Is Social Media an Important Marketing Channel for Your Chiropractic Clinic?
Social Media is the “hottest” topic on the Internet today. If you’ve been considering getting on board, but don’t know where the platform is, let’s talk a little about the “Who, What, When, Where, and How” of social media and you, that’s “Who.” Then you can make up your mind whether or not to add Social Media to your chiropractic marketing strategy.
Social media marketing may seem familiar in some aspects to other chiropractic marketing strategies you’ve thought about in the past, but still unfamiliar at the same time. In the “familiar” category, you wouldn’t try any type of marketing plan without taking the time to understand what it is and what you want to get from it. What are your goals? Once you’re clear about what you want, it’ll be easier for you to use social media to your biggest advantage.
When you are ready to begin your social media endeavor, but before you start, it will be highly important 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 every one of the social channels you want to use. There is a free service to help you with your search when you’re ready. Knowem.com is the who to go to. Knowem.com will check where your name is and/or if it’s available or not on a sufficient number of social media sites.
When you have “captured” all of your social media accounts, the next step is to choose where you want to be active. Because you have a clinic to run and patients to see, in the beginning only a few social media sites is preferable and may actually be all you’ll need. That way you won’t get caught up in too many channels. How do decide which sites are best for you? The big ones (where most of the action is) are facebook, twitter, linkedin, and Youtube.
What successful social media activity will do for you is build a true presence in your community. What is definitely ill-advised is for you to try to “sell” on your social media sites, in other words don’t sell your chiropractic services, don’t sell products, don’t sell anything! The benefit of social media is for you to go out and network with the community. Of course, let them know what you do, but do it by participating in the conversation. Social media works the same way as social networking offline. People on social media sites don’t want to be sold to, plain and simply. Social media sites are very much like a neighborhood backyard barbecue. People are standing around chatting about who they are and what they do, and then a participant asks you what you do. Or, maybe you begin the conversation by simply saying, “Hello, I’m Dr. ____. With social media marketing, the same kind of interaction applies. Social media sites should be handled the same way you’d “work” offline networking opportunities to promote yourself, i.e., answer the questions and concerns that let people know who you are and gets them interested in the who that’s you!
Filed under Marketing by Bill Watters.