Marketing For Private Practices

Posts Tagged ‘Social Media Marketing’

Social Media is the “hottest” buzz word on the Internet today. For those of you who would like to consider Social Media marketing as an adjunct to your overall chiropractic internet marketing strategy, but aren’t really sure what all the buzz is about, let’s take a minute to talk about the “Who, What, When, Where, and How” of social media and you, that’s “Who.”

Social media marketing may seem familiar in some respects 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 think of trying any sort of marketing plan without making an effort to understand what it’s about and what you want to get from it. What are your 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, you will need to make sure that you “own your name” on all the social media outlets, that is to say, be certain that your name or your clinic’s name is procurable so that you can use precisely same name on every one of the social channels you want to use. When you’re ready, there’s a service, which is totally free, that can help you with your search. That who is knowem.com. This service will check where your name is and/or if it’s available or not on a sufficient number of social media sites.

The next step, once you have all your social media accounts secured, is to decide where you would like to be active. Because you have a clinic to run and patients to see, in the beginning only a few social media sites is best and may end up being all you’ll need. That way you won’t get caught up in too many channels. How do decide which sites are best for you? The big ones (where most of the action is) are facebook, twitter, linkedin, and Youtube.

What successful social media activity will do for you is build a real presence in your community. What you should never do “sell” on your social media sites, in other words 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. Social media works the same way as social networking offline. People on social media sites don’t want to be sold to, plain and simply. What might be a beneficial idea to think of social media sites like a neighborhood backyard barbecue. People are standing around talking about who they are and what they do, and then someone asks you what you do. Or, maybe you start the conversation by (just) stating, “Hello, I’m Dr. ____. With social media marketing, the same kind of interaction applies. 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 get potential patients interested in the who that’s you!

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