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Presentation

To

2011 Florida Academy of Audiology Convention

Presented by:

Cindy M. Rosen, Vice President Operations

The Association Source, LLC

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Why Use Social Media to Market Your Practice?

Social media marketing…

•Creates a forum for two-way communication

•Provides instant feedback and exchange of ideas

•Offers a personal / social extension of your business & services

•Provides the opportunity to build trust

•Enables audiologists to demonstrate their value using digital media

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The Social Media Marketing Cycle

The objective of a social media marketing initiative is

harnessing the fundamentals that make your audiology

practice great, and enabling your patients, employees,

and area medical and educational contacts to spread the

word about your exceptional services.

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The Social Media Marketing Planning Process

Define Your Business Goals

•Identify new referral contacts

•Increase referrals from existing clients

•Create a referral program (coupons, discounts, giveaways)

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Social Media Marketing PlanWhat are Your Objectives?

• Acquire New Patients

• Engage Existing Patients

• Educate New & Existing Patients

• Inform patients and community of products

• Enhance value to patients and community

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Social Media Marketing… How do You Achieve Your Objectives?

•Listen to current patients and their families

•Find the online audiology forums and discussion groups

•Contribute to these discussions & listen to the answers

•Ask for referrals and testimonials

•Participate in community service projects to promote yourself

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Planning = Preparation

1. Listen and participate in online discussions

2. Identify influences in your area of practice and advocacy

3. Determine your place in the market/community

4. Develop a strategic and tactical social media plan that provides specific social media

sites and benchmarks for success

5. Integration of social media into your daily practice

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LinkedIn Groups

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Who are You?

• Why should a patient come to you for their hearing needs?

• What makes you special and different from other audiologists?

• Why do your current patients and their families come to you?

• Why do they trust you?

• How critical is “trust” in the decision-making process?

• How can you use social media tools to build trust?

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Identify Your Advocates / Fans

Your greatest resource is your knowledgeable and caring

staff and superior service standards. Your social media

strategy will identify these individuals and turn them into

all-out fans that are willing to evangelize your audiology

services and the great experience the practice and its

people represent.

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Engage Patients with Interesting Content

Identifying your passionate fan base is the first step. Next, you need to extend their experiences outside the four walls of the practice. Email marketing provides an effective method for reaching out to the people you have already utilized your services and have indicated (by giving you their email) their willingness to receive your information. The benefits of e-mail marketing go beyond simply keeping your patients informed. The basic act of asking for an e-mail address strengthens the bond between your business and your patients because they are entrusting you with a piece of their personal information.

Moreover, while an e-mail address may seem like a tiny detail, when someone gives it to a business, it proves the business is a trusted contact that the person would like to engage with on a deeper level. In addition, e-mail newsletters are easily (and often) forwarded to and shared with friends, so this offers a simple first step toward leveraging your patients’ contacts, if they choose to forward along your messages.

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Forwarding an e-mail newsletter is still a great way for your patients to spread the word about your practice, but social media marketing provides additional ways, too. Establish an archive on the audiology practice Web site so your e-mail newsletter content is accessible online. This will allow you to post the newsletter as links on various social networking sites around the Web.

Also, leverage your e-mail content through your social media marketing efforts. Every month, send out a short e-mail newsletter that features an article about management, and includes links to your recent “featured articles” as well as other resources that might interest your subscribers. Before sending out the newsletter, run a teaser post on Twitter prompting more people to sign up for your newsletters. After the newsletter is sent, engage subscribers on Facebook, talking about ideas feedback or ideas you have received from the newsletter.

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Stay in Touch…Get Out Front

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Convert Casual Acquaintances into Passionate Patients

Sharing information with friends is the very nature of social media marketing, so using

this channel to engage your most passionate patients will quickly increase awareness in

your business among their contacts. This is why providing content to your most

passionate patients is so important: Give them something worthwhile to talk about, and

they will gladly share it with their friends. Some examples of items your business could

post include:

• News on upcoming hearing-related community events

• Information about community fundraisers you may be participating in

• Hearing related education programs at area schools, hospitals, senior centers13

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“The Influencer”It is essential to identify and target your patient marketing

efforts toward the person that is the “influencer” in the

life of the prospective patient. This influencer may a

friend, school counselor, or relative who has a concern for

the patient and will be encouraging and even arranging

the visit to the audiologist’s office.

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Who are the Influencers and… How Do You Reach Them?

• Family

• Friends

• Spouse

• School counselors

• Type of communication resources they access

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Timing is EverythingThe holiday season or festive family occasion is often the

time when “influencers” notice diminished hearing and

participation in the conversational experience. Targeting your

marketing efforts during this time of year often encourages

family, friends, and other influencers to pursue the matter

further.

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Who is Your Patient…How Do You Reach Them?

• Age

• Demographics

• Socio-economic background

• Type of communication resources they access

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Connecting You to Patients & Their Families Facebook

Facebook is a great platform to reach a very specific audience. It can serve

three main purposes:

• It can build your practice’s brand identity and reinforce those products and services that make your practice unique.

• It provides a vehicle for your practice to “humanize” itself. People become engaged in discussions, photos, video, and human-interest stories that provide context to their relationship with your practice.

• It provides a “bridge” to your practice Web site and allows for a greater viral spread of your messaging and brand identity.18

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FacebookBuild a Facebook Page

• The first step to connecting with patients and their families is to create

your official presence via a Facebook Page.

