Updated: Jan 23, 2018
Are you looking for ways to grow your chiropractic practice? Do you want to learn how other chiropractors are using social media marketing to effectively grow their business? Maybe you have a personal Facebook account and have already started trying to promote your practice using social media.
Many savvy chiropractors are seeing the benefits that social media can bring to their practice and have started “going social” with their business. In this article you will discover how you can use social media to grow your practice, how to create an effective strategy and how other chiropractors use social media to get results.
How Chiropractors Can Benefit From Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is less expensive, faster and more efficient than traditional marketing methods:
1. Social media is less expensive and more effective than previously used methods of chiropractic advertising
Although it’s free to setup a profile on various social networks, it’s crucial that you invest enough to establish a professional, customized presence and a consistent branded image.
2. Your message can reach the right people faster than ever before
Have you tried running an ad in the newspaper, waiting for it to come out and then hoping people buy the newspaper and read it? These forms of more traditional chiropractic advertising (such as print ads, radio, television, tradeshows, health fairs) are becoming less and less effective.
3. Greater efficiency with identifying ideal clients online
You can quickly identify your ideal client by doing a little homework and a couple online searches. There’s no need for you to waste your marketing efforts on the wrong audience. A major flaw of previous chiropractic advertising methods is that they were typically untargeted and too broad of an audience.
Certain social media tools allow you to quickly monitor people’s perception of your chiropractic practice (and your competitors). One quick method is to do a search for keywords or hashtags on Twitter to see conversations happening in real-time on the corresponding topic.
You are now able to find out what people think about you, your competitors and your industry without any barriers.
How much could your practice improve with this knowledge alone?
With online search tools, you can quickly identify people of influence among the social media communities you join. If you build online relationships with these people, and they find you trustworthy, they can bring referrals and prospects to your practice by promoting you to their many followers.
Once people begin to recognize you online, you too can build your reputation and establish yourself as an influential expert in your community. The more you are perceived as knowledgeable and credible, the more people will seek out your chiropractic services and you will quickly be perceived as the leading authority.
6 Steps to Creating A Successful Social Media Strategy
There are six important factors that are required in creating an effective social media strategy:
1. Ideal Clients – There is no sense in trying to market to everyone. You want to concentrate your efforts on those who are likely to visit a chiropractor and those who would refer a chiropractor to their friends and family. Social media tools have search functions that allow you to search for your ideal chiropractic clients. Twitter, for example, allows you to monitor topics using keywords and #hashtags—try putting “back pain” or “chiropractor” in the search box to see what comes up. Ideal clients can be those currently suffering in pain and also those who suffer a car accident or sporting accident. You can see when people talk about those kinds of things online and invite them in for a complimentary assessment. These people are your target market for your social media marketing campaign—follow them on Twitter, befriend them on Facebook, point them to helpful videos on your YouTube page, useful news and articles on your website.
2. Objectives – As a chiropractor, your main objective can be to increase the number of clients and referrals you have after going social. Becoming known as the leading authority in chiropractic health care in your local community is another goal that will eventually grow your practice.
3. Strategic Plan – Your strategic plan will be based on your objectives. If your objective is to be known as the leading chiropractor in the city then your plan should include having a blog on your website where you post helpful resources such as articles, videos and case studies. You can then use social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to post links to these valuable resources. Your plan may also include inviting your readers to ask questions on your blog or social sites so you can answer them—your readers may turn out to be ideal clients so interacting with them is key. Your blog may even lead to you writing a book once you’ve accumulated a significant amount of content. Becoming an author instantly positions you as an industry leader, far above your local competitors.
4. Online Tactics – These are some of the online tactics that you will want to include in your overall social media strategy: Blogging – Blogspot, WordPress . . . Microblogging – Twitter . . . Social Networks – Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn . . . Video Social Networks – Yo