the age of social media.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/5-Doctors-Who-Are-Rocking-the-Social-Media-Game-1.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-12-10 18:54:242019-12-10 22:02:335 Doctors Who Are Rocking the Social Media Game
In this podcast, we will be talking about how to review and analyze what has worked digital marketing-wise in 2019. It is important to take the time to review what has worked and what hasn’t worked, along with making sure your content is attracting the right target audience you are looking for. We dive into Google Analytics, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and more!
We also mention this AMAZING tool we have been using for Pinterest called TailWind, it has significantly increased our traffic to our website!
00:01 Amber Irwin: Hello everyone, I am your host, Amber Irwin. Welcome to Social Speak Network and welcome back from the Thanksgiving holiday break. I know everyone is so excited to be back to work. And if you are a business owner, this is the last month of the year, so we have a lot of things that we want to look at and really analyze to see what has worked marketingwise for 2019. So today I’m gonna walk you through a few different things to track what has really worked digitally for your company. And it’s really important to take the time to look at the past year, to look at your content, what’s gotten the most likes, the most shares, what blogs have gotten the most shares, what videos have gotten the most comments and likes?
00:55 AI: So it’s really important to see what your audience is liking because this time of year, you’re putting together the budget for the following year, you’re putting together your content and your marketing strategy. And so you need to know what is expected of you, for at least the first quarter of 2020 and have a plan for the year, so you can stay on track. And this has been a really big year for us as a company as well because we really stayed consistent with our marketing mission, which is key because it’s easy to get in the mode of blogging and doing videos and then something comes up. Maybe it’s workrelated, maybe, you know, whatever it is, something comes up and you fall off the track of being consistent. So by looking at what has worked and what your audience is looking for, that will help you create that strategy for the following year and really be able to stay on track and stay consistent because the content is king, but consistency is even better. That’s the Ace.
02:02 AI: So you wanna make sure that you are being consistent and you’re continuing to deliver that information that your audience is looking for. So I wanna walk you through a few things on how to monitor your year to see what’s worked. So the first thing I wanna start with is your social media. So looking at… Let’s open up Facebook, looking at just your posts, so we wanna look to see… You should be tracking each month, your likes, so you should be able to see how many likes you have increased this year. So if you go to your insights, it will tell you. You can change the insights to the past 28 days. And this is why it’s important to look at this on a monthly basis, because unless you know what that beginning number was, at the beginning of the year, you may not know exactly what that number is now. So if we go to likes, it will tell us how many likes we have and then it will tell us just the beginning of November, what we had.
03:25 AI: So, it’s important to just check in on that math monthly, to make sure that your likes are increasing. And if you’re doing paid advertising with Facebook, you should be running ads to, go to our landing page to actually collect those emails and those leads. But then you should also be doing some page ads as well to increase the engagement and likes. So you’ll have organic likes and then you’ll have paid likes. So that’s really important to know the difference between where your likes are coming from, on Facebook. Is paid advertising really working and/or boosted posts. Are you getting, when you boost a post on Facebook, have you been getting more likes and more engagement?
04:11 AI: So it’s important to take the time to look at your insights to see what is working and then when you go to your posts, you can see what times of the day people are engaging. So for us, we get the most engagement early morning like 8:00 AM So moving into our content strategy for 2020, we may wanna make sure that our posts are going out between 6:00 AM and 8:30, 9:00ish because if we… When we start posting at noon, our reach drops significantly and when we post on Facebook later in the day, at night time like 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM, it drops even more. So our primetime on Facebook, is that early morning, that 6:00 to 9:00 mark. So that’s important to know as well, so that’s the time and the days.
05:12 AI: And then I can look at all your posts published and I can see which posts are getting either an organic reach or post clicks, reactions, comments, and shares. So you wanna see which ones are getting the most engagement, and then what type of a post was that? Because that’s really important to be able to monitor. If you’re putting up just shared articles, curated content, which is important, but there’s no personalization behind it, there are no videos. It’s just always sharing content, and you’re not getting any engagement, well, that then says, Okay maybe my audience isn’t liking that. But if you put up posts that talk about client stories, patient stories, it talks about the personality of your office, showing more behind the scenes and stats, that’s what works for us. Stats, people love when we put images up of stats in healthcare for marketing. So that’s what really works for us, are stats and content marketing strategy.
