Defining Your Practice Brand Through Social Media Profiles

I sat down with an awesome dentist last week for a coffee and a chat about marketing. He’s getting started with a social media strategy and like most of us, has a lot of questions on how to balance his personal life and practice brand. We talked about the importance of great, friendly looking headshots and the ongoing WOW experience that we try to create for patients within the practice.

We also talked about creating our social media profiles and I want to share a few of those ideas with you here today.

Like a first impression at your front desk, your username and profile can speak volumes about your practice. Many people, (myself included at one time), view creating an online profile as something to check off the “to do” list without stopping to think of the impact it will have on their business and brand.

Your profile or bios provide windows that let people know how you want to be viewed and insight to your core values and the values of your practice. Your profile should let people get to know you before they step foot in your office or call to book an appointment. Your profile helps you build rapport with existing patients, and can attract people to you who are looking for the services and care you offer.

Before you get started with social media, take some time to think about your personal brand and the brand of your practice. Be yourself, be helpful, and if need be, make multiple accounts for your practice and yourself.

Need some help choosing the best profile photo for you? Let the world choose your photo!

Twenty-somethings Prefer Texting to Calling


“I’m not trying to cause a big sensation, I’m just talkin’ bout my generation.” – The Who

Cell-phone texting has become the preferred channel of basic communication between twenty-somethings and their friends. A recent Npress survey of 300 Americans in their twenties showed that 94% say they sent and received text messages daily in April 2010.
Among those texters today:
  • 17% send 100+ text messages a day, or more than 3,000 messages a month.
  • 14% send 50+ text messages a day, or more than 1,500 a month. 

Most people in their 20s send 11-20 text messages per day.

Among twenty somethings, texting is used for multitude reasons, including communicating with friends and family (88%), managing work projects (59%), and coordinating meetings and plans (85%).

Calling is still a central function of the cell phone for people in their twenties, but they typically make and receive five- seven calls a day—far fewer than text messages.

Beyond text messaging and voice calling, twenty somethings who have multipurpose phones say they use many of the extra features. Among the most popular are email use (83%) and taking pictures (54%).

Bottom Line: Generation Y is 76 million strong and flooding the workforce. If you want to fill your practice with these young professionals and earn their trust and loyalty, you have to reach them where they are.

Have ideas on how to connect with your Gen Y patients? Share them here!
 
-Sarah

Looking for a great digital marketing strategy? The Practice Marketing Revolution can help! Email sarah@npressnewsletter.com today!

11 Tools to Discover What Your Patients Really Want

Listening to your patients and learning to meet their needs are keys to growing your practice and creating an effective marketing plan. In fact, not doing so handicaps the overall reach and effectiveness of your marketing, communications, and service strategies.

Luckily, there are a variety of interactive media tools that provide platforms for listening to an ever growing sample of patients. These monitoring tools offer doctors opportunities to identify critical conversations and for strategic engagement.

 Here are some of my favorite and FREE social media "listening"tools:

Google Alerts - Email updates of relevant search results
Monitter - Search for keywords in real time on Twitter
Social Mention - Real time keyword search across the web
Twitrratr - Sentiment ratings for Twitter
Backtype - Monitor blogs, blog comments, and conversations
Blogsearch - Find key words in the blogosphere
Evri - Aggregates user generated content
CoTweet - Conversation threading and trend monitoring for Twitter
Collecta - Monitor update streams of news sites, blogs, and social media sites
Klout - Find influencers based on topic
TweetDeck - Organize Twitter seaches by hashtag, brand, etc.

Since these tools are free, I advise searching for your practice or specialty on multiple sites so you don't miss potentially valuable information or feeds. Your practice's needs will be unique so select the tools and services that best fit your processes.

Do you have favorite tools for monitoring your practice or brand? Share them here in the comments :)