Healthcare Social Media Services

healthcare-social-media-austin-txSemantic Advantage provides Healthcare social media services for doctors, dentists, hospitals and other providers. These range from Facebook business page development and optimization to YouTube channel setup and video instrumentation. Our clients  most frequently request social marketing services in Austin including Facebook ads management, Google-My-Business page optimization and posts.

We also manage Twitter advertising programs for healthcare-related businesses. Especially those needing frequently and timely communications with their audience. Tweet services enable medical device and equipment vendors to inform their hospital, clinics or patient customers about upcoming products or discount offers.

If you want to improve audience engagement with social media services, contact Semantic Advantage today.

Social Media Services for Healthcare

Business Profile Development and Optimization
We create business profiles for your organization on the social media platform(s) most popular with your target audience. Our team optimizes these for maximum Local SEO effect. So people searching locally for your products or services will find your listing when searching on Google, Bing, Yelp or Yahoo! And, if your organization has multiple physical locations, we can produce a social media business page for each one. This increases your market reach and lead generation.

Blogging, Social Media Posting
Using information and guidance you provide, we blog, Tweet and/or post on Facebook, Google-My-Business or YouTube. As with your social business profiles, most posts will be SEO-enhanced and instrumented with #hashtags and hyperlinks to your website. We also recommend that clients do some of their own social media marketing. This increases involvement and gives a personal touch and feedback. To help you do this, we provide posting guidelines and coaching for maximum impact and adherence to HIPAA marketing regulations.

Paid Healthcare Advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or YouTube
Paid ads can precisely direct your message to the prospects who are most likely to buy. For example, Facebook’s audience targeting features enable us to specify the geographic region, age, gender, income, declared interests and other demographic data. And, based on the initial performance, we can monitor and adjust these parameters to make them even more effective.

All our social media services engagements use a metrics-based methodology. In addition to the native advertising platform tools, we use industry standard monitoring systems like Google Analytics, Sprout Social or Adobe Analytics. These provide us with continuous monitoring of performance, so we can optimize results and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

Evolution of Social Media Marketing in Healthcare

Social media marketing (SMM) refers to the use of social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to engage audiences and promote commercial enterprises. These social media sites were designed originally for personal use. But doctors, dentists, hospitals now use them to acquire new patients, provide healthcare information and schedule appointments. The rich media and convenience afforded by YouTube, Pinterest and Vimeo enables medical researchers, physicians and clinicians to share their knowledge with a broad audience.

Despite initial skepticism, healthcare organizations have successfully adopted social media marketing. This facilitates their  engagement with consumers, healthcare professionals and other healthcare organizations. Properly designed and managed, social media sites and posts can convey a highly professional image and enhance relationships with patients, colleagues or medical suppliers. Esteemed organizations like the Mayo Clinic are successfully using social media services to connect with physicians, researchers and other important constituencies.

Benefits of Social Media Services – Austin TX Examples

The best social media marketing programs do not stand alone. They are integrated into your overall marketing strategy and programs. The branding, messaging and calls-to-action are developed to be consistent with your organization’s overall marketing effort.

However, social media advertising and marketing services differ from conventional channels in several ways:

  • Social media sites enable you to communicate with a much broader audience. Facebook alone has more than 1 billion subscribers.
  • Social sites support one-to-many or many-to-many communications. This can lead to the development of an active online community devoted to the discussion of your healthcare organization’s services and related topics.
  • Social marketing is more interactive than traditional communications or other online media. This increases the need for periodic review and participation — and the expectation of prompt responses to visitor comments.
  • Social sites are community-oriented, conversational and generally non-transactional (exception: Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn ads).

Our professional social media services enable you to reach a younger demographic audience. And you will be surprised how many seniors are active on Facebook and Twitter. Unlike telemarketing, TV and radio, social marketing allows participants to choose when and how they participate. This is very important for busy doctors, hospital administrators, dental office managers or lab directors.

Audiences for Healthcare Social Marketing

The primary target audience for most of our clients is the healthcare consumer. Current and prospective patients. Many of these are already on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube; so it’s relatively easy to establish a connection.

Other healthcare target audiences include people or organizations that refer patients. These include physicians and medical groups, hospitals, clinics, commercial insurers, Medicare and Medicaid payers, self-insured employers, community organizations, healthcare directories and medical websites. Basically, if one of these organizations can send you a patient or recommend you to a patient, you should consider involving them in your social media marketing plans.

Social marketing also provides a good way to keep in touch with your healthcare peers. Social media technology – with its facilities for video, group communications and interaction — can significantly enhance peer communications. Many physicians now participate in online professional networking communities including Sermo.com, MedScape.com and LeadPhysician.com

Promoting the Quality of Patient Experience

Our social media marketing services promote the quality and convenience of your patients’ experience. Every aspect of a their healthcare experience is an opportunity to use to promote the benefits you provide. From improved quality of life, disease remediation or cosmetic enhancement to the basics of facility cleanliness, prompt attention and easy parking.

Some of the best applications of healthcare social media services are patient ratings, testimonials and referrals. Social marketing also enables broad reach and high impact with YouTube videos, Yelp reviews or ratings on Yahoo! Local. As well as patient quotes on your website, Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

Consumers give more weight to patient testimonials on social media than printed material or website copy. Accompanying photos and videos can significantly reinforce this effect. Videos by physicians and dentists have also proven to be highly effective, particularly when combined with an active social media marketing program.

Healthcare Social Media — Best Practices

Here are some guidelines we use for planning and implementing an effective healthcare social marketing services engagement.

  • Establish separate social sites or pages for personal and professional use.
  • Communicate with patients via professional social media page – not personal accounts. Implement security settings to keep your personal pages personal.
  • Promote the main healthcare-specific benefits provided by your organization. But also highlight features desired by patients – pleasant surroundings, prompt attention, clean rooms and hallways, better service, good value.
  • Choose the social media channel that best suits the communication and situation. Your website, LinkedIn profile and Facebook Info page are good for information that does not change frequently. Facebook timeline posts and blogs are useful for daily or weekly updates. Twitter and Internet Messaging (IM) are best for time-sensitive communications like last-minute appointment rescheduling.
  • Don’t communicate sensitive patient information on social media sites. HIPAA regulations apply to social media marketing as well as other communications.
  • Obtain signed consent forms from patients prior to using their quotes, photos or videos on the website or social media networks.
  • Observe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines for healthcare advertising. These apply to promotion in social networks as well as other media. New FTC rules governing testimonials and endorsements require healthcare providers to disclose typical results and characterize unusually good outcomes as “results not typical”.
  • Monitor social marketing program and social sites frequently. This provides the opportunity to promptly respond to comments, and remove any content that is inappropriate.
  • Use social media marketing applications like HootSuite and Sprout Social to manage participation in multiple social media sites. These schedule posts for optimal times, and can distribute a post to several social sites with a single action.

HIPAA and Social Media Marketing

Of course, HIPAA regulations restrict communication of individual patient information. So doctor-patient diagnosis or advice can not take place on these public platforms. But social media is extremely effective in delivering educational health-related material to the general populace. And in addition to mainstream healthcare social media marketing topics, this material encompasses non-traditional forms of treatment like acupuncture, biofeedback and homeopathy.

Austin Social Media Services
Semantic Advantage offers social media marketing services to Austin healthcare organizations and others throughout the USA. We specialize in managing business social media sites and interactions on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. For more information on our social media marketing services, contact Semantic Advantage.