Social media has come a long way from being predominantly used for connecting with friends and family or sneakily keeping tabs on who your ex is dating these days to a full-fledged marketing strategy.
Social media came to the rescue of collapsing businesses during the pandemic’s lockdown, especially for healthcare professionals and medical facility owners. It provides a platform for doctors and healthcare professionals to share the latest news, tips, and tricks with their target audience, keeping them engaged and forging a long-lasting relationship with their prospective patients.
The COVID-19 pandemic left us locked in with our anxiety soaring new heights. The unprecedented times forcing us to brace ourselves for the uncertain future triggered a mass shift to social media use.
The exponential use of social media created a window of opportunity for healthcare professionals with their followers reaching through the roof. With more and more people wanting to lead an informed and healthy lifestyle, social media is the key to efficient brand recognition and online presence.
Healthcare social media accounts enable you to:
- Keep your audience informed and updated about the latest advancements in healthcare,
- Share preventive tips and information with existing patients,
- Attract new patients with quality content,
- Collaborate with other health care professionals.
These are just a handful of activities that a healthcare facility’s social media account can boost engagement with its target audience. Let us understand the relationship between social media and healthcare marketing.
The Role of Social Media in Healthcare Marketing
Unlike most businesses that offer a particular service or product that can be marketed in hundreds of ways, healthcare professionals are responsible for our overall well-being. It makes healthcare marketing highly sensitive, making it crucial to prioritize the needs of their target audience.
The COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to the role healthcare plays in our lives. Alternatively, social media marketing for healthcare enables doctors and medical practitioners to effectively carry out their roles and responsibilities.
Let us look at how social media adds value to the healthcare industry:
1. Navigating People During Crisis
The prime role of healthcare professionals remains to educate and navigate people to fight against a healthcare crisis. COVID-19 serves as a new lesson that healthcare professionals can focus on imparting knowledge on how to lead an illness-free life which can be done quickly by harnessing the power of social media.
While healthcare professionals sharing tips and tricks to help improve their target audience’s quality of life is essential. Another equally important thing to keep in mind is fact-checking the knowledge you are sharing. The accuracy of your information can increase engagement with your social media account.
Educating the Audience
People have been heavily relying on self-diagnosis tips during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep their health in check. It means that people rely on the information they read or listen to on social media making it essential to educate your audience with the factually correct information.
Social media empowers the general public with guidance and education to protect themselves against diseases prevented by early detection. You can share new treatments, self-help or prevention tips, and recommendations. It is also an excellent way to increase engagement and foot traffic to your website and medical practice.
Helping Patients Feel More Comfortable
Going to the dentist is still a recurring nightmare for most of us. Most of the population fears doctors and would climb mountains before they agree to a routine check-up.
Social media allows you to showcase your practice’s compassionate and patient-centric environment to make the patients more comfortable. Let us look at things to keep in mind when creating social media content.
6 Strategies for Content Curation on Social Media Account
As a healthcare professional or service provider, you should focus on your responsibilities while creating and sharing content with your audience. It is essential to keep the industry benchmarks in mind when creating unique content for your prospective readers.
Here are a few strategies that can help you with the content on your social media accounts. The methods are as follows:
1. Publish Educational Content
When creating social media content, the most important thing is to publish educational content that can help your practice grow. Whether you post a blog, video, or infographic, remember to keep it relevant and informative to your audience.
It will not only help you increase your followers but also engage with your previous audience. You can discuss how to maintain good health and provide tips for personal healthcare to your audience. You can encourage your audiences to respond to these types of content within a small duration of time, prompting them to share their thoughts and opinions.
Therefore, curate quality and educational content for your audience.
2. Create Inspirational Content for Motivation
Sharing inspirational stories on your social media account helps garner attention to your healthcare practice from your prospective patients. Stories such as surgeries, people beating cancer, and others will help you increase your followers and engagement.
It also helps people who are currently about to undergo a surgery or an operation to educate themselves and make an informed decision.
