How FarmVille Teaches You To Be A Better Marketer

If you have a Facebook page, you’ve probably had a friend’s FarmVille update streamed across your newsfeed or maybe you play FarmVille yourself. This popular online game boasts 85 million active accounts and has been advertising in real life (IRL) through a partnership with 7-11.

Today, I just "hid” a friend on my Facebook newsfeed. I like the guy and all but he was sending FarmVille updates 20 times a day - super annoying.  I really don’t care how many virtual lettuce patches you just harvested or how many pigs you have. 

However, it did make me think about how many social media posts/tweets are enough to reach our target patients ... or when does it feel like too much? You certainly don’t want your practice to be “that annoying Farmville guy.”

You have to know where your audience is, and where you need to reach them in the locations they like to be reached. If you are able to engage regularly with patients on Facebook, that is a great place to be. If you feel all alone in the Twitterverse, you may want to ask your patients what social networks they like, and meet them (and others like them) there. 

As to how often you should reach your patients, that’s totally dependent on them – If I start to see people unfollowing, or not replying, I know to back off. The thing that makes social media different from all types of media before is the INTERACTION. Social media is not a platform for broadcast but of genuine interaction with others.  Treat your social networks like you would a cocktail party. If you only talk about yourself, eventually, you will be talking TO yourself. If people stop conversing with you or "hide" your posts and updates, they will miss all the good stuff you have to say.  I believe that in social media, you always want to UNDER-push than OVER-push.

How often do you interact with your patients? Let me know in the comments! 

- Sarah 

5 Easy Ways to Use the i-pad for Health Care Marketing

The i-pad has been on my mind a lot lately. Not just because I was just in the store playing with one, or in the first month they sold over 1 million units, but because I think they could be an excellent tool in health care marketing.  

Let’s take a look at five ways you can spark interaction with your patient that increases engagement by using an i-pad.

1. Load it with before and after pictures, articles, and testimonials.
2. Make your social media pages available so patients can "check in" at your practice on social location sites (Gowalla, Foursquare, etc). 
3. Create a referral program so patients can email an invitation from your practice to their friends while they are still in your office.
4. Show educational videos to your patients when explaining treatment or while they wait. 
5. Present treatment using the i-pad to show mock ups, design, or function. 

What am I missing? How would you use an i-pad in your practice? 

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 :)

Chiropractors who use Social Network tools

Here's our list of Chiropractors currently using social media.

As of May 3rd, 2010 there are: 22 Blogs, 15 active Twitter accounts, and 14 active Facebook pages. 

Know someone we are missing? Please let us know via email or the comments below.

Back to Action Chiropractic
Barton Chiropractic
Carla Cuido
Charlottesville Family Chiropractic
Dr. Eben Davis
Dr. Eric Murphy
Dr. Harris Meyer
Dr. Joel Fugleberg
Dr. Kevin Harrington
Dr. Kip Rod
Dr. Lynn Kerew
Dr. Matt Finke
Dr. RobertBoydston
Dr. Todd Narson
Dr. Tyler Johnson
Dr. Weisgerber
Elledge Chiropractic
Fink Chiropractic
French City Chiropractic
Linn City Chiropractic
Nick Campos
North Dallas Chiropractic
Pitts Family and Sport
Portland Chiropractic Neurology
Queen Anne Chiropractic
Roseville Family Chiropractic
Russell Brokstein
Silverman Chiropractic
Simi Valley Chiropractor
Steven Coniglio
West Coast Chiropractor