Social media. Some people love it, some people hate it and the rest of us tolerate it, mostly begrudgingly. If done badly, it can lead to a huge amount of wasted time, without any kind of return on that investment. That said, it also has many benefits and small businesses in particular can really benefit from a good social media page, you just need to make sure you're following a solid strategy.
In this article (text below and PDF in the Media Contents box) I’ll outline the strengths of having active social network pages but more importantly review what you can achieve for your business by having a good social media presence. I will look at the key objectives for healthcare-based businesses and explain what you should be prioritising and why. Lastly, I’ll answer some frequently asked questions such as which platforms should you be using, how many times a day should you be posting and whether or not you should you be spending time on more than one platform. We also cover some social media trends for 2021. Hold onto your horses....!
Note: In April 2021 I wrote a summarised one-page version of this article which you can also read or download that PDF here.
Social media has become a vast and wide open canvas, and taking full advantage of it requires careful strategic planning. A good social media strategy, not just should, but WILL, have a positive and demonstrable influence on sales.
Let’s jump right in and look at some of the strengths of a social network and also what you can achieve with a social media presence.
I’ve divided this section into subjective and objective goals. If you know me, you know which my favourite will be, but I’ve covered both because I’m trying to give you a ‘global’ view of how social media can help build and support a business.
The most important thing when it comes to social media, is to start with what you want to achieve from your efforts and at least some of these goals need to be specific and measurable, so that you can be confident you are getting a return on your investment.
As small businesses, most of us don’t have the luxury of assigning budget that doesn’t result in something quantifiable. Bigger companies have more financial ‘space’ to do it, for most of us, we don’t. Return on investment is super-important and the same goes for social media.
It may not therefore surprise you, that as I’m quite a results-orientated person, I’m going to start by prioritising quantifiable objectives, and particularly the first three in the list below.
For me, Facebook is one of my main ways of building my email list. I do this in the same way that I recommend you do it. That is by giving away content and knowledge, in exchange for an email address and an opportunity to build trust and continue to add value. At the same time in a very low key way, I take opportunities to raise awareness of what I can offer, to help you do the parts of your job that you don’t necessarily enjoy, more quickly and hopefully also more effectively.
The trouble is that as we know, Facebook in particular, has dramatically reduced the number of organic (unpaid for) page posts that are shown on personal profiles. And when I say dramatically, I mean it. Nobody actually knows the real number, but it’s believed that less than 1% of your Facebook followers will even see a Page post that you post.
That means if you have 300 followers, only 3 people are likely to see a post you publish on your page. Just 3 people. And of course the 3 who do, will be the ones who engage most frequently with your content. Which means it will always be the same handful of people that see all your posts…not that helpful when you’re trying to spread the word about your business further afield, at least without paying to do it.
But to be fair, why shouldn’t we have to pay for it? Just because social networks have always been free, why do we expect them to help us grow our businesses for nothing?
We accept that we have to pay to promote our business in a local newspaper or magazine, or an online directory, but we begrudge having to pay a social media network like Facebook, despite the fact that we can target in such a specific way, that no local publication could get near in terms of specificity.
Never in the world have we had the power, literally at our fingertips, to be able to target for example, men with a serious, club-level interest in cycling, between the ages of 35-50, who live within 5 miles of our clinic. But we can through Facebook, and damn that’s worth paying for if you ask me!
I’d rather spend £500 collecting email leads of, or promoting a professional bike fit service, to 200 people who live within 5 miles of my clinic who I know have a serious interest in cycling, rather than to 20,000 readers of Cycling Weekly who live all over the country, potentially all over the world, who may or may not even see, let along open that particular copy of the magazine I’ve placed my ad in. Not only that but my ad has got to be spotted through the noise of everything else going on in that magazine which is way too much of a gamble in my view (and I’m a publisher of a magazine!).
And if you take one step away from selling an actual product or service in that ad, and concentrate on building your email list by offering targeted content to the audience you’re interested in, by offering high-value content in exchange for an email address, then you suddenly own that contact. They become part of your email list, which if you follow my recommendation to nurture those leads, by continuing to add value, instead of spamming them with sales offers, that lead becomes infinitely more valuable, and you’re in charge, not Facebook. Suddenly, that £500 has become a real and genuine investment.
Another key part of my strategy is to build social proof through my social networks, in the form of reviews and testimonials about the things I do (be it my webinar) or the subscription services I provide, in the words of the people who are actually using my content.
I can tell you that my products are amazing until the cows come home, but in this day and age, where there is so much spin applied to so many aspects of our lives, it’s hardly surprising that most of us wander around feeling perpetually dizzy and confused. The words of my subscribers and webinar attendees are many times more powerful, persuasive and believable for prospective customers, than anything I could ever say, and quite rightly so.
The same is true for your patients.
This is why I place such an emphasis on it in my webinar, and why it ranks so highly in my 20% of activities that will give you 80% of your marketing results.
