Posts Tagged ‘social media’
How Important is Social Media Marketing to Your Clinic?
Social Media is the “hottest” topic on the Internet today. If you’ve been giving some thought to getting on board, but you’re not sure where the platform is, let’s take a minute to talk about the “Who, What, When, Where, and How” of social media and you, that’s “Who.” Then you can decide if you want to add Social Media to your chiropractic marketing strategy.
Social media marketing may seem familiar in some ways to other chiropractic marketing strategies you’ve thought about in the past, and yet unfamiliar at the same time. In the “familiar” category, you’d never consider trying any sort of marketing plan without making an effort to understand what you’re doing and what you want to get from it. It’s important to ask yourself, “What are my goals?” Once you’re clear about what you want, you’ll be more capable of using social media to your biggest advantage.
Before you begin your social media effort, it will be highly important for you to make certain that you “own your name” on all the social media outlets, that is to say, make sure that your name or the name of your clinic is available so that you can use the identical same name on every one of the social channels you want to use. There is a service that is free and will assist you with your search when you’re ready. That who is knowem.com. This service will check where your name is and/or if it’s available or not on a large number of social media sites.
When you have secured all of your social media accounts, the next step is to decide where you want to be active. Starting with only a limited number of social media sites is preferable because, let’s face it, you have a clinic to run and patients to see. You won’t want to get active in too many social media sites. How do decide which sites are best for you? Choose the social media site where the most action is, which are facebook, twitter, linkedin, and Youtube
What your social media activity mission should be is to build a true presence in your community. What is definitely a no-no is for you to try to “sell” on your social media sites, that means don’t sell your clinic, don’t sell services or products, don’t sell anything! The purpose of social media is for you to have an addition channel through which to network with the community. Certainly, inform them about what you do, but do it by participating in the conversation. There is really no difference between the way social networking works and the way you normally network offline. There is no getting around it, people on social media do not want to be sold to! Social media sites are a lot like a neighborhood backyard barbecue. People are standing around having a conversation about who they are and what they do, and then someone asks you what you do. Or, perhaps you begin the conversation by (just) stating, “Hi, I’m Dr. ____. The same kind of interaction applies with social media. Social media sites should be handled the same way you’d “work” offline networking opportunities to promote yourself, i.e., answer the questions and concerns that let people know who you are and gets them interested in the who that’s you!