06:00 AI: So Facebook is the first place I would start looking at those insights, looking at what posts have been working. You can on your posts, you can go back for the whole year. It’s just your insights that you can only go back 30 days but your content if you go into Facebook, go to your page, click on insights on the top, and then go to posts, you can then… And you can break it down to all of your posts. You can look at if you did events, videos, stories, different types of posts it will break down, but you will be able to see what posts are getting the most reactions. And that’s what you wanna start implementing more of in your content strategy for 2020. The next platform… And you’ll wanna do this for any platform that you are posting to.
07:24 AI: So we use Facebook and Instagram the most. So again, I wanna come through Instagram and I wanna look to see how many people liked it, if we got any comments, what type of comments we were getting, and then what types of posts, again, were people liking? Were they like when we were reposting from people? Were they liking when we are putting stats up, videos? So really looking at the types of posts, and then again, the number of followers you have. So at the beginning of the year, we are doing really great with Instagram Stories, and we were highlighting them. Well, as you can tell, we stopped that. We were great on posting to our feed but the Instagram Stories kind of… They weren’t a priority of ours anymore, and so these… You can even just tell in these branded images, it doesn’t match the brand that we have down here.
08:27 AI: And so here we should have healthcare marketing tips, healthcare social media, health… Because again, our target client is businesses that are in the healthcare and health and wellness industries that have one to six locations. So that’s what we need to work on, is getting our stories back up and going and reorganizing these highlighted stories. So our posts have done great.
Even with Instagram TV, we were really good at being able to stay on it and we are getting some great traction but again, it fell through the cracks and it wasn’t a priority. So looking at those analytics, how many people were watching Instagram TV, how many people were commenting? And that’s something that we may need to increase for the new year. So Instagram’s the next platform.
09:28 AI: Pinterest, I’ll get into Pinterest in a minute, but we use Pinterest a lot, and going into, I wanna talk about Google Analytics really quick. Google Analytics is a great way to really wrap your head around where all your traffic is coming from because your website should be your hub. That’s where everyone should becoming. This is where your blogs are going, this is where your videos are going within those blog posts, so your Google Analytics can give you a huge insight into what’s working. And you may wanna start here and then branch out into social media and your blog. One thing I found interesting on ours is under Acquisition and then Social, and then I just went to Overview, and I’m in Google Analytics, and on our overview for social, most of our traffic is coming from Pinterest, which is awesome. It goes Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Scoop.it, then Instagram, and then we have some LiveJournal, Twitter, Google+. But you can see it.
10:47 AI: So Pinterest, we’ve had over 1100 people come to our website from Pinterest and we’ve had almost 500 people come to our website from Facebook. So our Pinterest strategy is really, really strong, and we do use a tool called Tailwind. I’ll put that link below so you can check that awesome tool out, and it’s working. So obviously, we wanna increase our Pinterest strategy, we wanna make more images, we wanna get more content up there, because that’s where people are finding us. So this is working. Facebook is working. YouTube is working. People are finding us and then clicking back to our website. So Google Analytics is a great tool for you to really be able to identify where your traffic is coming from.
11:42 AI: And the other thing, even if you click on to Audience and Demographics, you can do… I just did the overview, but you can look to see what is the age group of people that are coming to your website, what is the gender, and what’s the interest categories. So you can look and see where people are coming from. And I think that this is important because one thing that I always find interesting is the content that we work so hard every day, every month, where are we… What’s working for us? And is the content that we’re working so hard on, is that attracting the right audience? So that’s something else to look at, to say, okay, where else are… If I’m running this content, and it’s directly around healthcare digital marketing, and our Google Analytics is telling us that we’re getting a lot of foodies coming to our website, people are interested in food and… Well, that’s not a good connect. That’s wrong… Obviously the wrong demographic.
