Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies for a Healthcare Practice

0:01 – Introduction – The healthcare industry on the whole is looking out for effective ways to reach out to new patients, and using social media platforms is one important way to build stronger relationships with patients. Incorporating effective healthcare social media marketing strategies allows hospitals and healthcare facilities to connect with potential patients one-on-one, while also providing valuable information to help them make the best decision concerning their health.

0:33 – Why Social Media Matters to Healthcare

When it comes to social media, healthcare providers are in a unique position as they are responsible for marketing a human necessity, not a traditional product or impulse buy. Social media has significantly changed the way people interact and communicate with each other. Today, many patients use social media to find their physicians online and it has become crucial for physicians and other medical entities to create an online presence and make a long lasting impression on their prospective consumers. Incorporating a simple yet systematic digital marketing strategy can help build reputation and bring in quality traffic to a healthcare website. Here discussed are some important tips for building an effective healthcare social media marketing plan and this plan can go along with any objectives that you have or any laws that you have to abide by so that you’re following health care guidelines properly to the T while giving entertainment, information to your audience to draw them in to come in for whatever your service offers.

 

1:58 – Analyze the Target Audience – There are many social media platforms and each specific platform has a unique user base. For instance, the demographics and interests of people on Twitter and Facebook may be quite different from that on LinkedIn. To gain maximum benefits from these social platforms, it is important to plan unique and innovative digital marketing campaigns for each platform instead of going with one for all social media platforms.  Of course, this is usually the better idea to use so that you can have an opportunity to really see which platform is reacting the best for you. So just come up with a content calendar and what I mean by that is just content that you can use on all social media accounts and you can link it up to Hootsuite, Buffer App or any other automated scheduler, social media scheduler, and then from there you can of course just do the one post and schedule the time frames that you want it deployed and the automated tool do it for you so you don’t have to manually do this.

3:11 – Next up is – Share Preventive Healthcare Crisis – Generally, time-sensitive posts work well for not only engaging the target audience but also educating them. These types of content include articles about recent health epidemics, routine procedures (like a flu shot), and hot topics in the industry. This point is particularly relevant in the wake of COVID-19 crisis. Social media platforms have become a hub for discussions and real-time news concerning COVID-19 since the huge spread of the virus. Healthcare providers can use these platforms to not only help guide the public through an actual crisis but also fact-check users. So, basically in this sense, you get an opportunity to piggy back off of what people are seeing in the news or a major, of course, news notifications where the CDC is spreading in some type of news for the whole public to know okay this is what’s going on etc. So, if you’re in the right health care profession, you can use your social media platforms to either agree or disagree and use that time to educate people and also to show your authoritativeness within the niche.

4:42 – Provide Health Information – It is important to provide physician tips and health quotes, and share details about the live medical procedures through social media platforms. This can be done by sharing images, YouTube videos, and Infographics via different platforms. Answer health-related queries through platforms like Quora and Yahoo as they help connect your facility to an active community and also improve search engine rankings in the long run. So, of course as were mentioning here, provide physician tips and health quotes and share details about live medical procedures to social media platforms as you can look at all the platforms that you signed up to. Just take a look, maybe an hour, 30 minutes, 15; it should be quick in terms of gathering up a bunch of competitors within each platform. And then from there, seeing what they’re doing that you aren’t and as we mentioned about sharing details about live medical procedures, so on and so forth, so they can get ideas of what you are currently doing at your office in terms of videos, showing them, getting testimonials showing new audiences – that look – this is how a procedure is done or here’s the benefits, harms — whatever it is you basically will get a competitive analysis together. So 15 minutes alone will let you know what’s going on across the board is the way that people are marketing the same across the board and the accounts that you see are very close to what you do — are you able to compete against them?

6:32 – Take Patients Behind-the-Scenes – Highlighting the human side of a healthcare practice helps to make social presence more personal. Social networking platforms like Instagram stories are highly useful for sharing the behind-the-scenes content. A brief glimpse of a healthcare practice’s day-to-day life can help make a connection with followers. For instance, below given is a post from Johns Hopkins which serves as both wholesome content and a positive spin on working in healthcare during the health crisis times.

7:10 – Conclusion

So within the content when you get a chance as this is not the only bullet points of actionable tips to keep in mind when looking at social media as a force pretty much to be reckoned with. For your health care service, you’ll notice some of the examples that we gave to kind of drive home the point that social media is a better option to use and it’s quick you can set things up fast and go from there.  So, going into the last bit, healthcare marketers face a distinct set of challenges when it comes to social media marketing. At the same time, they have tons of opportunities to make a meaningful and positive impact on their followers. Right from educating the public to creating a sense of community, analyze how healthcare social media marketing can make a real difference when it is done correctly. Setting realistic goals and making effective social media choices in the basis of business objectives will help shape the leads that your business attracts.

So, going forward look at social media as a place that you can entertain your audience, do informational content. So, the content is very educational, but at the same time, it’s entertaining. So, check out the different types of social media accounts that you currently have. If you haven’t yet, look at your competitors and put together a small list of 5 to 10 weaknesses and strengths that they have. But, remember the competitors have to be people that are servicing the same types of things that you are doing. So, once you do that, you’ll be able to drill down further into the types of posts that you should be putting in, apart from, you know, pandemic type issues, of course COVID-19 that’s going on, how to keep yourself aware of you know updates etc or whatever it is you will put pertains to COVID-19.