Best social media strategy for clinical practice

Medical practice is greatly affected by the reputation of the the doctor. We are sharing a time tested social media strategy for clinical practice.

Social media: The fastest trend

Wikipedia defines it as “Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. 

It has three important components

Online social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more.

Social media groups and communities.

User-generated content: videos, pictures, blogs, articles, and more

Rapidly spreading internet devices and usage, combined with multiple social networking apps has produced an absolutely spectacular new medium for social interaction. The medium is fast, ubiquitous, addictive, and very efficient.

Social media: The fastest trend

Wikipedia defines it as “Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. 

It has three important components

Online social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more.

Social media groups and communities.

User-generated content: videos, pictures, blogs, articles, and more

Rapidly spreading internet devices and usage, combined with multiple social networking apps has produced an absolutely spectacular new medium for social interaction. The medium is fast, ubiquitous, addictive, and very efficient.

1. Focus

 Start focusing on social media, among the options of the promotion you have.

In terms of the demand for time and money, it’s still the cheapest. For a beginner, there is plenty of the option which are totally free.

If you are new in the practice, you don’t need to purchase any paid ads. Facebook profile, Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, Twitter, and Instagram account are, best advertisements, for free.

If you are already using these mediums than you should start taking it more seriously. Most of the social media networks help you advertise. All the networks help you target the ads to the user details. Facebook can help you pinpoint your ads not only to a geographic area, demographic parameters but also on taste, preference, and more.

2: Integrity

Medical practice is among that profession which is greatly affected by the reputation of the doctor. As a film star, you are known by your last hit. Or miss.

People make an opinion about you, from the variety of the content they notice about you on different social media and communities. You can not be a reputed surgeon holding a scalpel on one site and contesting assembly elections, donning khaki on other. You should clearly define what kind of image you want for yourself (scalpel or khaki) and stick to it across the media be it Facebook or Instagram. This holds good for photos, your post, comments you make and the content you share a tweet , tag, or pin.

It’s not about you, it’s about them.

It can be used as a test to assess if you are posting is good. Ask yourself if this post will add any value to your patient or not. If yes, post it, If not, then you know what should be done with it. A simple post about how a patient can avoid falling in the washroom is great.

So is the arrival or a new CAT Scan in your facility, it must be shared with others. But can you say the same for the photos of the inauguration party of the new CAT Scan, with cake smeared on the doctor’s face? I will say it can be avoided as it’s not about them.

3: Content

Everything that you share on social media is content. your profile photo, photo of your foreign trip, a comment on someone else photo, a video shared or tweeted, a blog written by you. everything is content. every type of content has its own utility depending on the platform you are using. 

4: Consistency

Nobody likes someone who publishes in bursts for a week then suddenly he/she is nowhere to be seen for the next three months. It’s important to have good content, but its even more important to publish it consistently. Start with once a fortnight, if that is all you can manage in your busy practice. You can always increase it up to once a week or more, as is possible. Then stick to it.

5. Engagement 

It basically means the interaction of people with the content you publish on social media. It can be alike, a recommendation, a comment, a share retweet, or up-vote. Your target should be that others share your content, and that is the best gauge of its quality.

Not everyone is active on social media every second of the day, plus there are millions of viewers and an equally staggering volume of the content uploaded on the social media, every second. How do you ensure your content meets the right eye?

The best policy is to share your media on multiple platforms and frequently. If you have published it once, it’s absolutely okay to post it again twice or a few times a day. You also need to know how to target the content for a particular profile of users. 

HASHTAGS # though you will see it more frequently on twitter, they’re a very common used use to add meta information to your content. It helps in targeting the content to a particular group of users using or searching the content using these hashtags.

There are more than 200 hundred social media networks and many are added to the list every week. Facebook  LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram,  Pinterest, Google Plus, Reddit, and Quora, and the list goes on and on. You need a whole team of skilled people who can professionally manage all of them together. But you can choose a few, depending on your taste and amount of time you are willing to spend.

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are three every doctor should invest in. add Instagram if you have still more time and energy left with you.

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