13:00 AI: So how do we need to change our content or change our… Look at our SEO, our keywords, and figure out how do we reach that correct target market. So Google Analytics is a great tool to be able to do that. The other thing I want to mention is YouTube. YouTube is a great tool to really track and see what videos are getting the most engagement. And this year alone, I think at the beginning of the year, we were at maybe five or seven subscribers, and we’re up to 154. Now that’s still very low but in a year’s time of us being consistent, we’re getting anywhere between three and five new subscribers a month, which is great for us because we’re not doing any paid advertising on YouTube. This is all just organic but they’re finding our videos. And, again, when we are putting our videos into… When we put our videos up, we’re putting a link in the description to our blog. So they are going to our blog or to that website from YouTube, which is awesome.
14:19 AI: So it’s really important to analyze that to see what videos are working and which videos… If you thought a video would be great and it only got one view, well, why did it only get one view? And did you share it with social media? Is it on your blog? What can you do to increase that video? So, YouTube’s a great place to really look at the analytics and see what’s working. The last thing I wanted to talk about is your website. So, with Google Analytics, it will track all the traffic, and it will tell you where your traffic is coming from. One thing that we had installed on our blog is a tool… It’s a sharing tool, it’s a plugin, and this allows people when they’re on the site that they can share it to Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. So it’s a great way to see how many people are coming to your website and actually sharing those social media… Or excuse me, those blog posts to social media.
15:29 AI: And so one of our blogs, I think it was our content marketing strategy, that one had been shared quite a few times. So that shows us that people really want to understand more of that strategy, and how to put that content marketing strategy together. Let’s see here. I know it’s here. So just looking at going through your blog post, looking at each one, seeing which ones have got shared the most, and what were those topics? What were people wanting to know about? And I think that that’s really important because, again, it’s all about delivering that content to your audience in such a way that they’re receiving it, they’re sharing it, and they’re doing it. So that’s… So this one. So why is it so important to have a digital marketing strategy? This is a blog we wrote. 106 shares. 102 of those were to Pinterest. That is awesome. Four of them were on Facebook. So this shows me that, again, that Pinterest strategy that we have worked is killing it, and we wanna keep doing more of it. So, again, we have four more weeks left in 2019. If you have kids, I know that you really only have two or three weeks to really finish up this year because then they go on winter break, and Christmas is here and the holidays are here, and it’s craziness.
17:22 AI: So take time this week or next week, block out two hours and look at what has worked digital marketingwise for 2019. Take the time, jot it down, and as you’re… And at this point, you should already have that content marketing strategy started for 2020. And by knowing what types of posts have worked in 2019, what you wanna do more of, if video marketing is something that you’ve really been putting off this year, but when you have done videos, you get a ton of likes and shares and comments, that shows that you need to implement that more into the new year. If you post more… People want to feel like they are a part of your company. It’s that know, like, and trust factor. And showing more behind the scenes, so interviewing… If you are a healthcare practitioner, interviewing the doctors, interviewing the nurses, have the Friday funday behindthescenes pictures.
18:27 AI: I know this takes a little bit of extra time and planning, but I promise you this, if you do it and you stay consistent with it, you will see a huge difference in your social media and your digital marketing. You will see an increase in patients. You will see an increase in likes and comments and just that engagement, and if you need help managing this and putting together the strategy, that’s where we come in. That is our expertise, to work with healthcare professionals, to get the new patients in the door by using Google and Facebook ads, to put together the strategy for social media marketing, email marketing, and blogging. So you’re reaching your audience on every digital platform there is, on each level so they feel connected to you, and they wanna come into your healthcare practice. So if you need help, head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and schedule your free 30minute consultation today. 18:49 AI: Thank you. Have a great day.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019-Digital-Marketing-Review.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-12-03 19:05:352019-12-03 19:05:35How to review your digital marketing strategy for 2019
As socially inclined creatures, humans have embraced technology that allowed us to connect with our family and friends. Today, social has become a prominent part of people’s lives.
With over half of the world’s population now active on social media, it’s not surprising that more and more businesses are using social media to reach their audience. Healthcare is no exception.
As a healthcare professional or organization, you need to step up your social media strategy in order to reach your target audience, boost patient engagement, and improve health outcomes.
Here are 5 tips to get you started.
Choose the right platform
There are lots of social media platforms out there other than Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While social media can help you drive new patient leads and grow your practice, you can’t be active on all of them all the time. You need to be strategic where you spend your resources.
