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1. Always look first to see ifthe social media site is popular inyour area. Browse the website andsee if you can find good statisticsabout the site. Sites like socialbak-ers.com and digitalbuzzblog.comprovide national statistics on someof the more popular social mediasites. You are looking for number ofusers, how much your target marketuses the particular site, and howlong the social site has been active. If the site is relatively new, it may bebest to wait to see how the statisticsgrow within your target market

Social media. Those two little wordscan cause anxiety and stress in theworld of refractive marketing. Socialmedia is new and there are dozens ofwebsites out there. Without fullknowledge of which sites work welland how they operate, you canspend days, even weeks, trying to getthem to work effectively for yourpractice.

Six tipsHere are six tips that you can use tohelp you take control of the socialmedia world.

Taking Control of Social Media

Running the Practice Marketing

Michelle Pearce

before you decide to devote time andeffort into becoming a user of thesite. It is possible to contact thesocial media company to see if theycan provide you with national and/or local statistics as well.

Another way to investigate thesite’s popularity is to create yourown profile and browse around. Takefoursquare, for example. You can create your own personal profile andthen start to search for businesses inyour area. Then you can see howmany people checked into a place. Ifthose numbers are high, then thewebsite may be one worth being on.

To create the best returns from your social mediaefforts, appoint the employee best suited to thistask and give him or her release time designatedfor marketing through social media.

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2. Make sure that you andyour employees fully understandhow to maneuver on the socialmedia website. This is important.You should have a minimum of atleast one activity on your socialmedia sites each week—this meansposting something funny orthought-provoking, answering ques-tions, responding to reviews, etc.There might be times that employeesneed to fill in for each other. Havinga full understanding of each of thesocial media websites that you workwith will help these employees notonly operate smoothly during timesof illness or emergencies, but it willalso promote creativity when plan-ning marketing and advertising cam-paigns for your practice. When youcan be efficient in navigating thesesites, you can find ways to maximizeyour opportunities.

3. Investigate all the waysthrough which you might be ableto advertise or promote your busi-ness. Some of these websites mayallow you to do additional advertis-ing. This usually incurs a fee, sostarting with a set budget and doingcareful monitoring of your progressis essential during your first fewmonths. Not all social media adver-tising opportunities are profitable. If you don’t at least recoup youradvertising expense in your first fewmonths, you may want to considerreducing or pulling your budget.

It is also crucial to completelyfill out your profile on these web-sites. If people find your page or list-ing and they like what they see, they will want to contact you. If youdon’t have your phone number andan email address, as well as yourwebsite address, they will not have away to contact you. You shouldnever make your page or listingavailable to the public without all ofyour essential information. It willlook incomplete and can give thewrong impression to potentialpatients.

4. Do not be afraid to removeyour listing from a social mediawebsite. Just because these websitesare available does not mean youhave to be on them. This can be alittle tricky. You might have a pagefor your practice on Facebook, forexample, and only have 13 fans.Before you decide to pull your listingbecause of the small size of your fanbase, look at your website’s analytics,specifically at the way people get toyour website. You could find thatFacebook.com is one of the top fivereferring websites to your homepage.This means that even though youonly have 13 fans, people are findingyou on Facebook and then going toyour website. In this case, youshould keep your Facebook page.

Now say you also have a listingon the social media website Yelp.This is a user review website that isworking quite well in certain marketsand not so well in others. If youhave a page without any reviews and it has been up for awhile, thenmaybe you should consider puttingyour efforts into a social media pagethat gets more reviews. For example,we have a client in Rapid City, S.D.,where Yelp is not a commonly usedsite. Therefore, we spend our effortsand concentration on Facebookbecause the majority of patients andreferrals use Facebook often. Weknow this through new patient sur-veys and monitoring activity of thesesites. However, because Yelp is user-run, you should always keep an eyeon it. Even if you remove your list-ing, a user can add it back and postreviews. In order to prevent potentialdamage to your practice, you shouldreview these sites at least once amonth.

5. Make sure to have someonecontinually “working” your socialmedia presence. As the nameimplies, these websites are meant tocreate social interactions betweenusers: user to user, user to business,and business to business. The site is

a virtual “meet and greet” space. Ifyou set up a page or listing and younever visit it again, neither will yourpotential leads or patients. Theymight go to your website to learnmore about you, but the connectionis understood to be “one way.” Ifthey happen to land on your socialmedia pages, they are looking forinteraction. No one wants to be“friends” with someone who won’ttalk to them.

6. Monitor and keep statistics.Keeping an eye on how well thesesites perform for you is important.For example, suppose you run aradio campaign around the holidays.You have excellent messaging andyou notice a spike in the number ofvisitors to your social media websitesand your own website. However, younotice that not very many peopletook advantage of your offer. Thiscould be telling you that your mes-saging is effective and people wantto know more about you, but thatyour offer is not compelling enoughto make them want to participate.Statistics will give you the hard factsabout how well you are doing andwhat is working or what is not. Ifyou aren’t doing well, make a fewadjustments and try, try again.

An efficiently run social mediaplan—though time consuming—canaccentuate your practice and gener-ate patients. However, a poorly runsocial media campaign can be detri-mental to a practice. To create thebest returns from your social mediaefforts, appoint the employee bestsuited to this task and give him orher release time designated for marketing through social media. Weusually suggest at least 20 hours eachweek to produce huge gains in leadsand new patients. AE

Michelle Pearce (303-447-9192, michelle@fast-trackmarketing.com) is aclient project manager for FastTrack Marketing in Boulder,Colo.