A lot has been written about social media marketing over the years and some of it seems designed to overcomplicate and obfuscate it. Don’t worry too much about long and complicated definitions. Instead, all you need to know is this:
Social media marketing is simply the process of creating good content that’s tailored to your ideal customers and posting it on the right social media platforms where your potential customers hang out.
It’s about creating the type of content that your current and potential patients want to see and putting it where they can see it on a regular and consistent basis.
That’s all there is to it.
Of course, you do need to get it right and there are a number of things to think about, like what to post and how often, but that’s the gist of it.
While you might not think that social media marketing can work for chiropractors, it really is possible to up your social media game and build a relationship with your followers that could turn them into patients.
Why do you need to have a presence on social media? Well, apart from the fact that chances are your competitors are on social media, people tend to find information about brands and businesses online. They’ll search on Google, read reviews, and they’ll ask other people on social media. If you aren’t on social media, current patients can’t easily link to your Facebook page or tag you on Twitter to point potential patients in the right direction and you could lose out.
People expect to see local businesses posting on social media and interacting with their followers. They like to see an active, up-to-date page with plenty of useful content, and they like to see that you’re responding to comments and mentions and that you’re responsive to direct messages. This lets people get to know you and your business and builds trust, which is all-important when you’re trying to convert strangers into patients.
In this article, we’re going to give you our social media tips for chiropractors, to help you with your social media strategy, what to post, how to create great content, and how to make life easy on yourself.
Key elements of a social media strategy
Rather than just randomly posting, it’s far better to put together a social media strategy that helps you get the results you really want.
1) Set goals
Before you write a word, decide what you want to achieve with your social media marketing. Do you want to build your brand awareness, attract new patients, build a community around your practice, increase quality leads, establish your expertise, or all of the above?
You’ll need to keep looking at your statistics and analytics as you go to see if you’re heading in the right direction, but what analytics you want to measure will depend on what you want to achieve, as will what content you create, so start with your goals and work from there.
2) Platforms
The main social platforms are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, but that doesn’t mean you have to post and keep up with all of them. If you do that, you’ll spread yourself too thin and you won’t be nearly as effective. Instead, choose a primary platform and a secondary platform, based on where your ideal patients are most active. Right now video content is all the rage, and chiropractors are finding a ton of success with short videos on TikTok and Instagram.
You can always keep checking your analytics and your results and adjust if you find that you need to be more active on a different platform.
3) Content
Many businesses struggle with what to post on social media, but one easy tip is to ask your current patients what they’d be interested in seeing. When you have more followers, you can also run polls and ask your followers what they’d like to see next and what format they prefer.
Here’s the thing about content—it’s not just blog posts, or even necessarily written content at all. Your audience might prefer infographics, slide decks, memes, videos, or podcasts. And if you have particular strengths among your team, such as experience with video or a talented team member who can create stunning graphics, then play up to that, too. And don’t forget live streaming. It’s very popular with audiences and you do get more engagement with live videos.
Here are just some ideas of what to post:
Written content:
You should also write blog posts on various topics and post them on your website, then share them on social media, do case studies on how your treatments help your patients, though, of course, keep HIPAA in mind if you’re going to talk about a particular patient. You could create an ebook on how chiropractic works and what the benefits are, share it on social media, and link to a landing page where people can get the free download in exchange for signing up to your newsletter.
Live video:
With live streaming, you have so many options for what to talk about. You could educate your audience on a particular injury or condition and talk about how chiropractic can help. You could do a Q&A and let the audience guide what you talk about. You could do a tour of your office and treatment rooms to show people what it’s like when they come for treatment, or you could interview your staff and let everyone know what they do.
Why not demonstrate some exercises to improve posture or to ease tension in the neck and shoulders? So many of us spend our days sitting in front of a computer and a regular series of exercises to keep us in better shape and avoid dowager’s hump could go down extremely well, and establish you as the expert you are.