A great way to plan and begin your social media campaign is to identify your ideal outlets. To do that, you need to focus on your core target audience. Find out where they spend most of their time online. Build your primary social media presence around your audience’s platforms of choice. It only makes sense to fish where the fishes are.
Narrowing down your choice to just a select few platforms will not only save you time, but it will also help you get the best return on your investment.
Jump into existing conversations
Take the initiative to be a part of a social media conversation. Join existing chats and groups that offer relevant discussions. See what you can add to the conversation and what you can learn about the current topics. Inspire discussions, ask questions, and air your opinion.
In addition to taking part in the discussions, it is important to track conversations relevant to your field. This raw and unfiltered conversation can provide you with insights from your audience. You may even get new ideas that you can use on your social media marketing campaign.
Don’t make it all about you
Social media is a great place to promote your practice and get more patients through the door. But if that’s the only reason why you signed up, then it won’t be beneficial.
People hate ads. They are turned off by businesses that throw ads but do not engage with their clients. If you want to build a solid social media presence, then you need to really get on there and interact with your audience.
Go back to your core audience. Learn as much as you can about them: demographics, what they are interested in, what they need, what their pain points are, etc. Getting to know your audience will help you interact with them on a more intimate level. Once you start conversing with them, you’ll know how you can help them.
Show them that you care about them and they will feel more connected with you.
Raise awareness and counter misinformation
Social media has become an important health resource. Studies suggest that more and more people are seeking health information on social media. With the amount of information we are bombarded with each day, it is not surprising to find a lot of medical misinformation out there. As a healthcare professional, you can capitalize on social media by providing your audience with accurate, science-backed facts.
Give people a reason to follow and engage with you. Pull from your unique expertise and share relevant, valuable information about your field. Don’t get stuck sharing links to blog posts. Share infographics, videos, interactive pieces, podcasts, and other types of content.
Provide your audience with content they can’t find elsewhere. Sharing fresh and unique content will not only keep your audience engaged, but they’ll also see you as a thought leader or industry expert.
Automate social media posts
You reap what you sow is a well-known idiom. While the phrase is biblical in origin, it also applies to social media marketing.
You can’t expect great results if your page is inactive. The key is to stay active on social media and consistently provide your followers with high-quality content. How can you do that when you spend the majority of your working hours seeing patients? Social media automation holds the solution to this problem.
Automating your social media posts allows you to schedule and optimize posts for maximum engagement. Scheduling several posts in advance helps you save time while achieving consistency in your marketing efforts. Plus, it gives you control over the content you share and how you share it.
Ultimately, it also helps you get more results with less effort. Keep in mind, though, that automation can only help you save time and effort, it is not meant to make social media marketing a completely hands-off process.
Automation tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, AgoraPulse, and CoSchedule will make things easier for you. Whether you’re looking to find new patients or engage existing ones, you need to employ social media strategies that will help you sustain and grow your practice. Contact us today and let us put together a social media plan for you and your practice.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/5-Social-Media-Marketing-Tips-for-Healthcare-Professionals.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-11-19 08:00:362019-11-18 18:55:575 Social Media Marketing Tips for Healthcare Professionals
Having an active social media presence has become mandatory across different industries, even the healthcare industry. Unfortunately, many physicians find social media marketing intimidating.
The way patients approach healthcare today is different than it was a decade ago. Today, social media is the most relevant advertising channel for you and your practice. It is a cost-effective way to increase reach, build credibility, and attract new patients.
Still on the social media fence?
Here are 5 reasons why you should include social media in your marketing campaign.
Increase reach
With over 3 billion social media users, it is almost inevitable that the majority of your target audience has a presence on popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The majority of them log in on their accounts on a daily basis.
While social media was originally created to cultivate personal relationships, you can use it to get you and your practice in front of your target audience. Your existing patients are probably already following you, but social media allows you to reach more than just the patients you see in your clinic or office.
With the right strategies, it can help you broaden your audience and bring more patients through the door. Don’t be one of the many practices that are missing out on the opportunity to reach millions of people on social media.
Build a relationship with your audience
According to a study that was published in the Annals of Family Medicine, doctors spend an average of 17 minutes with each patient. That is not enough to address the patient’s immediate concerns, much less to build a relationship. Social media gives you an opportunity to connect with your audience and communicate with them outside the office.
