When was the last time you checked a social media app? Chances are, the answer is today if you’re like 74% of internet users.1 And those users aren’t just looking for cat pictures! Around 80% of social media users use these platforms to find doctors and research medical information.2
Given these statistics, leveraging social media to attract and convert more new patients makes sense for hospital digital marketers. But creating a successful social media marketing strategy for your hospital is more complicated than creating an account and making a few posts. A successful digital marketing strategy requires a great deal of research, planning, and monitoring.
How Hospitals Can Leverage Social Media Marketing
Connecting with your hospital’s audience is the best way to start building trust with prospective patients. Publishing valuable information that solves problems makes your hospital brand stick in the minds of users who find it. And social media is a great place to connect with your audience and answer their healthcare questions.
But what does an effective social media strategy entail for your hospital?
1. Create Connections and Nurture Your Network
Social media platforms let you easily share your hospital branding and advertising with new leads. A first touch isn’t the end goal, though. To get the most out of your social media marketing strategy, you need to nurture connections with your existing audience and new audience members alike.
Treat social media as a chance to show off your hospital’s personality. Show users your staff members are compassionate, professional, and knowledgeable by sharing meaningful, relevant and timely content.3
2. Tailor Your Brand Voice
Carefully determine your tone and word choice with your target audience in mind. Think about how your leads speak and the messages they find appealing. Maintaining a consistent voice across all social media platforms makes your hospital feel authentic and trustworthy.
To give you an idea of what this looks like, consider how Duolingo, a language learning app, developed its cheeky and entertaining mascot, Duo. You’ve probably seen this troublemaking green owl in your own social media feed. Featuring this icon in its marketing makes Duolingo’s campaigns feel less like ads and more like entertainment.
3. Practice Social Monitoring and Social Listening
Social media is an excellent place to learn about what your audience is thinking. How? Through social monitoring and social listening. This means working on interacting with your audience by responding to comments and questions.
Social listening lets you analyze these interactions to better understand your audience. Using social media to identify your target audience’s interests, as well as their pain points is central to a strong social media content strategy. Remember, you should always be posting what your audience actually wants to see.
4. Start a Conversation and Remember to Engage
Not only does replying to comments and direct messages help you better understand your prospective patients, but engaging also strengthens your relationship with them. In turn, you increase the odds they’ll trust your hospital with their healthcare needs.
5. Use SEO to Your Advantage
Social media is an avenue for new patients to find your hospital online. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the technical term for strategically creating content leads will see in online searches. Today, more web users are turning to social media platforms to find answers to their questions.
To ensure you reach your target audience, keep SEO in mind when setting up your hospital social media profiles.4 When your profiles are optimized, social media users who are searching for health topics you specialize in will come across your content. From there, your audience-centric content does the hard work and starts them on their journey to becoming a patient.
Ready to leverage social media marketing to take your brand to the next level, but aren’t sure where to start? Dreamscape Marketing can help. Contact us at 888.307.7304 to schedule a discovery call and learn more about our social media management strategy and our full suite of hospital digital marketing services.
For a list of references, please contact us.