Social media continues to evolve, and is your medical practice staying up to date? Here’s a rundown of the most popular social platforms, and which ones we recommend are worth your time.
Facebook is the go-to social media platform worldwide, and it’s an essential space for your digital marketing messages. Though it’s hard to believe, we still see medical practices not giving Facebook the attention it deserves. The reality is that patients considering you are absolutely looking at your Facebook feed, in addition to your website and online review sites. If they see a stale Facebook page for your practice, it’s likely to leave a bad impression.
Our Recommendation: You absolutely need to be active on Facebook.
Instagram is the perfect spot to tell the story of your practice through photos and videos. Last year it hit 1 billion monthly users, so like Facebook, it just can’t be ignored. Some of our clients find that posting on Instagram is actually easier than on other platforms, because the visually oriented nature of it makes it easy to take a quick pic with a patient, show off a new device, or answer a few FAQs right from your cell phone without hardly any prep time.
Our Recommendation: You absolutely need to be active on Instagram.
The Pinterest demographic skews heavily female, which on its face makes it an intriguing option for cosmetic/plastic surgery services. But in our experience, it hasn’t quite panned out as the perfect spot for visual content, like Instagram has. Almost 75% of Pinterest users are there to shop, and given that medical services don’t translate into “impulse buys” the way well-marketed products can, the benefit of posting on Pinterest hasn’t been there for most practices.
Our Recommendation: If you’re regularly posting to Instagram, try posting your most popular content to Pinterest as well and keep an eye on engagement.
YouTube
Like Instagram, YouTube sees about 1 billion monthly users. While video is substantially cheaper and easier to produce than ever before, it still takes a bit of planning. And let’s be honest, some doctors are better in front of the camera than others. We suggest trying a variety of content to see what gets views. The most popular videos we’ve seen in the cosmetic space share patient stories and/or before and after images.
Our Recommendation: If you are in the habit of producing video, this is your place. If not, it’s probably not worth the time/effort to get started.
Twitter makes sense for customer service, if you are a larger company and want to hear instant feedback from customers (and have the capability to act on it immediately). But for busy doctors and practices, tweeting just doesn’t make a lot of sense. You’re unlikely to have a lot of news to share, and only your diehard patients would really be interested in your take on the latest celebrity news or health craze. Your time is better spent elsewhere.
Our Recommendation: Skip it.
Snapchat
In the past 2 years we’ve had a few questions about whether a client should be “on Snapchat.” In general, the answer is no. Over half the users are in the 15-25 age range. That might be a good target for breast augmentation and rhinoplasty, but it’s not usually the main audience for most practices. Also consider that the platform is mainly for exchanging personal messages, and users don’t really expect to interact with many brands on Snapchat.
Our Recommendation: Nope, unless you are heavily focusing on a young demographic.
LinkedIn may be a good spot for B2B marketing, but it’s just not a place to reach patients. We suggest having a professional, up-to-date profile on LinkedIn, but don’t sweat providing regular updates or posts on this platform. And in all honesty, there are much better places for doctors to connect and network with each other online. It’s just not a source of new business.
Our Recommendation: Find something better to do with your time.
A Note on Paying to Play
Given the amount of time spent on all these platforms, and given that these companies have shareholders looking to make money, it should not come as a surprise that the days of getting a ton of reach and engagement for free are long gone. Every platform offers ways to pay to reach a wider audience – but where should you spend?
Promoting posts on Facebook and Instagram can be a very solid investment – especially when you want a message to reach a bigger audience than you usually get. Things like offers/events are always great to promote. You can also keep an eye on which of your posts are getting strong engagement and keep that momentum going by promoting them after you’ve posted. On Instagram specifically, a promoted post gives the option to include a call to action to send people back to your site, a real bonus since otherwise the platform is set up to keep users only on Instagram.
We also encourage clients to run dedicated, ongoing ad campaigns on both Facebook and Instagram. Several of the other social networks discussed here also have advertising opportunities, but we have yet to see strong enough ROI to recommend those, even if you are engaged in an organic posting effort on those networks.