3. Post Infographics Regularly
Infographics are an excellent way to drive engagement for a healthcare social media account. Publish them at regular intervals by scheduling your posts beforehand.
People who are health conscious or who are eagerly looking for quality content will thoroughly read it. Therefore, try it and see the positive change in your account.
4. Always Use relevant Hashtags
Yes, it is correct that the healthcare sector has plenty of hashtags, and you should use them as opportunities to boost the performance of your post. The use of hashtags on your post can double up the promotion and can provide better results.
Your post will get a better reach and engagement along with a potential audience. So, remember to add relevant hashtags while posting content on the healthcare social media account.
5. Post Team Pics or Behind-the-Scenes
Posting pictures of your team or behind-the-scenes pics builds trust among your audience. Try to share your day-to-day activities to drive engagement, but the activities must be related to the profession.
It gives your existing followers an insight into your daily life and behind-the-scenes activities, humanizing your brand and helping you attract potential audiences to your social media account.
6 Publish Patients’ Testimonials or Shout-Outs
Publishing testimonials or shout-outs from your patients foster a positive online reputation for your practice. It enables you to leave a better impression while building trust and confidence in your target audience.
Let us look at the benefits of social media for healthcare professionals and medical facility owners.
Benefits of Social Media in the Healthcare Industry
The benefits for a healthcare professional or facility to use a social media account are as follows:
- It helps increase the number of followers generating leads. When a higher number of people follow you, you will get a higher engagement.
- It drives engagement with your audience and builds a relationship with them.
- It helps you communicate with your audience personally. Social media is a place where you can personally talk to your audience.
- It is a great way to exchange timely information with your audience. It means you can exchange information with audiences or other similar accounts.
- You can showcase your practices and tools & equipment used in it. It helps the audience to know your techniques in a better way and build trust.
- Promote healthy practices and self-care tips for your audience.
- It is a way to promote your healthcare center or facility. You can run paid advertisements and use other services for promotion.
- You can convey discount offers with the help of social media accounts.
- It increases the online presence and visibility of your healthcare center. If you stay active on social media, then the audience will notice you.
- It creates and increases the brand reputation for the healthcare facility. Almost all the healthcare facilities and centers are maintaining a social media presence to build a reputation.
Along with these, there are many more benefits of posting regular content on your social media account. Just make sure to choose relevant social media platforms according to the products or services you are offering. Digital marketing is a vast concept and not only limited to social media marketing; it has other benefits too.
Let us look at a few tips for running and managing a social media account for their healthcare facility or center.
Tips to Manage Content on Your Social Media Account
Social media provides an opportunity for healthcare professionals to put their medical facilities on the map. They can use a variety of social media platforms to boost their engagement levels.
However, it is vital to keep a few things in mind while creating or publishing content and managing your social media account.
The key elements are as follows:
- Use relevant social media platforms to maximize your patient reach.
- Identify the behavior patterns of your target audience and the kind of content they seek.
- Social media marketing is free with zero initial cost to manage your healthcare accounts. However, you can opt for paid services such as advertising campaigns down the road depending on the needs of your healthcare marketing plan.
- Recognize your target audience in the beginning because you will be doing all this for them. And do not target irrelevant audiences as they are of no use.
- If you have decided to begin with social media posts, remember to stay consistent with your decision and publish content regularly.
- If you want to drive engagement with social media posts, then don’t forget to publish quality and informational content for your audience.
Final Thoughts
Patient engagement and patient retention remain the main goals of any healthcare practitioner or facility owner. Social media marketing plays a vital role in helping doctors steer in their target audiences, leading to better conversion rates for your healthcare facility.
Social media offers a unique opportunity to directly interact with your prospective patients and become an integral part of their lives by providing tips and professional opinions on your accounts.
If you are a healthcare facility owner looking for hassle-free healthcare marketing, opting for healthcare digital marketing services is an excellent option.
Which of the tips mentioned above do you plan to incorporate into your healthcare marketing plan?
Let us know in the comments below!
The post Social Media and Healthcare – How to Increase Patient Engagement? appeared first on ZealousWeb.
