The Social Media-Savvy CA
Abbie Miller
Is your chiropractic practice on Facebook and/ or Twitter? How about a Yelp profile? Does your practice's website have a blog or online newsletter? Increasingly, especially for those under 35, your current and potential patients can be found on social media. If they can't find you there, too, then you're missing out on a valuable tool for marketing, patient education, and relationship building.
In most practices, the CA is the one who ends up handling social media—often because the doctor is too busy treating patients, but sometimes because the doctor doesn't have time for personal use of social media, and so may not see the value in it.
But whether you or the doctor likes being on social media or not, the truth is that this is increasingly where consumers go to make spending decisions and keep in touch with the businesses with which they develop relationships. Once your accounts are set up, posting to them only takes a few minutes a day.
“in most practices, the CA is the one who ends up handling social media—often because the doctor is too busy treating patients
Yelp
A basic Yelp profile for the practice is free of charge and can bring in a surprising number of new patients. Healthcare consumers have become more discerning shoppers, and when it comes to something as important as their spinal and overall health, they're willing to do some research. They're likely to look up a chiropractic practice on Yelp in the same way and for the same reason they'd look up a new restaurant—to see how other people liked it.
This is why it's important, before you even create the practice's Yelp profile, to solicit positive testimonials and "reviews" from happy patients. They have to post those reviews themselves—you can't do it for them—so make sure you have a system in place to request the testimonial and to follow up to make sure the reviews are posted. Note that a potential downside here is that you will not have control over or be able to delete negative reviews, so make sure your overall practice is a happy one. If you do get a negative review, then respond to it quickly, positively, and professionally online.
A challenge because of its 140-character limit, Twitter is best for short, punchy calls to action and interesting tidbits. You can also post links to events, such as your practice's healthy lifestyle workshops, interesting articles about wellness, and even your own blog posts. Twitter is extraordinarily fast-paced—tweets rush by in mere seconds—so consider tweeting more than once a day.
Blogging
A blog doesn't take the place of an e-mailed newsletter, but those e-mails can and arguably should be nothing more than the first paragraph or two of a
“Keep compliance at the forefront of your mind when using social media, especially for marketing. ”
blog post with a "read more" clickable link that takes readers to the rest of the blog post on the practice's website. This is great for generating traffic (consider adding a link to request an appointment!) and for establishing the doctor as a subject matter expert. When people read it in writing, they often "hear" it better than when they are being told the same thing during their appointment.
Many people have a love-hate relationship with Facebook—especially those who have business pages. Facebook's algorithms mean that only a fraction of your Facebook page followers will see most of your posts, but there are a few tricks to help maximize exposure. Use photos and, even better, videos whenever possible, and include plenty of "chatty" posts as well as promotional ones. Hint: when you're promoting an event or linking back to your website, it can improve your post's distribution if you put the link in the first comment, not in the post itself.
Caution
Keep compliance at the forefront of your mind when using social media, especially for marketing. You can run afoul of the OIG by inadvertently offering a dual-fee schedule if you come up with a low-ball promotional fee, or be charged with inducement. You'll also want to be extraordinarily careful when posting pictures to social media; make sure photos don't have patients, a computer screen, a patient chart, or any private health information in the background.
The social media-savvy CA knows that building a solid relationship of trust between patients and practice is a big part of what keeps patients coming back, on top of the doctor's excellent care. Remember that new patients could be just a post away!
âAbbie Miller, MCS-P has a bachelor ’s degree in business administration and is a medical compliance specialist as well as working for KMC University as director of operations. Abbie ’s extensive chiropractic coaching and training experience has its roots in running her husband ’s chiropractic office and fighting for every collectible dime. She can be reached at info@ KMCUniversity. com or at 855-832-6562.
