Using social media to expand a healthcare practice is new, but the principles involved are the age-old successful promotional actions of old-just less legwork.
With roughly 200 million U.S. Facebook users (according to Facebook), 13% of American adults now use Twitter and 84% of Americans have cellphones (according to a report from the Pew Research Center).
Social media is in now widespread use and is the new way people interact with friends, family, colleagues and patients. It's a major shift in the way we deliver communication, but not in the message we send.
How can a healthcare provider use this new communication media to grow one's practice? A practitioner could spend many hours of his or her valuable time tweeting, posting and commenting. Or, could come up with a way to use this new media with as little effort as possible, yet still insure a definite return on your investment (ROI).
In advertising or promotion, it is important to use more than a single medium to reach people. A person sees your ad in a local newspaper, but that does not guarantee they will immediately respond. However, seeing that ad every week for three weeks, seeing a flyer in their mailbox about your practice, seeing you listed in Google maps and seeing you on Facebook all adds up to establishing one's presence in the community. The better and more firmly established the presence, the more likely they are to respond and become a patient.
The value of using social media really starts to become clear when you see just how many people a practice can reach with just the right message at the right time.
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