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Medical Social Media Marketing Missteps

Medical Social Media Marketing Missteps

Social media is becoming more and more important to medical practices and will continue to play a bigger role in their marketing efforts. Medical social media marketing is not like marketing in other mediums.

Doctors and owners need to be mindful of several factors before they launch a medical marketing campaign on any of their social media channels. Some factors to consider:

HIPAA – If you are planning to promote your services and use one of your patients as an example, you need their permission, or you must protect their privacy. Your business could get into serious trouble if you violate HIPAA protections.

 

Claim Of Results – When promoting your clinic or service, be mindful of what you are claiming. Do not guarantee any results or make any promises. You can talk about what has happened in some cases, but do not claim that the best results happen every single time.

 

Doctor Qualifications & Titles – Do not embellish the title, qualifications, or education of the doctors and staff working at your medical practice. Be upfront about all of these things. If they are inaccurate, it can greatly hurt your reputation.

 

Follow Medical Regulations – General ethical and medical standards should be followed in any medical marketing.

 

Check State Laws – Not all states allow you to advertise all services. Check the local regulations on medical marketing to ensure you don’t accidentally break any laws or rules.

 

Note What Treatments Are Experimental – Are you using a treatment that has gotten good results, but hasn’t been proven by medical research. These treatments are experimental, and you need to be honest about that. While you can certainly talk about all of the great benefits, be sure to be clear about the risks and that it is not guaranteed to be successful.

 

Examples Of Good Social Media Medical Marketing

Patient First – Whooping Cough – Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/PatientFirst/photos/a.359056380789639/3156984510996798/?type=3&theater

This is an excellent infographic from Patient First describing Whooping Cough. The information flows naturally from top to bottom, beginning with what the illness is, the symptoms, and how to prevent it. The colors and graphics all follow the same theme throughout the image, and it is branded with “Patient First” at the bottom. The Facebook post quickly describes what the infographic is but doesn’t repeat everything in the infographic. Patient First had this infographic specifically created for their brand and to be shared across their various social media channels.

Night Lite Pediatrics – Flu – Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/nlpurgentcareoakridge/photos/a.10150335688402918/10156804087507918/?type=3&theater

Night Lite Pediatrics probably does not have a graphic designer on staff that can produce an infographic like Patient First. However, this social media post can be just as useful as the previous one. Night Lite Pediatrics is an urgent care facility that specializes in urgent pediatric care. With that in mind, the selection of a child dressed up like a doctor is right on brand. They likely have a subscription to a stock photo website that allows them to use these photos for social media marketing. Judging by the other posts they have on their website, they are not taking these photos from other sources. While this is easy to do, taking pictures and graphics from other websites without giving proper credit can cause issues.

The post is a little longer than the Patient First post, but that is because it needs to convey more information. It tells potential patients quickly about the services that are offered for children who have the flu. It also provides two links, one giving viewers information about where the clinic is located and one that has more information about the flu season. Notice the use of “#Flu” in the first sentence. While not required, hashtagging a word on Facebook can increase your reach. Try not to have more than 5 hashtagged words in a post.

Diamond Physicians – Website Promotion – Twitter

Unlike Facebook, you have a much more limited amount of space to convey your message on Twitter. If possible, try to always include a picture with your post on Twitter. Even if you are communicating something simple, like closing early due to a power outage, include an image. In this case, Diamond Physicians put together a simple graphic, highlighting something they thought potential patients want. They also used an emoji of a doctor in their twitter post. This post does not contain a call to action, but rather it is promoting the website as a whole while highlighting a feature. This is a straightforward post that many medical practices can put together. Ideally, spend some time creating a dozen or so graphics like this highlighting services or aspects of your medical practice. You can then cycle through them slowly throughout the month.

Jefferson University Health – Staff Highlight – Twitter

Jefferson University used this post to promote one of its staff members who had recently won a monthly award. This is an excellent post that serves many different purposes. First, from a staff standpoint, highlighting the accomplishments of a staff member can boost morale. Second, it is showing potential patients that Jefferson Health monitors its staff and highlights good work. Jefferson did not use a graphic in this case, but instead took a picture, likely with a cell phone. While this post is not a refined as an infographic, the photo ads authenticity to the account. Jefferson Health also used a hashtag and a blue heart emoji to highlight this post. The hashtag is unique to this post, “#JeffersonNurse” is used instead of just “Nurse.” Why? If someone were to click on #JeffersonNurse, they would be presented with many other posts highlighting other stories from nurses at Jefferson Health. It serves as a way to keep all of these twitter posts with the same theme organized. When selecting your hashtags, you can choose broad ones to help it reach a wider audience, unique ones to organize future posts or both!

Temple Health – Heart Month – Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8B01yHAEom/

Temple Health created this custom graphic to promote Heart Month at their facilities. It is branded at the bottom left to let people know where the graphic came from if someone were to share it elsewhere. Unlike Facebook, you cannot post links in Instagram posts, so the posts include a call to action for people to find Temple Health on Facebook to view events related to Heart Month. You will also notice at the bottom of the post; they use eight hashtags to tag this post. Each hashtag is related to the heart and is broad. Temple wishes to have this post reach a large audience, so they chose broad keywords. Notice they did not try to cram those into the post awkwardly but kept them all organized at the bottom. This technique is widespread on Instagram.

Well Span – Heart Month Event – Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7_3tpSHsG3/

They are taking a different route that Temple Health, WellSpan Health instead used a real picture from an event where they are a sponsor. Their post includes a call to action for people to visit the event and take a picture next to their ice sculpture. They also encourage people to share that picture. This post doesn’t encourage people to visit WellSpan or use any of their services, but rather shows off their connection to the community. Although likely an oversight, WellSpan probably should have attached #HeartMonth, #IceFest, #IceFest2020 to this post for a broader reach. Nevertheless, within 18 hours, it already has quite a few likes.

Social Media Marketing can be a great way to promote your medical practice. Put some time and effort into your posts and be mindful of not breaking any rules or regulations. Not only can social media marketing increase your patient count, but many doctors and staff have a lot of fun in creating posts!

Your Content Is the Single Most Important Factor in Your Online Success. 8 Reasons Why Content Is Important. 

1. Content defines your medical practice’s brand.
2. Content expresses who you are, how you conduct your business.
3. Content is read by the Search Engines – and this results in GOOD or POOR rankings – You should NEVER copy content from another site.  Checking ideas from other websites is OK, but copying content is like shooting yourself in the foot.
4. Content can make your marketing flourish.
5. Content can make your advertising irresistible.
6. Social media loves GOOD content.
7. Email marketing with good quality content will give you higher open-rates.
8. Best of all – Patients LOVE Useful content.

Anatomy Of Good Medical Marketing 

Eight Steps For Achieving Great ROI Results for Doctors

The term “SEO” can have different meaning to different professionals, but we will assume that you are a doctor, physician, dentist, surgeon or an administrator of a practice.  We have seen that these professionals mean high search rankings, and simply want to acquire more patients using “SEO”.  So based on this, we will define SEO beyond the Search Engine Optimization strategies. To our audience, doctors and practice managers they mean Good Medical Marketing and its composition.

Step 1 : Website Overall Strategy – Including the Website and Facebook business page

Step 2 : Website Content Marketing

Step 3 : Local SEO & Organic Strategy

Step 4 : Social Media Marketing

Step 5 : Online Advertising Plan

Step 6 : Online Reviews Management & Marketing

Step 7 : Email Marketing & Email Automation

Step 8 : Conversion Automation 

These 8 steps are the core anatomy of a typical Healthcare practice’s medical marketing plan.
 

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