As a healthcare professional, you have an opportunity to help people by correcting the spread of medical misinformation, helping chronically ill people feel less isolated, and encouraging them to pursue a healthier lifestyle. Of course, you need to make it clear that you won’t be providing medical advice. This should be done in the office.
With time and consistent effort, you’ll be able to gain their trust and loyalty. If you can create the ultimate experience for your patients, they aren’t likely to go to another doctor.
Attract new patients
The internet has changed the way people find doctors. They are no longer limited to physicians in their area. Although word of mouth and referrals still rank high as a means of finding new doctors, many patients would turn to the internet to find healthcare practitioners of all kinds.
In a survey that was conducted by Doctors.com, they revealed that 63% of respondents choose one doctor over the other because of a strong online presence. You want you and your practice to be at the front of a patient’s mind when the need for your practice arises. And that’s exactly what social media marketing is for.
Social media can be an invaluable resource to attract new patients. As mentioned above, it provides a way to reach a new audience, engage with them, and promote your services. When done right, it will bring you a steady stream of new patients and grow your practice.
Patients want you out there
According to a survey conducted by the National Research Corporation, over 40% of internet users rely on social media for health information. Some would turn to social media for advice when they have questions about healthcare problems or issues.
Your potential and existing patients are already on social media, and using these platforms to get in front of them makes sense. There is already a demand for health-related content, so why not give it to them?
In a hyper-connected world, people want to be able to communicate directly with major brands in their lives, including their doctors. Take advantage of this opportunity to market your practice and services to the exact people that are looking for you.
Become a thought leader in your field
More and more people go online to look up medical information. Since anyone can post practically anything, health information online is often unreliable. As a physician, you can’t just remain quiet and uninvolved while people spread inaccurate information.
Information sharing is one of the greatest benefits of social media.
Doctors have a powerful voice. It is time for you to dip your toes into the virtual waters and disseminate scientifically-proven medical information to the general public.
Always bring value to the community. Give tips on how to stay healthy. Share information about current illnesses going around. Upload links to new research about your area of specialty. If you can make complicated topics easier to understand, then you’ll be able to help millions of people across the globe.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Why-doctors-need-to-be-on-social-media-.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-11-13 08:00:082019-10-30 17:14:215 Reasons Why Doctors Should be on Social Media
Video marketing is such an important piece of your digital marketing strategy. In today’s marketing world people want to be able to connect with their healthcare providers and know who they are.
Gone are the days of making extravagant videos, going WAY over budget, having a studio, etc. Let’s get back to the basics, being authentic in the videos, recording on smartphones or newer computers with good quality. Videos are such an easy way to be able to connect with your audience on a deeper level.
00:01 Amber Irwin: Hello and welcome to the Social Speak Network Podcast. I am your host Amber Irwin, and today’s topic is all about video marketing. Video marketing is such an important piece of your online digital marketing strategy, and this is a question we can asked by our clients all the time: Should I be doing video? And the answer is yes, it’s very simple, yes. So, it’s one of those things where, because digital marketing has grown so much, people really wanna be able to see who you are, to feel like they know you, and get a sense of how the office runs, especially in the healthcare industry. You have to think of that patient journey, what they are struggling with, what they’re going through, why they may be reaching out to you for your services, whether it’s chiropractic, acupuncture, ob/GYN, medical issues, lifethreatening diseases, cancer, all these different things, you have to think of what they’re going through.
01:14 AI: And even though there’s a ton of content online to read, and they can call the office, if they can see videos, and they can see the doctors, and they can see the front desk and the staff at the front desk, and they can see the nurses, it helps build that gap when they are reaching out for a healthcare provider. And they feel like they know, like, and trust you, which are the three main factors in marketing: People need to know, like, and trust you in order to do business with you. 01:50 AI: So a few stats here on a study had shown 80% of online visitors will watch a video, while only 20% will completely read a piece of written content. So if getting your audience engaged and fully immersed in your healthcarerelated information is important to you, then so should video. As stats show, your audience is more likely to consume your content to its full capacity when there’s a video involved. This is also something, you have to think of the healthcare industry when you are explaining, maybe it’s symptoms, or a process, a procedure. When they can hear it straight from the doctor’s mouth, that builds that trust. They’re able to really know what the doctor and the staff, that they know what they’re talking about. And there are so many different tools out there that make video marketing so easy. There’s a reason or a process to everything and having a professional videographer come in for a commercial shoot, maybe a video on the website, that’s really important. I am not discrediting that at all; that is something that’s really important to have. And it’s really easy to do your videos inhouse for your daily tips, your blogs, even your YouTube videos. So it’s not a huge cost item any more either.
