Because chiropractors are commonly wearing the doctor and business owner hat, the trends in how our chiropractic office will reach and engage with our target audience is something that we are wise to take note of and get on board with.
Whether out of desire or necessity, most chiropractors are learning more and more about social media and the significant impact it can and likely will have on the way we communicate with patients, market chiropractic services to the community and run our business.
Nonetheless, just in case you are still a little iffy on whether social media has a place in building your chiropractic clinic, let me share a personal case study with you. Well, it didn’t start off as a case study but I am billing it as one in retrospect.
The Proof
At my Downtown Phoenix clinic, there is an award given every year for the ‘Best of Downtown’ in several categories, one of which is Personal Care and Health. While I had really never thought too long and hard about trying to win it, because of the amount of competition in my area with chiropractors and other types of health and personal care services, my physical therapist and office manager had other ideas.
They approached me in December of 2010 and said “help us win this award…” and quickly supported their request by stating how we could announce a victory in our newsletter, put it on all our marketing, send out press releases and a whole host of other practice building benefits.
Between their solid points and their excitement about winning the award, how could I say no?
The problem was I didn’t have a lot of time to spend trying to get others to vote. So where did I turn? You guessed it – social media.
With a couple of tweets and posts paired with an email to the patients list, we won by a landslide.
So 2011 rolls around and for some reason the staff forgets to notify me until just 3 days before the voting deadline. So this go around I didn’t have time for planning an optimized strategy even if I wanted to. Nonetheless, by even just doing half of what I had done in 2010, we still won the award and now are able to promote our clinic as the ‘two time winners of the Best of Downtown Award.’ Nice ring to it huh?
Winning the above awards has definitely had an impact on the number of patients calling our practice from the internet and choosing to sign up for our wellness services. If you want to see how we have used the ‘best of’ award logos on our website, click here on Phoenix Chiropractor and take a look.
The Formula
Whether you are trying to win an award or promote your upcoming Patient Appreciation Day, social media can be an important ingredient in your overall chiropractic marketing strategy.
To keep it simple, this is the formula I followed for Facebook alone. You could of course repeat a similar strategy on other social media sites:
1. I posted the event on my clinic Facebook page and clearly explained to people what I was asking for their help with and how much it would mean to me and the staff if we won
2. I attached the link to the post so it would auto-populate a picture to increase the post appeal and give people an easy one click way to help
3. I explained in the post what they should do once they click the link so that there was no confusion once they got to the voting site
4. I posted it to my personal the same way
5. I went to local business pages that allow posts from their fans and posted it the same way. Note, I often post valuable content throughout the year to set the stage for when I need a favor or want to announce an upcoming promotion or event (see The Catch below)
6. I asked my staff to take a few minutes and sign into their Facebook account and create a post announcing the event or share the post I created with their local friends. I also asked that they include a personal message from them that was along the same lines of number 1 above
As I noted above, you could then repeat the same basic steps above on other social media accounts so that you get the biggest saturation of your patients, friends and target marketing in general.
The Catch
Now there is a catch with posting on Facebook or any other social media site and getting a response from people. You can’t use these sites as your company billboard where you push promotion after promotion without giving any content in return. This approach will result in your posts being seen as little more than spam.
People will quickly unfriend you, block your posts or just ignore what you say at the very least if you don’t balance your marketing with great content. Remember that these sites are called ‘social’ for a reason. Just as your friends would soon begin to avoid you if you were to pitch your next great idea or upcoming event to them every time you were out having dinner, the same is true with social media.
As Gary Vaynerchuk makes clear in his book The Thank You Economy, the social media phenomenon is not a sprint, but rather a marathon where the winner displays patience, balance and poise verses taking off in a dead run, with no water and zero game plan. The sprinter will definitely fall short in social media marketing.
It is critical that you treat social media like any other marketing strategy and develop a plan to follow. In general, that plan should be to provide your followers with valuable information, respond to their comments and engage in conversations. By taking this social approach on a consistent basis, people will follow you, get familiar with you and trust what you say.
Then when you make the post for ‘a little help’ or to announce an upcoming event, it is coming from someone who they feel like they know and owe for all the free and valuable information you have provided throughout the year rather than just a random self-serving stab at promoting your business.
With social media it’s all about the relationships you form and the longer you build those up by giving a lot and asking for little the more response you will get from your loyal followers and friends when you really need it most.
