Social Media

Facebook Tips for Medical Practices: A Brief How-To Guide For Any Physician

By Amber Turner On Jun 18, 2021 . 0 Comments

Social media can be intimidating to many physicians. However, once you know what you’re doing, it can be a huge, cheap marketing asset that can continue to grow your medical practice.

With nearly 2.45 billion monthly active users, Facebook and other social media platforms are crucial to help you reach patients where they spend time online.

How can doctors use social media to better interact with their patients while improving the care they provide? We explore useful tips for Facebook marketing, to help you attract new patients and engage your existing community.

Educate Your Patients – Communicate With Your Audience To Keep Them Informed

People turn to social media for everything from questions about their favorite businesses to answers about medical symptoms. Use your social media platform to educate and build trust with your current and potential patients.

Social media is a key way to raise public awareness about new, emerging, and annual health concerns, especially if there are changes in your practice. Facebook is all about building relationships, whether you’re sharing helpful content or answering questions patients post to your Facebook wall. 

Create content that increases your visibility to the friends and family of your current patients and social media followers. 

Use social media for simple administrative tasks, such as posting office hours and appointment availability. Posting self-published articles from a physician at your clinic on Facebook is a great way to present yourself as an expert and educate your patients with self-content.

Combat Misinformation

Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of health misinformation on social networks, especially during this time of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Have your Facebook page be a resource for fact-based, helpful, and clear information.

Citing research and information from credible sources is the best approach. 

Make It Personal – Build Relationships With Patients

Give your potential patients a “behind the scenes” look at what your medical practice is all about. A simple way to do this is to create Facebook content that connects to your patients on a personal level.

Examples of Facebook Connection Posts:

• Doctor/Physician Introduction
• Employee Stories
• Patient Stories/Reviews
• Images that show your employees and facility

Engage With Organizations And Local Pages

When it comes to attracting new patients using social media, other organization accounts can help you expand your reach to a relevant audience. Interacting with the pages of local school and community centers will highlight your presence on Facebook. 

Share any community updates, such as city awards and local events, or spread the word on your own fundraising activities and clinic events. Don’t forget to tag the respective organizations as well, so they can potentially repost your content.

Patient Interaction – Spark A Conversation

Social media could provide a new level of interaction between medical professionals and their patients. Conversational post types provide a good way for doctors to keep in touch with patients and potentially bring new patients into the office at the same time.

Examples of Conversation Starters:

• Fill in the blank
• Questions
• Caption this

Quality Over Quantity

Quality always comes out on top, and for good reason. For example, what good is having a dozen new shoes if they fall apart after one use?

The same can be said about updates on social media platforms like Facebook. People are more likely to judge your business by your post quality than post quantity.

Make sure you are taking that bit of extra time to make sure your content is high-quality meaning clear and readable text and high-grade images or videos.

Don’t annoy your audience with too much content. Be a medical practice that offers a laugh or meets a need by posting polished content.

Give Your Posts a BOOST

Available to anyone with a business page, boosting a post on Facebook means paying to get your content seen by more people. With a boosted post, you’ll be able to reach a much wider audience as you aren’t limited to people who already subscribe to your page.

If you are doing Facebook without boosted posts, your efforts will reach fewer people. The main investment in your page is time and energy, don’t stop at the finish line.

Summary

Combining social media and healthcare can be challenging. But the use of social media in healthcare also presents incredible new opportunities. Healthcare professionals can take their medical practice to the next level by taking advantage of established social platforms to reach patients, and potential patients, where they already are. 

The longer medical practices wait to engage with patients on social media, the harder it will be for them to catch up to others who are gaining expertise in best practices. So do not shy away from using your Facebook page as a great resource for your current patients and the many more to come by using these helpful tips.