Women in Healthcare – Five Social Medias Every Doctor Should Practice

09 Sep Women in Healthcare – Five Social Medias Every Doctor Should Practice

According to the most recent census report, “since 1970, women have grown from 9.7 percent of physicians to 32.4 percent.”

Female Doctors Practice Social Media

Every year, more women are successfully navigating the medical field to carve out exciting practices in all fields of medicine.  Although women own the demographic in many social media, a large number of female physicians forego the incredible opportunity to connect with potential clients to grow their practice and network with peers through online marketing channels.

Just the Facts About mHealthcare

Again and again, studies show that more patients are turning to social media to find a doctor or share an experience with a medical practice.  Although healthcare may be a very personal experience, social media is proving that shared experiences often trump privacy with these unavoidable statistics:

• 41% of people said social media would affect their choice of a specific doctor, hospital, or medical facility. (source: Demi & Cooper Advertising and DC Interactive Group)
• 30% of adults are likely to share information about their health on social media sites with other patients, 47% with doctors, 43% with hospitals, 38% with a health insurance company and 32% with a drug company. (source: Fluency Media)
• Parents are more likely to seek medical answers online, 22% use Facebook® and 20% use YouTube®.  (source: Mashable)
• 60% of doctors say social media improves the quality of care delivered to patients. (source: Demi & Cooper Advertising and DC Interactive Group)
• 28% of health-related conversations on Facebook® are supporting health-related causes, followed by 27% of people commenting about health experiences or updates. (source: Infographics Archive)
• 60% of social media users are the most likely to trust social media posts and activity by doctors over any other group. (source: Infographics Archive)

Many times, the first place a person turns when looking for a doctor is social media.

Beginning of Social Media

For most doctors, the thought of engaging in social media is like going back to medical school because of the vast array of social media channels vying for attention.  Social media can seem like a complex mixture of finding the right demographic, enough time, and comprehensive knowledge to cut through all of the chatter to reach potential patients.

Although social media can apply to a much larger collection of input/output channels, the majority of medical professionals can use the following with success to claim their space and grow their practice:

• Facebook®:  Most people consider Facebook® as the beginning and end of the social media question.  In many ways, Facebook® is a good first-stop to launch a social media campaign for healthcare providers because of the versatility and connection to potential content.  With the ability to check-in to a provider’s location, share their treatment experience, and review medical services, Facebook® offers a smart way for physicians to turn patients into advertising evangelists.  As well, the search engine loves Facebook® as it indexes posts in real-time, so it helps your ranking.  However, because of these fantastic features, Facebook® requires real time engagement to manage an online reputation and distribute useful content to keep an audience.
• Twitter®:  Twitter® is the social media that most matches the style and information structure appreciated by medical professionals.  With a brief 140 characters, a picture, a video, and a link, healthcare providers can share and go without much hassle.  The often missed social media strategy behind Twitter®, because it is indexed directly into search engines and Twitter® searches, is to use Twitter®-talk such as hashtags, geo-location, retweets, and @mentions to ramp up engagement equally from potential patients and other medical professionals.  Twitter® is NOT just a brief form of other social media.  With its own search engine and a powerful geo-location system, Twitter® enables people to chat in brief sentences to refer a practice or comment on a treatment while quickly networking to connect to information.
• LinkedIn®:  LinkedIn® is where business and social media meet for virtual power lunches!  By engaging other doctors and medical professionals on LinkedIn® as well as sharing content, many doctors stay at the top of the referral funnel.  Sharing knowledge and engaging other medical professionals in industry related content sharing builds trust relationship much like the old-school medical conferences.  Within the same city or the same country, medical professional often research and refer each other through LinkedIn®.  With these social networking connections, many hospitals use LinkedIn® to recruit their medical staff.
• YouTube®:  As YouTube® currently represents the second largest search engine in the world (behind Google® of course), video is the on-going wave of the future.  If this seems odd, then one has only to turn on the television to understand that human beings love to watch other human beings.  YouTube® gives medical professional the opportunity to own a piece of the video market for long periods of time.  Strong video content will stay at the top of search engines longer than any other type of content including blogs, articles, and social media posts.
• Yelp® / Google® Reviews:  Yelp® and Google® reviews are the true gathering of people who are recommending service providers, like doctors, to other patients.  While it is good to have testimonials on a website, Yelp® and Google® reviews are searchable by location and by specialty in a search engine.  In this way, both Yelp® and Google® pre-screen potential patients and start the process of making an appointment.  These mediums give the online searcher all of the information needed to help one practice stand above another in a searchable format.

Ready, Set, Get Social Media

As each of these social media channels offer an unique way to brand and promote a medical practice online through geo-location, reviews, and expertise, the deployment of an effective social media campaign could be the equivalent of having a group of happy patients waiting to pre-greet and pre-sell your practice to potential patients.

Ready to get your social media campaign started?

Contact HealthCare Marketing Group to discuss your options or download our complimentary MEDICAL MARKETING GUIDE to get you on the fast track to success.