Steal these medical practice social media tips

If you’ve already established a social media presence for your healthcare practice and are ready to level up, here are 7 medical practice social media tips to help you connect with more patients, maximize your impact, and grow your business. Remember: your social media presence is a cornerstone of your overall practice marketing strategy. 

Think of analytics as evidence-based medicine for your social media strategy. By tracking, analyzing, and interpreting metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and clicks, you can gain valuable insights into how users interact with the content you post.

This information can help you understand the number of unique visits your profile gets, the demographics of your audiences, and even trending topics within healthcare. 

Use this data to determine what types of content resonate most with your audience — and then adjust your strategy to meet their preferences. 

Want to stir up some excitement about your practice? Introduce a little friendly competition into the mix.

Contests and giveaways help generate interaction with your practice and encourage patients to like, share, and comment on your posts. Prizes can be as simple as a pair of free movie tickets or gift certificate to a local restaurant, but they should reflect the interests and stage of life of your target audience. Just be sure to check and comply with any relevant laws and regulations. 

If you’re not using hashtags, you need to start right now. Not only are these clickable little tags #fun, they’re imperative for connecting with a wider audience and getting your content in front of more eyes. #doctorlife #nurselife and #medicalhumor are used on hundreds of thousands of posts each day. 

On each post, aim to use about 5 hashtags — and feel free to be both literal and funny. Include enough to be searchable, but not so many that you look like spam. It’s also a good idea to tag your location so that you connect with more local people. 

Speaking of hashtags, #BTS (Behind the Scenes) is trending these days, and for good reason. Everyone loves a sneak peak into where the action takes place and using the reels or stories function of social media platforms is a fun way to give your viewers a backstage pass. 

Consider asking a teammate to pretend to be a patient undergoing a procedure, showcase your staff participating in a viral challenge, or do a full “day in the life of Dr. Jones” to keep your audience engaged throughout the day. 

Once you’ve mastered stories, it’s time to move on to live events. Hopping on to an Instagram or Facebook Live might seem intimidating, but it’s an excellent way to engage with people in real time, provide more in-depth education on a certain topic, or to answer patients’ frequently asked questions. 

It’s important to post about the live event in the days and weeks leading up to it to create buzz and ensure a good turnout. Give patients a clear idea of the topic on which you’ll be presenting. Encourage them to submit questions ahead of time, and suggest that they share the details in their own feeds or invite friends and family members to participate. 

If you really want to drum up excitement, you can announce the winner of a contest or giveaway at the end of the event.

Collaborating with other providers is another fun way to capture viewers’ attention and provide them with a fresh, exciting perspective. Offer to switch with a provider at a nearby practice for a “takeover” that gives viewers a look into another specialty or team up with a friend from medical school to create cross-specialty videos that you can both post on your respective sites.

Not only do these sorts of collaborations help keep your content fun and interesting, they also provide a great opportunity to educate your patients on important topics outside your specialty. 

When people witness you and your team enjoying life and having fun throughout the day, it’s infectious. Your social media profiles and posts give prospective patients a glimpse of the patient experience at your practice.

By posting photos of your office, providers, and staff, and featuring positive patient reviews and testimonials, you build a familiarity with potential patients before they even contact you.

So, one of the best medical practice social media tips is to inject humor and levity into your posts. Remember, accessing healthcare can be overwhelming and even frightening for many people, so the more you’re able to help patients laugh, relax and allay their fears, the better the experience will be for everyone involved.

If you want to use your online presence to attract more patients but are worried that you lack the time or expertise, don’t be afraid to call for backup. 

Tebra offers a full suite of technology and services to support independent practitioners' efforts to grow their business and provide exceptional patient experiences.