‘Word of mouth’ referrals are probably the oldest and most influential form of ‘marketing’ in the world, (can anyone think of anything that’s been around longer?), and with the addition and value placed on social proofing on social networks, it’s influence looks set to continue growing.
Some statistics (1):
How many reviews do you need in order for social proofing to count? In 2014, 4-6 reviews were deemed sufficient to get 56% of people to trust your business [BrightLocal]. In 2017, the stats were suggesting that viewers would read at least 7 reviews before making a decision [RealTimeReviews.com]. In 2019, TrustPilot are saying you can never have enough reviews.
I certainly believe the more the merrier, as long as the reviews are real, genuine and authentic, and they don’t all have to be good, as long as you deal with the negative ones in a positive way.
There are a couple of other factors about reviews that are important in addition to the stats above.
As I’ve already described, utilising ‘paid social’ like Facebook ads, can be extremely powerful when you have a proper strategy and a quantifiable goal that can generate actual revenue ie. building your email list which you then nurture and convert using conversion events (again watch my webinar for more details).
You can obviously also use paid ads to promote events which lead to direct sales, I just happen to be a fan of a more subtle, less-salesy, more value-add approach. It might be a slightly longer game plan, but ultimately it will reap better rewards. Or you can use a combination of both. But if you’re going to spend money, please make sure that you have a way of generating a return on investment ie. a full customer journey in place which leads to paid bookings.
You can also use retargeting very effectively. For example you could promote an event such as a mini-bike fit, to people who have visited a blog post on your website on cycling injuries. Because you’re targeting someone you know has a specific interest in the promotion you’re running, your ‘conversion’ rates ie. getting that person to take the action you want, is likely to be much higher, than targeted colder people.
Publish a blog post on your website (ideally with an inbuilt email lead collecting component – again my webinar explains this in more detail, and use social media to promote this blog post.
This is great for establishing trust and building reputation and authority and obviously you can use tools like Google Analytics to see the number of people this pushes to your site. I have a couple of caveats. Yes, blog content is good for SEO but it’s hard to quantify and it takes time to have an effect. If you add in an email lead collection component, in other words offer your reader even more value content in exchange for their email address, then that blog post becomes even more useful.
Supplement promoting those social media posts which lead to your blog post, with paid advertising so that it reaches a much wider (but targeted) audience, and things get much more interesting. But you can’t just publish content to your blog, and expect it to work wonders without investing in promoting it.
These are great for building engagement as well as getting a better feeling for what your audience is looking for or interested in. Why not say something like, you’re thinking of producing some injury leaflets on the following topics, offer a list of topics, and ask them to vote. Or you could ask people if they’ve ever had trouble sleeping as a result of back pain – yes/no. Then post a link to a leaflet with advice on getting better sleep if you suffer from back pain.
It’s a good idea to build the engagement first, before you go and provide the leaflet, because you’ll get more traction on the post. Again you could supplement this by using paid ads to push the post out more widely.
The beauty of most social networks is that they provide this for you, for free. You can gather all sorts of data, and it’s all collected and analysed for you without you having to get involved with spreadsheets.
I think the first section went into this in sufficient detail but the ways I feel social media can benefit healthcare practitioners most of all under this category are:
Next let’s quickly look at some practical elements of your social media strategy. These are the questions I get asked most frequently...
My answer to this question will always be, go where your customers are. Research the demographic breakdown of the social network you’re looking at, and if a large number of your customers are on there – all is well and good.
Instagram is growing at a rate of knots. It’s just caught up with LinkedIn and there’s no doubt it’s only going to get more popular. But as of Oct 2019, its biggest user demographic worldwide, by a long shot is people between the ages of 18-34. If this is the age group of your customer base, Instagram is your social network (2). That same age group make up 58% of all Instagram users in the UK specifically (3). If that’s not your age group, by all means keep an eye out on the numbers as they move fast, but you’d be better off prioritising another social network which has a higher proportion of your customer base.
Incidentally, 57.4% of Facebook’s users in the UK specifically, are age 35 or over and that demographic also applies worldwide (4). Sure, this time next year, maybe even in 6 months, those numbers may be different, but for now, that's the real picture.
That said, as Facebook has so dramatically reduced the number of posts that it shows on personal profiles, this could be an argument for trying Instagram. Even if your target demographic is smaller in numbers, you may still manage to get your content in front of more people. The trouble is….who owns Instagram? Yup, you’ve got it, Facebook! So I suspect it won’t be long before Facebook start to squeeze organic posts on Instagram, and drive us just as they have with Facebook, towards paid ads.
Better to do one well, than spread yourself too thin and do more than one badly. First and foremost, get a good, solid strategy in place. Set some SMART goals. Achieve those goals. If that’s working, then by all means invest a bit more time, testing another platform (while continuing with the other platform) to see if you can achieve better goals, but make sure you’re comparing like with like.
