Healthcare Marketing Do’s and Don’ts: Twitter

18 Nov Healthcare Marketing Do’s and Don’ts: Twitter

Does your healthcare marketing plan use Twitter? If you’re not sure where to start, don’t worry — the massively popular microblogging platform is something that barely anyone knows how to definitively use.

As Mashable pointed out, “…many marketers don’t seem to know what to make of the formats, or Twitter itself, for that matter.” It’s a forum that is open to interpretation; individuals might use it to follow news and trends, businesses might use it to promote their products, and novelty accounts — like @common_squirrel — might use it to update the daily happenings of the common squirrel. So, where does healthcare marketing come into the picture?

If your practice isn’t already on Twitter, now’s the time to get started. Read on to learn about tips to incorporate into your healthcare marketing plan — and things to completely avoid.

Healthcare Marketing Do: Create a content plan

One of the worst things to see on a business’ Twitter profile is a series of excited Tweets right when the profile was first created — and then, nothing. It’s easy to run out of things to say when you’re trying to reach a broad audience, but don’t let that prevent you from creating a high-quality healthcare marketing content plan that lays out what you want to share with your audience.

Here are some healthcare marketing-specific ideas about what to post on Twitter:

• Healthy living tips, such as recommended serving sizes, super foods, and simple exercise ideas (“A 20-minute walk clears the mind and gets blood flowing!”)
• Upcoming vaccination reminders and immunization events
• A photo of your staff performing daily duties — with a smile
• Changing facility hours
• Q&A hours, or quick comments straight from physicians and medical staff

Try to incorporate some form of consistency with your content plan — for instance, make Monday the day you post healthy living tips, and reserve Fridays for staff photos and snapshots around the facility. This measure of consistency is a great place to incorporate hashtags, as well — they’ll follow naturally from routine postings, and can give your audience a chance to view past postings on #PhotoFridays.

Healthcare Marketing Don’t: Stop yelling.

Your tweets can fulfill a few different purposes, depending on your goals; they can provide information to your audience, capture the attention of search engines, and give your profile an added relevance boost. But all healthcare marketing aside, your tweets need to be well written, too, and you should seek to make sure you’re conveying your message as appropriately as possible.

That means a few different things when it comes to Twitter for healthcare marketing:

• Even though Twitter is limited to 140 characters per post, use proper grammar and spelling. You might have to use “&” instead of the phrase “and” every once in a while, or abbreviate “with” as “w/” sometimes, but 9 times out of 10 you should make sure your posts are written in plain and proper English. This maintains your practice’s professionalism and ensures your audience can actually read your posts.
• Don’t write use extra punctuation (you only need one exclamation point), don’t write in all capital letters, and don’t abbreviate things to the point where they’re unreadable. Just trust us on this.
• It’s a good idea to occasionally Retweet informational tweets from users you trust, but make sure it’s a profile you are personally familiar with. If any links are embedded in the tweet, make sure you click the link first. Accounts with unsecure passwords can be hacked, and a post that looks promising on first glance might actually take you somewhere you don’t want your users to go — so, be safe, not sorry.
• Stick to your healthcare marketing content plan, and only give social media privileges to people who are familiar with your quality guidelines.
• Use hashtags, but don’t use more than two per post — it’ll look too cluttered. Try to use hashtags that are already in circulation, when appropriate — if you’re tweeting a healthy living tip, for instance, include the #wellness hashtag so your post can capture the attention of people browsing the larger tag. Hashtags should be no more than three words — any more and you’re risking readability.

If you’re interested in learning more about Twitter for healthcare marketing, get in touch with the professionals at HealthCare Marketing Group today.