Is Social Media an Important Marketing Channel for Your Chiropractic Clinic?

Posted on 06. Apr, 2010 by admin in chiropractic marketing

Social Media is the “hottest” buzz word on the Internet today. For those of you who would like to consider Social Media marketing as part of your overall chiropractic internet marketing strategy, but aren’t really sure what all the buzz is about, let’s take a minute to talk about the “Who, What, When, Where, and How” of social media and you, that’s “Who.”

Social media marketing may seem familiar in some aspects to other marketing strategies you’ve engaged in in the past, but also unfamiliar at the same time. In the “familiar” category, you wouldn’t consider any sort of marketing plan without making an effort to understand what it’s about and what you want to get from it. What are your goals? Once you’re clear about what you want, you’ll be more capable of using social media to your best advantage.

When you are ready to begin your social media venture, but before you start, you will need to make certain that you “own your name” on all the social media outlets, which is to say, make sure that your name or your clinic’s name is attainable so that you can use precisely same name on every one of the social channels you want to use. There is a free service to help you with your search when you’re ready. Knowem.com is the who to go to. Knowem.com will find out where your name is and/or if it’s available or not on a substantial number of social media sites.

When you have “captured” all of your social media accounts, the next step is to make a decision as to where you want to be active. Starting with only a small number of social media sites is preferable because, let’s face it, you have a clinic to run and patients to see. You won’t want to get caught up in too many social media sites. How do decide which sites are best for you? Choose the social media site where the most action is, which are facebook, twitter, linkedin, and Youtube
What your social media activity mission should be is to build a true presence in your community. What you should never do “sell” on your social media sites, in other words don’t sell your chiropractic services, don’t sell products, don’t sell anything! The purpose of social media is for you to go out and network with the community. Certainly, inform them about what you do, but do it by participating in the conversation. There is actually no difference between the way social networking works and the way you normally network offline. People on social media sites don’t want to be sold to, plain and simply. What might be useful to think of social media sites like a neighborhood backyard barbecue. People are standing around chatting about who they are and what they do, and then a participant asks you what you do. Or, perhaps you begin the conversation by (just) stating, “Hi, I’m Dr. ____. With social media marketing, the same dynamics apply. “Work” your social media sites in the same way you’d work your offline networking communities, which is to say, answer the questions and concerns that let people know who you are and gets them interested in the who that’s you!

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