Social media is an ideal platform for healthcare marketing; these are evolving and becoming a prevalent way of reaching out to consumers. It is therefore important for medical professionals and physicians to utilize social media for online marketing and establish a strong media presence. In other words, social media optimization is the need of the day and it has to be done with increasing focus on the most recent trends and requirements. A medical website marketing company can provide the necessary support for healthcare businesses in this regard.
- Facebook: Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms with around 1.59 billion users. It comprises various demographics and is an excellent medium for businesses to connect with prospective patients. Patients can post reviews and this will help attract more prospective patients and followers. It also has a feature called Facebook Ads that helps to match current buyers with over two million similar prospects who have similar characteristics.
- Twitter: This is another social media ground that helps your posts to go viral and the more your posts are shared or your content re-tweeted, the more followers you will have. You need to closely observe the trends and include them with hashtags.
- LinkedIn: This platform mainly focuses on connecting with business professionals and helps you to target them by industry.LinkedIn prioritizes relationship building over anything else. It has the LinkedIn Groups feature and healthcare businesses should have groups in order to target a particular niche or industry. It also helps in building new relationships with key prospects. With this feature, healthcare businesses can establish Groups in their specific niche, and invite others in your target market to join.
- Instagram: This is a popular social media platform for sharing photos at events or healthcare shows. Using hashtags and posting photos will also increase followers.Some businesses offer incentives to attendees when they host events to post photos to Instagram using that particular event’s hashtag.Participants are sometimes offered free giveaways as well.
- Pinterest: Quality images are likely to go viral if a photo pinned in Pinterest can gain millions of views.It is one of the ways to promote your medical business.You can use this social media channel if you have quality images to share.
- YouTube: YouTube is the second largest search engine and posting videos that are search engine optimized can yield many views and thereby visibility. This will help to promote your business.
- Yelp: It is a platform for criticisms and reviews. It helps in having an active strategy to build positive reviews about your business. It is important to monitor whether your business has received negative reviews and adopt measures to rectify the same. You can ask your customers to review your healthcare business on Yelp. This is a good strategy that will help prevent any negative review from standing out.
Here is a look at how healthcare businesses can utilize the above mentioned social media platforms.
- Share valuable information: Healthcare organizations can share general information about, for instance, flu shots and tips to avoid a common cold. Specialty websites such as that of a plastic surgery practice can offer detailed information regarding the popular aesthetic procedures such as Brazilian butt lift, breast augmentation, gynecomastia surgery, and hi-def liposuction to achieve six-pack abs. You can also share news regarding health hazards and outbreaks and keep patients informed.
- You can provide updates on new technologies
- Answer questions on various topics
- Introduce the doctors
- Provide generic, pre- and post-operative care information
- Provide updates regarding the practice/business itself.
- Evaluate your competitors’ activities on social media: This is important to get an idea of their services and overall patient satisfaction. You can also use any effective methods they may be following to enhance your practice.
- Improve quality: With social media interaction, physicians can obtain immediate response from individuals regarding common reactions to medications, and regarding the new techniques used in the industry. This will help them adjust in keeping with patient desire, goals and safety concerns.
- Provide live updates during procedures: Many doctors and plastic surgeons provide live updates as and when they are performing a procedure or service.
- A great tool in times of crisis: Healthcare businesses such as hospitals and other organizations can provide information regarding hospital capacity, ER access, and so on.
Social media is and will remain a valuable asset for healthcare businesses. It is vital that healthcare organizations have the right social media management company to work for them, ensuring the right social media optimization techniques to increase the visibility, traffic and exposure of their website.
