Five Ways To Build Your Network With Social Media
The bigger your network is, the more people youre going to touch, the more of their friends youre going to touch, the bigger your list of prospects is going to be. Building a list of opted in local people is a hugely valuable thing for any business - especially a medical practice.
1. Start with your staff and actual friends
Your real friends and your actual staff are the core of your network. If these people dont believe in your practice you need to rethink what youre doing in the first place. All of your staff should be able to access your practice Facebook page. The instruction should be: Dont do anything embarrassing. In general, have fun with it. Be cool. Create a conversation. Your team should be perceived by the public as being excited about the practice and a part of something exciting.
2. Have events
If youre doing seminars you should be promoting them to you network. Events give you a logical and newsworthy thing to hinge your advertising and practice on. Successful practices think in terms of a time line. Things like holiday specials, fall specials, winter specials, night events, and giveaways all give you something to talk about and promote.
3. Contests
Contests are newsworthy, expand your network and can create valuable content that grows your website and social campaigns. Ask a question like, Why would you want to have plastic surgery? and the best answer wins a spa day. If you could get 50 people respond to a advertisement or post like that, what would you have done? You have created tons of great content for your website and your social media strategy.
4. Integrate Facebook into your site
Put the social plugins from Facebook onto your site. It creates social proof, shows whats going on at the practice and is a very sophisticated content management system. When a new prospect comes into your website, If they click Like on this Facebook thing, theyre going to go into its opted In list. Its valuable. Have your web developer work with you to integrate it into your site.
Learn about Facebook Social Plugins here:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
5. Local resources
Medicine is all local. You are pretty much not going to pull anyone from beyond the ten-mile radius. If youre a dentist, youre probably not going to pull beyond a five-mile radius. If there is a local calendar, local blogs, or local online publications these should be reached out to and encouraged to link back to your system. This is a great time to use your newsworthy events and promotions to get press.
Look for local groups. Chamber of commerce, women's groups, associations... Reach out to them with contests, specials and targeted promotions. Theyre very targeted and if it was direct mail itd cost a fortune to mail them. Because of these emerging social networks, it gives you a lot of access. Find thought leaders and promote your contest to them as a direct benefit to them.
