Posted on July 8, 2011

The Social Media Buzzsaw: 3 Phases to Getting Social Media Buzzing At Your Practice

Social media integration continues to be important for a solid online presence. Today, there are literally more forms of online marketing than there is with traditional marketing. Social media is now one of them and can have impact both in terms of visitor action and brand awareness for your practice. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are the most popular social media sites. A lack of presence on these social media websites is no longer an option for businesses. Quite frankly, your website visitors will expect this presence. When getting started with social media it is important to develop a clear direction and overall vision at your practice. Allocation of resources on the practice level versus the amount of work outsourced should be paramount in this conversation. Many practices reserve the day-to-day posting activities internally while outsourcing the more technically challenging areas such as blog, YouTube or application interfacing.

Social Media Optimization involves a comprehensive account set-up and design customization options, including a broad range of marketing campaign services that will help you manage and grow your networks on these communities.

You may find it useful to read over a recent blog article by Ashley Hopkins detailing 6 main benefits of incorporating Facebook into your practice Internet marketing strategy: https://www.glacial.com/blog/

We have developed a road map to address various phases and task delegation in order to set up and execute a social media strategy:

PHASE 1 – Complete Profile Creation and Optimization:

This process will involve proper business profile creation and integration of various features including BLOG integration, video integration, FEEDS from websites, PR integration and content management planning (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube):

  • Custom Blog Application
  • Custom Facebook Page Set Up
  • Custom Twitter Page Set Up
  • Custom YouTube Channel Set Up
  • Flickr

A large quantity of medical practices have had trouble in setting up profiles in the most professional and efficient manner. Jeremy Lindemann writes an article here describing routine issues in this phase: https://www.glacial.com/blog/

PHASE 2 –Social Media Maintenance…Making it ALL work

This phase will involve the maintenance for growing your social media presence. In Phase 2 your practice or social media partner will be in charge of managing the ongoing process of building your subscriber base.

  • Page Promotion
  • Blog posts
  • Announcement posts
  • Photo Uploads
  • Traffic Reporting
  • Social Media Engagement
  • Social Media Monitoring

PHASE 3 – Social Applications…Gaining Real ROI

Applications are perhaps the best way to receive a return on investment for your practice. Applications can be custom developed to initiate contest, group buying offers, and other offer oriented objectives. Obtaining APP users is a great way to distribute information that takes advantage of the SHARE feature within Facebook. Your idea now has the chance of going “viral” if shared amongst the entire spectrum of your Facebook connections and furthermore their connections.

Example: Helen Keller International Creates Birthday Cake Application

Applications Can Include:

  • Contest Systems
  • Photo Contests
  • Voting Modules
  • Group Buying Deals Systems

Conclusions

Social media can be challenging and frustrating as it is time consuming but as a practice how far ahead are you willing to let your competition go? A new book called Wikibrands is now available and details to transition from traditional forms of marketing into a new engagement style marketing where customers have more brand control. This book may provide some insight into reasons for starting your program as soon as possible.