Audio:
Many people love listening to podcasts because they can still get good information while doing other things, like cooking or exercising. You could cover similar topics to those mentioned above and interview experts in other beneficial areas, such as nutrition.
One thing to remember is that once you’ve created a piece of content, you can use it over and over again by repurposing it. A blog post could become a video script or a podcast episode. You could take the audio from your videos and use them as podcasts. A series of blog posts on similar topics could become a short ebook or a lead magnet. You could take excerpts from any piece of content and use them as short quotes with a matching image. There really is so much you can do with great content, that you’ll never run out of ideas.
4) Messaging
Now you have some content ideas, it’s not just what content you’re creating but how you are communicating it. Your messaging isn’t just about the words, it’s about how you make your audience feel and the emotions you evoke.
How do you want to come across to potential patients? What impression do you want to create?
Think about your messaging and tie that into everything you do on social media.
5) Engagement
When you post on social media, what you’re hoping for is to have lots of likes, follows, and comments. You want engagement on your posts, and you want to keep people coming back.
Think about your messaging when you post and ensure that you’re posting in the right tone of voice and style to suit your brand.
You also need to be responsive. It’s not all on your followers to comment on your posts, you need to engage too and reply when you get comments. Make it a conversation and be genuinely helpful.
Keep an eye on your engagement and if you’re not seeing it build over time, go back to basics and look at your analytics and what you’re posting to make sure you’re reaching your target audience.
How to easily create compelling social media content
Hopefully, you now have ideas for a lot of targeted content and for how to talk to your audience and increase engagement, but marketing is something that continuously develops as you get better at it, as your audience grows, and simply with changing circumstances and trends. It’s a good idea to keep on top of what you’re posting and ensure you’re still posting what people want to see.
Here’s how to do that:
1) Use your analytics
As you post more, you’ll start to see trends and patterns in your analytics, and you’ll see which platforms you’re getting the most traffic from. This may surprise you, and if it does, you may have to look again at your primary and secondary platforms to see if they’re still the right ones for your practice.
You can also look at your analytics to find out the interests of your ideal customers and to see what search terms people are using, and what questions they are asking. Here you will find solid gold intel that you can use to improve your general marketing as well as your social media marketing. You’ll be able to see what keywords and phrases people are using and start to use them yourself in your content. And you’ll see plenty of search terms and questions that will give you ideas for new content.
2) Work on your content ideas
Use what you’ve learned from your analytics, and from talking to your audience, and brainstorm topic ideas. Look at how you can leverage your expertise and knowledge to stand out in your field.
You can also look at what your competitors are doing. Look at their blog posts, other content, and social media posts and see if you can get ideas for new content from what they are doing, though without copying them, of course.
Try sites like Quora and Answer the Public to see what questions people are asking and what they’re talking about.
3) Craft impactful campaigns
Now you have more experience and the stats, analytics, and results to prove you’re on the right track put together good campaigns to attract your ideal clients and bring them into your sales funnel. As always, take into account your messaging, be consistent, and stay on brand when you post for the greatest impact.
4) Schedule your social media content
You don’t have to sit in front of the computer seven days a week and twenty-four hours a day. Make life easy on yourself and schedule your posts out in advance. You can create content and set it up to post on schedule, whenever you want. Though it is still important to post live and interact with your audience in real-time too. A good balance of both should keep your page interesting and engaging and keep your audience coming back.
Why not attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform demo?
You can run all your digital marketing, including your social media, all from one place, and do so much more, to keep your marketing machine humming along nicely and good leads coming in.
Take back control with all your marketing in one place, including social media, leads, reviews, ads, content, email, directories, photos, and more.
Stop relying on duct-tape solutions that lead to frustrating results and eliminate data silos from your organization to gain a 360-degree perspective on ROI.
Get a single sign-on view of literally everything with a data-driven marketing intelligence platform that seamlessly aligns your branding and messaging to online and offline touchpoints as people move through the customer journey. Book a demo with our knowledgeable team and see how our all-in-one platform can turn your social media marketing from a chore into a pleasure that gets you results.
