More patients are finding plastic surgeons online now than ever before. In fact, this recent study from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery indicates that more and more patients are paying attention to your social media presence. The results of the analysis conveyed that patients are associating a first-page ranking on Google with credibility. Due to a larger number of patients using online resources to make their healthcare and plastic surgery decisions, optimizing your social media for business has become necessary!
As your audience shifts online to look for information and cosmetic medicine practices, it’s important to also make that shift. Nearly 60% of beauty brands had a Snapchat profile in 2016, and the industry is booming on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as well. In 2015, 90.3% of beauty brand interactions occurred on Instagram, this number seeing an increase from 76.1% in the previous year. Needless to say, these platforms have plenty of potential for marketing your services, and finding your next patient!
The cosmetic industry has the edge of visual appeal. This platform, nearly entirely composed of imagery with little to no text necessary, is perfect for putting the true impact of your work on display. This is also a great place to visually describe certain procedures to your curious patients. This platform leaves room for you to post information such as:
- Infographics such as statistics
- Pre and post-operative photos
- Graphic displays of procedures
- Video reviews and testimonials
- How to’s and tutorials
Every social media platform receives different amounts of engagement at different times. For Instagram, the schedule to stick to for maximum patient engagement and exposure is as follows:
Sunday: 5:00 pm
Monday: 7:00 pm & 10:00 pm
Tuesday: 3:00 am & 10:00 am
Wednesday: 5:00 pm
Thursday: 7:00 am
Friday: 1:00 am & 8:00 pm
Saturday: 12:00 am & 2:00 am
Consider using automation to ensure you always maintain your posting schedule and frequency. This will help with having a strong presence online, and keeping the interest of your audience.
Many practices and businesses use Twitter for their marketing to take advantage of a variety of benefits the platform offers. These benefits include:
- Reputation management
- Networking
- Interacting with patients
Twitter can be used specifically to build personal connections with potential patients. This platform is the perfect place to have real-time interactions, answer questions, and provide information when asked for – all the more reason to consider automation and social listening.
When it comes to cosmetic surgery and procedures, people have questions. Not only do they have questions and concerns, but 34.5% of consumers prefer customer care through social media. This means that if you have a strong online presence and can get to your potential patients quickly, you’ll have a higher chance of converting them and leaving them with a good impression of your brand.
The best times to have these personable, real-time interactions on the platform are as follows:
Friday: 9 to 10 am. Friday is also the best time to post on Twitter.
Every other day from 10 am to noon has some of the highest engagement rates.
The worst time to Tweet? Sunday morning.
Facebook has a very particular, somewhat tricky algorithm when it comes to content marketing. It also has many micro-targeting features that allow you to select your precise, ideal audience, and make sure your content is on display for them.
However, if you’re just starting out, or are just looking to better optimize yourself and engage with your own following, these are the best times to make your presence known.
Monday: 12 pm – 3 pm
Wednesday: 12 pm – 3 pm
Thursday: 12 pm – 3 pm
Friday: 12 pm – 3 pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12 pm – 1 pm
Much like Twitter, Facebook allows easy interactions between patients and practices. The platform was structured for these exact communications, and when Facebook launched business pages on their platform, this became even more true. Patients now have the ability to provide ratings and reviews directly to a company page, send direct messages with questions or comments, even share your page and recommend it to their entire friend list.
As we know, social sharing is great for online visibility. Facebook receives more than 1.37 billion users daily, helping it to retain its’ place as a top social networking platform.
The cost of marketing your services on Facebook isn’t going to break the bank, either. Unlike maintaining a website, a business page on Facebook is completely free to create, and costs to run ads for your practice remain minimal and budget-friendly. With the previously mentioned advanced methods of targeting, you can target what audience sees your content, and pay to have it in front of them.
This has many advantages for a cosmetic company. Let’s say your niche is offering Botox services to women between the ages of 40 and 75, and you operate out of Edmonton, Alberta. With Facebook’s advanced targeting, you can put your content in front of all women that fall within that age group in the area. This helps you to be more visible, and ensure any money you spend on ad targeting is well spent!
LinkedIn doesn’t come with the bells and whistles of all the other popular social networking platforms. The sole purpose of this platform is to build business and professional connections, network, and share relevant content.
