Social

Social Media

How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Medical Practice

Social media takes ‘word of mouth’ recommendations online!

Social media usage has become one of the major social activities of this decade. People enjoy chatting, posting and sharing content that interests them and will often make recommendations on it.

There are four principal social media platforms that businesses typically use to engage with people. They are:

Facebook

This network enables family and friends to keep in touch with each other and share photographs and videos of their daily lives. It also connects businesses. Doctors, surgeons, pharmacists and other medics are able to construct Facebook pages for their establishments and post content that people might find interesting.

There is also the opportunity for patients to leave reviews of the treatment they have received and what they think of the practice they attended. These informal recommendations can be passed on to friends and this may increase referrals and the number of appointment bookings.

Twitter

This social media micro-blogging site allows the user to send short messages of up to 140 characters. Health care professionals can use twitter to ‘tweet’ details of new treatments, surgeries, diseases or medical journal studies to heighten interest in their speciality of medicine and in their practice.

YouTube

This is a video sharing platform that is the 2nd most used search engine in the world. Doctors can make videos about their practice or about the treatments they offer. For instance,

• Fertility clinics can provide informational videos about infertility and assisted reproductive techniques.
• Cosmetic surgery clinics could create ‘before’ or ‘after’ videos to demonstrate the effects of breast enlargement or eyelift surgery.
• Dental practices can use videos to show prospective patients around their clinic.

There are lots of ways in which medical videos can be utilised to increase interest from the public. YouTube videos can also be embedded into a professional healthcare website.

LinkedIn

This is a platform in which professionals can get in touch with each other. Healthcare personnel can use it to recruit new staff for their clinic or hospital or even get to know the competition.

To increase your online presence and use social media to gain more clients, contact Chits UK.