Most people I work with don’t have a strategy full stop. And pretty much nobody has goals, let along SMART goals, but they’re still stressing about posting to Facebook and Instagram and maybe even Twitter. But without a strategy they’re just wasting 3 x as much time, instead of 1 x as much time.
As far as I’m concerned you’re asking the wrong question. The questions instead should be have I got a strategy with SMART goals and a clear way to demonstrate my return on investment on one social network? Am I following the strategy consistently? Am I achieving the goals I’ve set, if not why not, do I need to re-evaluation/recommit? And finally, if the honest answer to all those questions is yes I’m crushing it on one social network, then by all means test whether you can achieve those same goals (which should be overarching business goals) more effectively, by introducing a second platform.
People, please stop going after every new shiny thing! Get your foundation strategy and your processes in place first. Currently few people can legitimately prioritise focusing on any social network other than Facebook unless your ideal customer is skewed to a different demographic than most physical therapy practices or you deliver a service which you can promote better to the same size audience, using another platform.
But to be honest guys, this is so dependent on the type of content you’re posting, the quality and value to your followers and remember, most people won’t see your organic posts, particularly on Facebook.
Frankly these numbers change faster than Donald Trump’s mood swings and you’re getting down to very small, possibly even non-existent incremental gains at this point. You’d be better off getting the big stuff right like strategy and consistency before worrying about this level of granularity.
In conclusion, social media if used with a good strategy, can help you to achieve things that no other communication medium in isolation can achieve as effectively, in other words it helps you kill many birds with just one stone, and we like effective use of time.
I hope this article has given you a clear idea of what and how you can utilise social media to greatest effect for your business.
Social media trends in 2021 #1: SEO Drives Organic Instagram Visibility #2: Reels Ignite Organic Instagram Exposure #3: Brick & Mortar Stores Embrace the Shift to Online Shopping on Instagram #4: Brands Must Humanise #5: Facebook Advertising Success Is Tied to the Customer Lifecycle #6: Flexible Strategies Fuel Facebook Ads Success #7: Facebook Ad Creative Becomes Less Static, Favours Positivity #8: Personality Becomes Key to YouTube Growth #9: LinkedIn Culture Shifts Toward Conversational Transparency #10: LinkedIn Networking Behaviour Changes To learn more about each trend, just click the link below for the full article Reference: Social Media Marketing Society Dec 2020 (11)
To learn more about each trend, just click the link below for the full article
Reference: Social Media Marketing Society Dec 2020 (11)
And here were the social media trends of 2020
Messenger bots haven’t caught on – only 14% of marketers plan to use it Instagram is hot – it’s now the second most important platform behind Facebook (just surpassed LinkedIn) and more marketers plan to increase their organic posting on Instagram in 2020 - but there’s a catch to that which I’ll cover under the “Which channels should I use?” section Marketers are prioritising engagement – probably because of Facebook’s changes to the news feeds prioritisation Interest in YouTube is high – 62% of marketers plan on using it more in 2020 and it’s the lead video channel with Facebook native videos just behind LinkedIn is on the up too, with 52% of marketers plans on increasing their use of it in 2020 But Twitter is down with only 35% of marketers planning to increase their use of it Facebook dominance is still strong – 94% of marketers use Facebook compared with 73% Instagram Facebook ads is still the dominant paid social channel with 59% of marketers planning to increase their use of it in 2020 Reference: Social Media Marketing Report 2019 (9) Note: Remember, this is a survey of marketers, NOT business owners. That’s two very different beasts when it comes to the data. The priorities of marketers may not necessarily be exactly aligned with the priorities of a small business owner.
Reference: Social Media Marketing Report 2019 (9)
Note: Remember, this is a survey of marketers, NOT business owners. That’s two very different beasts when it comes to the data. The priorities of marketers may not necessarily be exactly aligned with the priorities of a small business owner.
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Tor began her professional life training as a physiotherapist at Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, UK. She went on to complete a BSc in Sport & Exercise Science at the University of Birmingham whilst also achieving a WTA international tennis ranking.
After graduation she worked for a London marketing agency and then moved into medical journalism where her passion for publishing was born.
At 27 she established sportEX medicine, a quarterly journal for general practitioners focusing on sport and exercise medicine.
sportEX grew into an internationally known journal for all sports medicine practitioners, including physical and manual therapists; articles covered the practical application of evidenced-based research alongside professional development with expert contributors drawn from across the world of medicine and rehabilitation.
With a passion for technology as well as publishing and sport, Tor's leadership grew sportEX into the Co-Kinetic journal and website which included a more collaborative, royalty-based form of publishing as well as a wider content remit. As well as the quarterly magazine Co-Kinetic, offerings now include e-learning opportunities, breaking clinical research infographics, marketing kits for therapists, business growth tools, and a business discount club.
Tor's focus is providing resources to help practitioners and therapists develop their businesses and to work more efficiently and effectively, a topic that she speaks regularly on at global conferences.
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