• Pages are a free product for companies, medical practices, and

educational institutions to connect with patients and the healthcare

community in an easy to access format.

• You can create and maintain a Facebook Page for your audiology

practice from your personal account or create a new account using a

Gmail account or another email platform just for this purpose. 19

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FacebookTips to Help You Connect

Once you have set up your Page, check out the following tips and examples to create an optimal experience for your followers to connect with your practice.

Be Personal and Educational

•People connect to audiologists and healthcare providers because they are eager

to feel a personal connection with a very important person in their healthcare

experience.

•In addition, your Facebook page is an unintimidating way for people to learn more

about hearing loss, risks, and diagnosis.

•Whenever possible, share updates directly related to industry advancements and

community support and awareness issues. 20

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•Use a first person voice vs. third person to show your community followers/visitors that you are active on the page and encourage them to post feedback.

•Share information directly from your practice and experience to educate followers/visitors about new or past issues and educational and audiology related resources.

•Invite them to contact you via email or phone for more personal and specific information.

Facebook…Tips to Help You Connect

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FacebookCreate Content Worth Sharing

Empower people to share and spread the word among theirFacebook friends by giving them content to interact with andshare. Photos, Video and other content can go viral quickly asthey attract more “like” and “comment” interactions, which then spread to friends and family, and influencers in the community.

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•Upload “behind the scenes photos” or inspiring videos from community events

•Upload your own video “tip of the month” through YouTube or Vimeo. Show them your personality.

•Promote an audiology-related community service project or fundraiser supporting. Then, post a video and photos from their events.

FacebookTips to Help You Connect

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Facebook is a culture of conversations—audiologists have a huge

opportunity to get immediate feedback on issues. Here are some tips

to starting the conversation on your Page.

• Poll your followers/visitors on Facebook with a question now

and then in your status update, instead of only posting

statements.

• Show you are listening by making a comment among the

followers’ posts.

• Do not discredit an occasional negative comment – view it as

an opportunity to start a dialogue and educate along the way.

Facebook…Join the Conversation

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•Facebook Pages offer great tools to help you get closer to patients and their

families.

•Target your updates geographically when you have news to share that is

specific to a certain local region.

•Review Page Insights to see where supporters are from and discover new

cities for upcoming events or mailings to create awareness of your practice.

•Design a custom landing tab for your page to run special promotions (example:

free screening).

Facebook…Use Tools to Increase Relevance

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Once you have created optimal content and updates on your Page, here are some tips for promoting your Page to grow your audience.

•Promote the Username for your audiology practice Facebook Page everywhere:

to every email list, in print/broadcast/outdoor advertising, newsletters and more

•Run Facebook Ads targeted to audiology and hearing loss keywords, related

industry organizations, relevant geographies or particular demographics at

affordable rates.

•Add a Like Box to your audiology practice Web site so visitors to the site can

instantly connect to your Page without leaving your site.

Facebook…Grow Your Connections

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Connect Facebook to Your Audiology Practice’s Web Site

Facebook allows you to access/offer links outside of its walls. Take

advantage of this by keeping your your practice Web site

maintained with robust content. Add articles, video interviews, photo

gallery to your Web site so there are links you can provide in

Facebook to “bridge” over to your audiology practice’s Web site.

Give people reasons to come back to the Web site more than once.

They need to feel that it is constantly changing and providing them

with new information and/or services. Stay relevant.27

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Facebook – “The Wall”

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Facebook – “Info”

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Facebook – “Photos”

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Facebook “Connect to Your Web Site”

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Facebook “5 Steps to Generate Awareness”

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Facebook“5 Steps to Drive Preference & Differentiation”

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Facebook“5 Steps to Build Loyalty and Deepen Relationships”

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Facebook“5 Steps to Amplify Recommendation & Word of Mouth”

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Facebook“5 Steps to Gain Insights”

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Facebook“5 Steps to Foster Product Development &

Innovation”

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Get the latest updates on Facebook Pages product news http://www.facebook.com/facebookpages Explore how other sites integrate Facebook via social plugins http://developers.facebook.com/showcase Learn how to create affordable ads on Facebook and reach your exact audiencehttp://www.facebook.com/advertising Connect with Facebook’s official Page for the latest company updateshttp://www.facebook.com/facebook Use the Facebook Help Center to get answers on specific products and featureshttp://www.facebook.com/help

Facebook Resources

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Forums are discussion areas on websites, where people can post messages

or comment on existing messages asynchronously – that is, independently of

time or place. Chat is the synchronous equivalent. Before blogs developed,

email lists and forums were the main means of conversing online. Forum

discussions happen in one place, and so can be managed and facilitated in

ways that blog conversations cannot because these are happening in many

different places controlled by their authors.

Social Media ToolsForums

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Social Media ToolsBlog

Blog is a word that was created from two words: “web log.”

Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular

entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material

such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in

reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb,

meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

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Blog

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Twitter

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ListServ: Participation in LISTSERV discussion groups, as well as

management of these discussion groups, has made its way to the

World Wide Web. As an enhancement (not a replacement) to the

traditional e-mail communication with LISTSERV, you can now join

or leave a list, request a new list, and manage lists. The discussions

conducted through a listserv are only available to those subscribing

to the listserv.

Social Media ToolsListServs

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Social Media Marketing

What Tools are Right for You?

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