Social Media is the “hottest” topic on the Internet today. If you’ve been giving some thought to getting on board, but you’re not sure where the platform is, let’s take a minute to talk about the “Who, What, When, Where, and How” of social media and you, that’s “Who.” Then you can decide if you want to add Social Media to your chiropractic marketing strategy.
Social media marketing may seem familiar in some ways to other chiropractic marketing strategies you’ve considered in the past, but still unfamiliar at the same time. In the “familiar” category, you’d never think of trying any type of marketing plan without making an effort to understand what you’re doing and what you want to get from it. It’s important to ask yourself, “What are my goals?” Once you’re clear about what you want, you’ll be more capable of using social media to your best advantage.
When you are ready to begin your social media effort, but before you start, it will be necessary for you to make certain that you “own your name” on all the social media outlets, which is to say, make sure that your name or your clinic’s name is available so that you can use precisely same name on all of the social channels you want to use. There is a free service to help you with your search when you’re ready. That who is knowem.com. Knowem.com will check where your name is and/or if it’s available for use or not on a sufficient number of social media sites.
The next step, once you have all your social media accounts “locked up”, is to make a decision as to where you ought to be active. Beginning with only a small number of social media sites is preferable because, let’s face it, you have a clinic to run and patients to see. You won’t want to get caught up in too many social media sites. So, how do you choose the best sites for you? Choose the social media site where the most action is, which are facebook, twitter, linkedin, and Youtube
What successful social media activity will do for you is build a real presence in your community. What is definitely a no-no is for you to try to “sell” on your social media sites, in other words don’t sell your clinic, don’t sell services or products, don’t sell anything! The purpose of social media is for you to go out and network with the community. Certainly, let them know what you do, but do it by becoming a participant. There is truly no difference between the way social networking works and the way you normally network offline. People on social media sites don’t want to be sold to, plain and simply. Social media sites are a lot like a neighborhood backyard barbecue. People are standing around talking about who they are and what they do, and then a participant asks you what you do. Or, perhaps you start the conversation by (just) saying, “Hi, I’m Dr. ____. With social media marketing, the same kind of interaction applies. “Work” your social media sites in the same way you’d work your offline networking communities, which is to say, answer the questions and concerns that let people know who you are and gets them interested in the who that’s you!