No one likes to visit the doctor or the dentist, so getting your patients to follow you on social media can be pretty tough.
Whether you run an NHS-funded doctors or dentists surgery, or you run a private business, it’s important that you build and maintain a strong presence online, not only to alert your patients to news and information about your surgery but to find new patients and take your business to the next level.
One of the best ways to do exactly that is by posting regular content on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, so below, we’ve rounded up some social media post ideas for doctors and dentists.
Surgery opening times
Whether it’s Christmas and New Year, the Easter Break or a Bank Holiday, the chances are that your opening times change throughout the year, and alerting your followers to those changes makes sense.
Consider posting a custom graphic, where you outline your opening hours during a particular period, and pin it to the top of your Facebook and Twitter profiles so that everyone is in the know.
You could work with local Facebook pages and ask them to share the post, which will increase its reach, and perhaps help you find some new followers.
This cosmetics clinic created a custom graphic, sharing their Christmas opening hours.
Tips on looking after yourself
Get advice from one of your doctors or dentists and create some posts that offer tips on looking after yourself.
If you have a lot of elderly patients in your surgery, for example, you could share some advice on keeping warm and away from the ice during the winter months, whereas a dentist may choose to highlight the importance of brushing over Halloween, or share some interesting facts that people will want to retweet and share with their friends.
This American dentist shared some posts over Halloween and created their own boards to take photographs of their patients. A great way to boost engagement and offer some facts.
News relevant to your patients
Not a day goes by without a major health story making the news, whether it’s to do with childhood obesity or dementia.
Follow relevant news sources and share interesting content with your followers. It may be that you want to squash some stories that are factually incorrect, or you want to start a discussion with your followers to increase engagement.
By being one of the first to share news stories, you’ll position your doctors or dentists as an authority figure within your niche – people will be more likely to like and share your content and tag their friends in the comments, too.
Be on the ball, turn on push notifications for news relevant to your niche, or consider using RSS feeds to automatically post content for you.
It’s great to share news stories that relate to your business – especially if it involves children, as parents will be more likely to interact with it.
Behind the scenes content
Finally, remember to let down the guard from time to time and share some behind the scenes content from your business.
It’s always good to let people see the people behind the business, as the chances are that most of your followers will be familiar with who they are.
Whether you’re celebrating a birthday, congratulating a member of staff on a qualification or you’re simply having a cake sale in the office, show off the people behind the business.
Sharing images of your staff, whatever the occasion, is great for building rapport and helping to ‘pull back the curtain’ and humanise your brand.
Wrapping up
There’s no denying that managing social media for dentists and doctors can be hard work, especially so if you have very few followers, but with the right content strategy, you’ll be able to grow your audience and find new patients in the process. We wish you the best of luck.
If you’re too busy to work on your own social media campaigns, then get in touch with the experts here at 99social, who can manage your accounts from as little as £99 per month.