03:25 AI: So a couple of tools I wanted to share with you. Two tools that we use for screen sharing. So this is really good if a doctor puts together maybe a PowerPoint, or has images they wanna share, diagrams. If you wanna walk through a process, you can have it just on your computer, and you can share your screen, and you can go through that presentation or… And the one thing… So the tool that we use a lot is called Zoom, ZOOM. And this allows you to do video recording such as this, and it gives us the video file and the audio file, which serves two purposes. Obviously, the video is great for the website, for YouTube and your social media marketing. And the audio file is great for podcasts, and that’s exactly what we do. There’s no point in recreating that wheel when you can use one piece of information for multiple purposes. 04:24 AI: And the other one is Loom, LOOM, and that works the same way as Zoom does.
I know, Zoom and Loom, it can get a little bit more confusing. But those are two great screen share 10/08/19 Page 2 of 6 Video Marketing Tips options. And the other two that we like to use… These are more for those cute, fun videos to throw into social media if you have… Maybe a great one would be if you have a new staff member coming on. This is where you take pictures of them, maybe it’s them in the office, a couple of pictures of their personal life. And you can make a cute video, I use Animoto and Ripl, and these are both… There’s free versions and paid versions, I would do the paid version, just so you don’t have their logo on it, and you can actually add your logo, and add text to it, they’re not expensive at all. So those are two videos that have fun little templates, holiday theme if you wanna have a little office video that says Happy Holidays. You can do little snippets of videos and images together and then they put it together into a video format.
05:41 AI: So those are what we call more of the fluff posts for social media, but they’re videos that people like to see. You can do fun facts, so you can do facts around a certain topic in an Animoto video and share it, you can ask questions. So videos don’t need to be complicated, if you have a Mac, you can just use QuickTime Player and record yourself. Again, if you’re gonna do that, I would highly recommend using Zoom because you do get that audio file and the video file. And if you use your phone, you can use your iPhone or Android as well, If I’m recording a video for social media and I also want it to go onto YouTube, I will have my Zoom screen up, and then I also then would have my phone vertical recording as well, so I can use that for Instagram Stories and Facebook.
06:45 AI: I know it sounds complicated, and a lot of times it’s just getting used to being in front of the camera. Having those bullet points of what you wanna talk about. I have my bullet points right here with some stats written down that I will go into. I have another screen pulled up so I know what those bullet points are that I wanna cover. And so it’s really figuring out that system for you. Some people write full-on strips and tape them up. So you have to find that system that works for you, you don’t have a choice anymore in digital marketing, you have to be doing videos. And the more videos you do, the better.
07:27 AI: So you wanna think of… Where I would start with this video marketing strategy is thinking of; what are your clients or your patients asking you? What questions are they coming to you with, and how can you address those? What are those hot topics in your industry? Is it around vaping, opioids, vitamins? Is it working out, is it diet? Diet’s a big piece, and food ties into every type of healthcare, doctor, industry, everything out there. So are your clients asking you how to eat better? Are they asking you what they can do to improve the quality of their life? And so start paying attention to what are they asking you, and then start doing videos around that.
08:19 AI: And your videos, start with small things, maybe it’s just one question. Keep it short, simple, and to the point. So less than three minutes is great. If you’re doing a presentation, you’re explaining diagrams, or you’re teaching them something, then I will go up to 10 minutes. Keep in mind that the… If you’re posting it onto Instagram, it can’t be more than 10 minutes for Instagram TV. And you also have to think of, what are you talking about that you wanna be able to keep their attention. So their attention span is gonna be shorter, too, so you wanna make sure that that video is giving them a lot of details, a lot of valuable information that they wanna keep watching it.
