How to Engage in Your Own Social Media Marketing

So, you’ve accepted that your practice needs social media marketing. You’re posting with hashtags, promoting content regularly, and even incorporating social video marketing into your strategy—but what if that’s not enough to create a robust social media marketing plan?

According to research by RealSelf, 89% of people want their physicians to be somewhat, if not very, engaged in social media. When there’s minimal information about a doctor online, this can cause them to look outdated, even making some people wonder if they’re hiding something. Prospective patients want to learn what physicians are like, and social media pages are an effective place to demonstrate this.

Sure, having any presence on social media and maintaining an editorial calendar of regular posts is important, but it’s not enough to just publish posts and neglect your social pages the rest of the time. To get the most results from your social media marketing, you need to also be active on your social sites.

In addition to developing and implementing a social campaign with expert strategists, here are some ways both you and your employees can engage with your own social pages to enhance the benefits of your social strategy:

• Dedicate time for participating in the conversation. Thank your patients for their comments, answer questions, and even leave friendly comments on photos that patients post to your page.
• Act as advocates of your practice. Get the conversation going by participating in fun trivia, true or false posts, or other posts that ask followers questions. You and your employees should also regularly share your practice’s social posts to your personal pages.
• Humanize the page with your own photos. Branded content that is well-thought-out with clear marketing goals to either drive traffic back to your website or encourage followers to inquire about a service is great, but you can enhance your page with your own photos of your personal/family time, hobbies, vacations, office events, etc. Take this opportunity to also share fun facts about yourself and your staff.

A great way to remind yourself to interact with your social media pages is to turn on notifications for any activity that occurs on your page. That way, when followers leave comments, send messages, share posts, or interact in some other form, you’ll be more prone to responding in a timely manner, making you look as attentive and caring as you are at your practice.

If you and your staff are not active on your own practice page, how can anyone else interact with you? Increased activity can build closer one-on-one connections with current and prospective patients. Conversations can also lead to more conversions because remaining active on social media is like attending networking events every day.

Get in Touch with Our Social Media Team

Our social media marketing team regularly monitors our client social pages and sends email reminders to answer questions and private messages, helping to maximize social media activity and engagement with followers. We also have suggestions on what types of personalized content can enhance your page. If you are interested in working with Rosemont Media to improve your social strategy, contact us today.

Editor’s note: The original version of this post was published on June 30, 2015.