With it having a large B2B audience, the best times to post often coincide with office hours, with little to zero interactions or traffic on the weekends. The best times to engage and post on LinkedIn are as follows:
Tuesday: 7-8 am and 5-6 pm
Wednesday: 7-8 am and 5-6 pm
Thursday: 7-8 am and 5-6 pm
Peak engagement usually occurs on the platform on Tuesday mornings, between 10 and 11 am. Strangely enough, few people are engaging on both Mondays and Fridays – the theory is because it’s so close to the weekend on either side, and the thought of work is often off the table!
Because LinkedIn is centred around a more professional atmosphere, it may be difficult to determine what content will work best. One of the ways to engage with your following is to write a long-form article that will interest them, maybe even inspire a discussion.
LinkedIn also has a Twitter-like feature in which you can publish short, concise messages for your followers to see. To use the latter in the best way possible, you can conduct polls, surveys, or simply ask questions to get an organic conversation going. To do this would be to capitalize on what this platform is all about – networking, and building connections.
As a cosmetic medicine practice, you have the ability to provide answers to common questions in the form of blogs, and short posts. You can also provide new industry information, trends, and processes.
Having an active LinkedIn page will not only help you connect with the audience you’ve built but pave the way for business relationships with others in the field. This will help you to be aware of industry trends, developments, and practices!
Putting it All Together
Knowing each platform is optimal, and knowing what times work best with each social networking platform is even better in order to get the most out of your marketing efforts. However, as a cosmetic medicine business, what marketing efforts are you to utilize?
Hand-Pick Influencers
Partnering with potential influencers online for business collaborations is one of the best ways to build an audience in the industry. Influencers help to promote your products, review them honestly, and cement your brand online.
It helps that influencers are typically young, up to date on trends and social networking, and have built substantial followings. It’s best to identify who would be the most natural influencer for your brand and propose collaborations and promotional projects from there.
These natural brand evangelists will often present themselves to you – take a look at your own audience first. Do you have customers that seem to always naturally rave about the products or services you offer? Do they genuinely believe in, and use your brand? These are important distinctions to make that can make for honest, genuine marketing.
Be Personable in Your Connections
Consumers want to speak with a human, not your automation tools. Automation can be extremely helpful for organization and scheduling purposes, but should be left alone when it comes to interactions online.
It’s easy to tell when a brand is conjuring automated, pre-set messages in order to address your questions. It’s an effort, but not a real one. A significant part of your social strategy should include social monitoring and listening, so when questions are posed online, a member of your team will be able to provide a timely, organic, written response.
This will promote that there’s a human within your brand, and to them you’re a patient, not just a statistic to examine in your online traffic reports.
Comment, Share, and Write
Writing and producing your own content is great, but don’t just stop there! Joining the dialogue in comment sections and sharing other credible industry content can actually boost your own credibility.
If you leave your audience with something worthwhile, helpful, and trustworthy that you didn’t produce yourself, this helps to fill the holes in your own content calendar and deems you trustworthy. This also shows that you’re just as interested in educating your patients as you are in treating them. Patients will appreciate the transparency, the information, and your values.
Sharing the relevant content of others will in your own gaps in what you may be too busy to create, and will also automatically make you a reliable source. Maybe your patients will even consider you to be one of their first points of contact for news and information in the industry – being this trusted can only increase your traffic and engagement.
Create Tutorials and ‘How-to’ Videos
These types of educational, entertaining, and creative videos are all the rage in social media marketing. In addition to being highly relevant, they are extremely shareable online.
One of the best things about implementing a video marketing strategy is the potential to have your influencers play a role. These influencers can promote your product, demonstrate it for your online audience, and use their following to develop strong brand commitment from your potential and current patients.
Influencers just have a knack for making products look good and extremely useable. Aside from the advantage of attaining aesthetic appeal, creating how-to videos is a great way to help educate your patients. It doesn’t hurt for boosting engagement, either, or gaining more followers.
At the end of the day, your social strategy is your own. You know your market, you know your audience, and you know your products and services better than anybody.
It’s up to you to use this knowledge to create something lasting and engaging online that will help your traffic, presence, and engagement!