09:07 AI: 83% of marketers believe that video is growing in importance. Duh. It is so important. We have to be doing it. 53% of customers engage with a brand or a business after watching a video 10/08/19 Page 3 of 6 Video Marketing Tips on social media. Your audience is cyberstalking you, which sounds horrible, but they are doing their research. They are looking at multiple different healthcare practices, from who they are, where they’re at, what their expertise is, what are they talking about on social media, are they being consistent with social media, do they have the videos? Is their website userfriendly? And we talked about that user experience, that digital experience for your patients, for your audience, is that an easy process? So even if you do an intro video on your website, like welcome to our website, here’s where you need to go to book your appointment, here’s where our expertise are, it’s really important to make sure that you have these videos and you make that experience as simple as possible for your audience. So video marketing, you just gotta get in there, you gotta get in front of the camera. You’re gonna have 10 takes before it’s perfect, and that’s okay, and keep going.
10:29 AI: So then my next question I get is, “Well, what about editing? Do you edit your videos? And if so, what software do you use to edit your videos? I’m usually the type of person that I wanna get it done in one take. I don’t wanna have to stop and splice it together. I like to have my points, get it done in one take, and that may take me three or four times, but I’m not editing a lot. So in your first couple of videos, you may have it at the beginning where there’s a pause and then you say, “Hi!” Or in the end, you pause and then you talk again. So some simple editing, beginning and ending. If you have a Mac, you can use iMovie, if you have a PC you can use the Movie Maker, that does a good job. You can use Adobe Premiere Clip. And also YouTube does have some video editing tools in there, and they work great, so you can edit a beginning. So again, if there’s that pause in the beginning or a pause at the end, you can use that.
11:44 AI: Sometimes you wanna add a beginning that… An intro, you can do that in Movie Maker or iMovie. There’s a ton of different video editing software out there. And again, we like to keep it as simple as possible, so find the one that works best for you. As I said, YouTube, iMovie, or Movie Maker for those beginning, pieces is a great idea just to get used to it and then if you wanna add more effects or different things to it, you can start doing some more research and looking at Adobe Premiere Clip and other video editing software.
12:22 AI: So start by, again, listening to your patients, what are they asking, what are those hot topics that people are talking about in your industry? Do some research on your competitors: Are they doing videos? What are they talking about? Looking at other videos, just YouTubing videos on those topics, those keywords that you’re thinking about, seeing how many views they have. And once you take your video and you upload it to YouTube, think that SEO, think those keywords, what would they be typing in to find this video? In your description, make sure that you have a link back to your website, so if you’re talking about a treatment or a condition that… Or even a blog post, tie it back to a link on your website, so there’s that call to action.
13:14 AI: So it’s really important, you’ve gotta think about this as another process in your marketing. So you find your bullet points for your video, you record your video, you upload it to YouTube, and you share it with social media. Once the video’s on YouTube, you can take that video and insert it to your blog posts as well. Videos are a great addition to add to your blog posts. And so we usually will write a blog post and then do a video, so we’re touching both parts. People can watch a video and then they can read the blog. And so the blog is great for SEO, the video is great for our audience. So finding that balance, and start doing some videos, and just get it in the habit, whether you’re doing one per week to start, and then start moving it up to maybe two per week. 10/08/19 Page 4 of 6 Video Marketing Tips 14:07 AI: And then what is the point of that video? Again, is it an FAQ, is it a treatment condition, is it a blog post? And then what’s a call to action for each video? And our call to action for our podcasts is to be sure to go to Podbean or iTunes and subscribe to our podcast so you can listen to all these amazing tips that we’re sharing with you. And also if you are struggling with that video strategy, head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and request a free 30minute consultation, and we can walk through this video strategy with you.
14:44 AI: So I look forward to seeing your videos. Please drop a link below to your YouTube channel, we would love to take a look at them, and get a recording. Have a great day.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Copy-of-Why-Video-Marketing-is-Such-an-Important-Piece-of-Your-Online-Strategy-1.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-10-09 08:00:232019-10-08 19:12:11Why Video Marketing is Such an Important Piece of Your Online Strategy
