Social Media is not just a medium to connect with friends and family anymore. It has become much bigger than that. It is now the channel for gathering news and information about everything. With everything getting digital, even the healthcare sector is no exception.
Social Media Marketing has become an integral part of marketing for each and every commercial sector. Hospitals and Clinics are also practicing the lucrative social media marketing tactics to attract patients.
Today in this blog, we have come up with some innovative ideas of Social Media Marketing for Hospitals and Clinics in the year 2020.
- Use trending social media platforms to reach your patients.
- Engage with patients both – past and present.
- Praise your audience for reviewing your firm.
- Vlog to showcase the amenities offered by your firm.
- Blog about your firm
- Always stay high at SEO rankings
- Start trends
- Digital Advertisement
- Brand Building is the key
- Establish protocols for online communication.
Let us now have a detailed discussion on these ideas for creating a better understanding of Social Media Marketing Strategies for Hospitals and Clinics.
Use trending Social Media Platforms
The Internet is flooded with different social media platforms nowadays. Though Facebook and YouTube are here to stay for long but there are some trending platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Tiktok, etc. that are highly used for social media marketing by different business sectors.
Hospitals and clinics should also create their handles on these trending social media platforms to keep their patients updated about the activities and services going on in their firm.
Stay Connected with your Patients
It is very important to maintain a relationship or connection with both your past and present patients. This can be done through interactive videos (Facebook Live, Instagram Live) and messenger.
This activity helps in building a patient’s loyalty. They feel important while being connected to your firm. And happy patients will always help you expand your customer base.
Appreciate your audience for their positive feedback
If your customers are happy with the treatments provided by your doctors, they will surely post a positive review on your official page or website. However, don’t forget to ask them to share their feedback, in case they forget doing so. Proper engagement over social media can help you to build not only social proof but also enhance the credibility of your medical practice.
Moreover, around 80 percent of the people say that they search for healthcare information online prior to visiting a doctor or a hospital. This provides another primary reason why positive feedback from your patients plays an essential role. Remember, patients bestow trust in their peers more than the marketing department of your hospital.
Vlog to feature the amenities your firm offers
As video content is rapidly becoming the new strategy for the future of search engine optimization, it can help you to market your medical practice to potential patients. Creating a YouTube channel for portraying the amenities offered at your firm can help to enhance your online presence, SEO as well as raise brand awareness.
Information that is delivered through vlogging is more likely to stick in the minds of the patients. Moreover, showcasing yourself as a reliable and trusted authority when it comes to health-related problems will make sure that you are the first name your patients think of when they need a healthcare service.
Meanwhile, improving the social media presence of your hospital with regular video content, primarily during the special days (such as World Diabetes Day), improves patient engagement and education as well as initiates community involvement.
Blog about your firm
A hospital, as well as its services, can shine out and generate more business because of blogging. There is more flexibility and space to choose a blog’s topic, in contrast to a website. This is a significant benefit that you can use to cover a broad spectrum of content that showcases your expertise to patients. Instead of focusing on generic information about treatment and disorder, blog about your service line’s philosophy, approach as well as anecdotes from your staff and patients to position it better in the minds of the readers.
Using a blog to highlight subjects that are featured already on your hospital’s website will help to attract visitors and also turn them into potential customers. However, make sure that your blog is representing your firm just as thoughtfully and skilfully as the other marketing strategies you are using.
Stay high at SEO rankings
When people want to search for hospitals or doctors online, they are more likely to locate their individual or business profiles over online directories. This is also true for pages or profiles on Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. When patients or customers search for health queries, results over Quora, YouTube, or Yahoo! Answers tend to appear higher over the search engine.
Therefore, if you want your company’s posts over social media or the content to appear at a higher SEO ranking, you need to optimize content and website. Use keywords or most searched terms over your social media posts to ensure an organic reach for your brand. Always add a link of your website to these posts to acquire direct traffic from the social channels.
Start New Trends
Healthcare professionals or brands can make use of social media platforms to keep their audience engaged via online contests. Apart from this, you can also try out the popular #Hashtag campaigns & quizzes with regards to common health issues that give the followers a broader perspective & valuable information.
For example, you can try out a hashtag challenge to bring people together to discuss the best exercise routines they practice for digestion or any other health issue. If you are new to the platform and lack proper brand recognition, you can try out tweeting or re-tweeting the latest and trending topics to get the attention of potential patients or customers.
Not just that, this can also help bag the attention of any potential client interested in investing in your cause.
Digital Advertisement
Digital advertisement is another principal approach that you can use to endorse your hospital or clinic. It has the ability to attract new customers to your clinic and has gone on to become a significant means to reach people. You will find different kinds of advertisements on social media these days, each featuring products or features from popular brands. So why not use advertisements to your advantage and promote your hospital? Proper advertisement of your hospital, by portraying all its treatments, qualified staff, doctors, as well as the facilities you provide, can influence an individual to visit it for treatment.
It offers people a better idea on the kind of treatment or service they will receive at your clinic. Moreover, you can also launch advertisements talking about some new treatment measures or schemes to let your potential patient connect with the ideal hospital for better treatment.
Reputation Management and Brand Building
Social Media Management, also known as SMM, is very critical to the management of the online reputation for a brand. The social channels can be made use of by spreading a positive message through successful patient testimonials or suggestions from new customers.
Offline engagement with customers, awareness campaigns or CSR activities can easily be promoted over the online platforms. If your clinic or hospital has a local reach, seeking help from regional personalities for the promotion of your brand can help pitch a positive image for your business.
Plus, it will help enhance the existing visibility of your brand both online as well as offline.
Establish Protocols for Online Communication
Every company needs a policy that is well-thought-of for online communication needs. You cannot simply post any random thought you just had on your mind. That is for your personal profile. With a business profile, you need to be professional and keep in mind your audience and how they think. Your employees that handle social media profiles need to be educated on your goal, mission, and vision. They need to be trained to use the social channels with due diligence and care.
Plus, they should also be warned strictly about any breach of privacy or ethics, which could raise concern amid the customers over your social media page. The content that has been shared on your page should thoroughly be verified, especially if it is medical information or a health tip.
There needs to be a proper system for your clinic to answer the grievances as well as queries posted online by the customers. You should always monitor the verses posted by your competitors about you. However, you cannot be aggressive in your approach, as it can distort your image as well. So, always remember to answer neutrally and professionally.
Final Thoughts
Users are entirely hooked on to the digital channels, and there could be no better place for your healthcare business to start the application of marketing strategies. The sharing capabilities brought in by social channels add higher mileage to the campaigns. So, make sure you use digital/social media in a smart way to connect with your patient & reap the rewards in terms of ROI for your healthcare business. Hire a digital marketing agency having experience with digital marketing for hospitals like Socialee to rule the digital market with innovation.
