How to use Social media for Clinical practice ?

Social media offers a parallel channel to every possible service that is delivered online. It’s important to know, how to use Social media for Clinical practice? It not only provides you with your own canvas to paint your own picture, it also guarantees that the canvas is big and choices of color are infinite.

1: Creating  a strong  brand identity

As Amazon’s Jeff Bezos says 

“branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

As a medical practitioner, it basically means what perception people have about your reputation and professional connectivity.

The perception is significantly affected by the patient‘s experience and services that you provide.  Social media is increasingly getting flooded with the content which is either directly about you, or a person you interacted with, or an event you participated in.

So its totally your choice.

You can actively control it to shape the public perception the way you want to them perceive, or you can leave it to chance.

It’s unlikely that your competitors are would take this issue casually.

Greater is your engagement with patients in social media, easier will it be for you to achieve your targets of practice, be it to find new patients or their willingness to accept your services.

 2: Increased patient engagement

Your authority over the field of your specialization and activities on social media will help users to find your content and if it is really engaging that might share it.

It’s the sharing of your content which is the ultimate litmus test of the quality of the content. It also shows how accurately have you targeted your content. If the good quality content is targeted to the wrong audience, the effort to create that content will go down the drain.

That brings us to the issue of users or audiences.

The doctor should have very clear ideas who are the people you are targeting.

If you are a kidney transplant surgeon, naturally you will not Target your content to Young working female. But that will be the target population for a Lasik surgeon.

The use of Social media for Clinical practice promotion and visibility will help the user to engage with your content and will visit your website or clinics, and so on.

But it is not one-way traffic. It also gives you client control to express and disseminate his or her view about you. It is for sure that the user will share his or her experience on social media.

A practitioner can provide a platform where patients can speak out , the doctor can reply back.

3: Competitive landscape of clinical practice

Failure to do that will result in the dissemination of one side of the story in isolated communities of social media. It may be outright misinformation about you, and worse still you may remain totally uninformed.

It’s not that the patient only has their grudges to share on social media.

Satisfied patient use social media to share their good news among their communities.

That’s is better promotion of your capabilities if a patient is sharing is a good experience. All you have to do is to amplify it among the appropriate user.

A tweet sharing an obvious over-prescription of drugs, by a practitioner. it’s retweeted by many who came across. Right or wrong, good or bad, news spreads fast on social media.​

In the competitive landscape of clinical practice, it’s even more relevant. Social media is a perfect tool to get accurate estimates of your competitors, not just what they are doing wrong, but also what is working for them.

4: Connect with employee

In practice, the patient is god, but a competent and loyal employee is no lesser god. People gather information regarding the prospective employer before even thinking about applying.

Social media also gives you an eagle eyes view of the professional landscape, if you are out for the headhunting of new employees. Of course, you can keep an eye on existing employees through their social media activities.

5: Break physical boundaries to use Social media for Clinical practice

Seth Godin describes “

Revolutions destroy what is perfect and make the impossible a reality”.

Social media is a revolution which is not only spreading like a wildfire, it is disrupting every established business that is coming it’s way.

If you think the music, retail, and travel industries were vulnerable, and medical practice will be resilient for disruption than it will be a mistake.

The online services are not limited to the doctor’s discovery and ordering and delivery of medicine. On-line consultation and telemedicine, with all its limitations, are slowly gaining the ground. It’s not limited to the teaching institution’s sponsored programs, it’s very much becoming a   business.

The US bases company doctor on demand has not only received a fresh round of funding, but it has also been accepted by the government to be included in the public-funded health plans, thereby giving it formal legitimacy.

The reason is simple, the online services are cheaper, so more people can afford it. At least it’s better than absolutely no access to the doctor. Now it can be anybody’s guess how would Indian government react if it gets any such proposal.

6: If anything is online, it is on social media.

Social media offers a parallel channel to every possible service that is delivered online. It not only provides you with your own canvas to paint your own picture, but it also guarantees that the canvas is big and choices of color are infinite.

Take the example of doctor search site Practo. You can have a profile which the patient can access, so also your competitors. They have a strict format of what can you can display and what you can not. Anything that allows direct communication between the patient and doctor is not allowed, because that will make the sites irrelevant.

The site ensures everyone looks the same. So users can choose the one who is cheap and easily accessible. But the doctor is not the same, just like any other field, there are good ones and exceptionally good ones. Now the question is how does an exceptionally good doctor stand out of the rest.

Now, look at the Facebook page of the doctor. You paint your picture the way you want. Have your photos, share your videos. let people post comments and connect. You can display everything that you want your client to know. They actually encourage you to communicate.  Facebook is no mediator, filtering every message.

Simple Solutions welcomes unsolicited articles and blog posts. If you are interested in writing for us, please contact us below.

Simple Solutions welcomes the eye surgeon/ hospital to list their cataract surgery services so that patients can find them. If you are interested in listing your cataract surgery services with us, please contact us below.