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Getting Staff Involved in Social Media

When done right, social media can be an excellent and free source of marketing for your practice. In addition to creating awareness about your practice for a greater circle of potential patients, social media gives you a chance to connect with, educate, inform and socialize with your patients outside of the exam room, nurturing your relationships and increasing patient loyalty.

When done right, social media takes time and for a busy OD, this can be a major deterrent.  This is where your staff comes in. Enlisting your staff members to contribute to or even run your social media campaign can not only ease the investment of time needed to do it right, but it can also contribute a valuable addition to your overall strategy.

How, you ask?
Your practice’s presence on social media represents your brand. It is a window into the personality of your office, your staff and the experience a patient will have when they walk in the door.  Therefore the more your whole office is involved in your social media campaign, the more integrated the campaign will be with your office dynamic, personality and atmosphere.

Getting started
First you have to determine how involved you want to be in your social media campaign. If you are already active in social media personally, it may be quite natural for you to spend an extra few minutes each day updating your office’s Facebook Page. If social media is new to you, you should consider appointing a socially savvy staff member to run the show. I wouldn’t recommend choosing the office introvert to be your social media champion either – pick someone who is naturally outgoing and sociable.

Ways your staff can help
Depending on their level of involvement, here are some ways you can enlist your staff to take part in your practice social media efforts and remember – everyone can and should play a part:

  1. All staff: Connect with your practice profiles – liking your Facebook Page, following your Twitter account, connecting on Linkedin etc.
  2. All staff: Reach out to their circles to broaden the reach of your social network
  3. All staff: Make sure they inform patients in the waiting area or after exams about your social media profiles and campaigns, encourage interaction and get feedback
  4. Select staff: Create and post (or schedule) fun, informative, engaging content for posts
  5. Select staff: Manage accounts, responding to comments and questions in a timely manner (with proper direction of course)
  6. Select staff: Keep an eye on the industry, research the competition and look for ideas to improve your strategy.  
  7. All staff: Require each staff member to write a weekly post about their role in the office, for example, the optician can write about a new product, the receptionist about a cancellation policy etc.

Warning: Set a policy
Before you give your staff the go ahead however, it is important to clearly define and communicate your office’s social media policy. Too many business owners have learned the hard way that once something is posted on social media, it is very hard to retract. Before you end up with any unintentional (or intentional) blunders (which could seriously harm your business) set a meeting with your staff to establish the rules.  Here are a few suggestions:

  1. Review how employees should represent themselves online. Hopefully you have hired people that know this innately but all interactions online should be respectful, genuine and helpful.
  2. Full disclosure - in every interaction relating to your practice your staff should indicate who they are and that they are staff of your practice.
  3. Confidentiality- As within the office walls, staff should know what they can and cannot share about patient identities as well as information about your practice.
  4. Staff should know when they are permitted to speak about the practice and when they are not (ie. receptionists should not be giving medical advice or offering free services without consulting with the doctor).

Like any marketing strategy, you want to keep your entire staff informed about the social media promotions and campaigns you are running and make sure everyone is on board, has the correct information, and knows where to direct patients. While you are at it, give them a sense of responsibility and explain how social media in general can help your practice when used right and potentially harm the practice when not. This may seem extreme but it is worthwhile to be cautious.

Once your staff is on board and aware of the rules and policies, set up a strategy and start getting social.  The good news is, once you are able to delegate some of your social marketing tasks to other staff members, you will have more time to see all of the new patients you will be bringing in through these efforts!