Social Media Marketing

Tips for large and small private practice organizations.

By Sarah Salvatori, MBA

When you plan your practice’s social media strategy, it is important to establish some ground rules.

For example, do you want to have one designated account on each main social media platform? This is ideal for brand consistency and recognition, but less ideal for a practice with multiple brick and mortar locations.

If you own a practice with multiple locations, your services and quality of care should be the same across the board, but when it comes to personality, these locations have different voices, communities, and impact.

It is important to showcase those voices on your social media platforms. This can be done from the main social media accounts, established to represent all the practices and brand as a whole. Another option is to create individual accounts for each location.

Creating an account for each location can be a daunting task, but incorporating social media “ambassadors” at each location can make this manageable. If this is the route your practice would like to go, establish ground rules for the ambassadors to avoid HIPAA violations.

Ambassadorship may be met with some hesitations, but with a few tips the task won’t feel so intimidating:

• The whole point of this endeavor is to create a picture of the clinic and patient experience. Share photos of the location, introduce your staff, and describe what therapy is like at that location.
• It’s important to remember that social media does not need to take away from your day.
• Be mindful of the things you do throughout the day. There is content all around you.
• Patient graduations, testimonials
• Events
• Exercises, physical therapy tips, etc.
• Encourage your patients to like and follow the clinic’s pages.
• Ask your patients to be involved on social media by commenting and sharing your content; this can be fun and exciting for them.

Patients enjoy getting to know you and your practice’s characteristics. Social media is another way to engage and reengage with past and present patients; they are your biggest advocates.

Sarah Salvatori, MBA, is the Social Media & Marketing Project Manager for IRG Physical and Hand Therapy in Mill Creek, Washington. She can be reached at sarah.salvatori@irgpt.com.