Social media functions differently for professional businesses than it does for other industries. For retail businesses, for example, social media is an avenue to direct sales, and that makes having as large a following as possible essential to those businesses’ success. For professional businesses, social media isn’t a place to sell, and high numbers of followers isn’t the goal. For you, social media is a critical opportunity to reassure potential clients that you’re the right practice for them.
Medical and dental treatment, legal services, and orthodontia are major investments and highly personal. They’re vulnerable experiences. Professional service providers should meet this vulnerability with an upbeat social media presence, of course. You want to show lots of smiles– happy patients and families, and a happy, cohesive team. But discretion is always important in a professional environment, and social media is no exception to this rule.
Your social media participation affects clients’ perception of you as respectful, trustworthy, reliable, and risk-aware, and this creates special challenges for your social media managers who often choose this role because they’re fun, creative people, who love to sell the party.
When our clients manage their own social media accounts, we see them struggle with content creation, compliance with ever-changing platform rules, and staff time.
Having a team member dedicated full time to social media doesn’t make sense for most practices, but adding social media to the responsibilities of existing staff often adds more to their plate than they can manage well. When they’re too busy to follow through on implied commitments, like posting for staff birthdays and anniversaries or for patient reveals, your great ideas can turn into stress and tension on your team. People you value can feel hurt and forgotten.
Consistent posting is effective posting. It keeps followers engaged, and communicates that your business is organized, reliable, and communicative. But it’s hard for busy staff to come up with a lot of ideas and especially hard for them to execute those ideas, and this usually leads to inconsistency. Inconsistent posting implies the flip side of all those positives, and no professional business can afford to look disorganized, unreliable, or disengaged from the community.
Your staff also rarely has the time to stay on top of the content guidelines for social media platforms. These rules change frequently and are inconsistently enforced, meaning that you could see another account do something, try it yourself, and be penalized. Having an account shut down temporarily or permanently is always a risk, but knowing the rules and how to stay within them is an essential mitigation strategy.
Your social media is yours– you’ll always be able to add a great photo you take of an event or celebration or a hilarious video of a team dance. When inspiration strikes, you can go for it! Our ClearSocial scheduling app, included in all of our social media packages, facilitates this collaboration.
But for all of the times when your team is spread thin, focused on caring for patients, helping families with financing, running all of the logistics of a busy office, we’re here for you.
Our social media packages make sure that you have fresh, beautiful photography so that you don’t have to interrupt authentic experiences for patients and staff. Our team ensures that you post consistently 2-3 times per week, teaching the algorithms that your practice is relevant. We have time to know platforms’ rules, so we can help keep all of your posts (including those you post yourself) compliant.
We also offer consulting services to support any of your team members who do contribute to your social media– we can help them brainstorm content, create post cadences, figure out how to celebrate team birthdays and anniversaries effectively, and troubleshoot challenging situations.
For some practices, paid advertising on social media platforms can be effective. We’re here to help you develop an appropriate budget and manage your advertising content so that it complies with platform regulations and reaches the people who are looking for your services.