Skip to main content ↓

Social media for doctors is a great opportunity for your doctor’s office to connect with patients. You can post compelling content that gets them interested in your practice and ready to trust your team with their care.

Keep reading to learn more about social media for doctors, including:

  1. Why social media for doctors’ offices is helpful
  2. How to get started with social media marketing for doctors
  3. Where to get help with launching a social media campaign

If you need help using social media for doctors, call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our social media marketing services. Otherwise, keep reading to get started!

What is social media marketing for doctors?

Social media marketing for doctors helps physicians improve their online presence across social media and even search results. With social media marketing and advertising, doctors can attract new patients, engage current ones, and build a trusted reputation for quality care.

Why use social media for doctors?

Social media for doctors offers your practice several benefits, including:

1. Build awareness for your practice

A social media presence can help your office establish brand awareness or make potential patients aware of your brand. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can also provide insight into the look and feel of your office, which can convince a prospective patient to give your office a call.

2. Encourage regular and routine exams

Posting regularly on social media networks can also motivate patients to schedule regular exams. For example, your office could share content about the importance of having an annual wellness visit to give patients a reason (and reminder) to make an appointment.

3. Generate patient referrals

Maintaining an active presence on social media can help your practice also get patient referrals. For example, a patient that appreciates your team and care may recommend you to a friend or family member by sharing your Facebook page.

4. Demonstrate medical expertise

Social networks like Twitter and Facebook can also help your practice demonstrate your knowledge. Your knowledge of different topics can persuade prospective patients to contact your practice. Showcasing your medical expertise can include sharing news articles, research, and more.

5. Share new medical findings, healthy habits, and more

Social media for doctors can also help patients learn about a health issue, like diabetes. These articles, videos, or posts let you continue educating a patient about a specific health issue — without disclosing personal information — which can help patients make more progress outside their appointments.

Hear What It’s Like to Work With WebFX!

Five gold stars

“WebFX has completely transformed my practice. With their support, I have expanded my practice significantly and grown exponentially. I could not have expanded to this degree, nor this quickly had it not been for the incredible efforts provided by WebFX and my team.”

Healthcare

How does social media marketing help doctors and medical practices?

Your practice is built on good relationships. Social media marketing for doctors makes it possible to not only establish these relationships, but strengthen them. Here are some of the ways it does this:

Increased visibility

How big is social media? One of the smallest sites, Pinterest, has 100 million users. Facebook, the largest, has 1 billion. When you’re active on social media, your potential audience is larger than you could ever reach with a traditional marketing strategy.

Greater engagement

Social media may be one of the most effective channels for creating a dialogue with followers. You can post a story or comment and encourage other people to respond. They may ask questions that you answer. Or you can read what your followers are talking about regarding health and medicine and get a better sense of what people want from their doctors.

Higher authority

As you converse with followers on social media, you’re still establishing your expertise and credibility. Every time you answer a question, share relevant content, and present new information, your practice looks more and more like a trusted source of medical care.

7 tips for getting the best results from social media for doctors

If you’re looking to achieve the best return on investment (ROI) from social media for doctors, follow these four tips:

1. Choose your platforms

If you want to run a successful social media marketing campaign, you need to choose the right platforms. There are many social media platforms you can use to connect with your audience. Some examples include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

To figure out your ideal platforms, you need to know your target audience first. Your target audience is who you want to reach. These are people that are most likely to visit your doctor’s office.

You can figure out your target audience by thinking about who is most likely to visit your doctor’s office. You’ll want to use demographic and socioeconomic information to help you figure out your ideal audience, as well as hobbies and interests. This will help you focus on who you want to target.

Once you know who you want to target, you can figure out which platforms they frequent the most. You want to select a platform where you know you can reach your target audience. Each social media platform has a predominant demographic that can help you figure out where to reach leads.

Some platforms appeal more to certain audiences than others. For example, 81 percent of people ages 18-29 are on Facebook, while only forty percent of them are on Twitter. The percentage of users varies by age groups, gender, and other factors.

You will need to research each platform to figure out where you can reach your target audience. This will help you pick the platform that is best for your campaign.

2. Promote your accounts

A growing number of patients are using online channels to manage their healthcare, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to immediately start following you on Facebook or Twitter. They may not even know you’re on social media. Let them know by placing your social media handles on all of your marketing materials.

Add follow buttons to your website, enabling visitors to start following you on whatever channels they prefer. Include these same links at the end of every email. Don’t forget your brochure, appointment reminder cards, and other print pieces. As the visibility of your social media profile increases, so will your network.

3. Post a variety of content

Once you select your platform, you’ll need to create content to post on your page. It is important that you post a variety of content to keep your audience engaged. You want them to interact with your doctor’s office’s page.

When it comes to social media marketing for doctors, the type of content you can post will depend upon the platform you choose and needs to refrain from violating HIPAA. Some platforms are more flexible than others. Your platform will determine the type of content you can post.

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are very flexible with content. You can post photos, videos, links to content, and polls on these platforms. It makes it easy for you to create a variety of content.

With platforms like Instagram, you are more limited in your options. You can only post photos or videos, so you’ll need to make your content unique and stand out to your audience.

When you post a variety of content, you will figure out what your audience likes best. You’ll see what generates the most engagement and involvement. This enables you to tailor your content to increase interaction on your page.

By posting a variety of content, you’ll engage your audience better. This will help your doctor’s office reach more patients.

Explore Social Media Compliance for Healthcare

4. Try paid ads

Social media algorithms give physicians a challenge when it comes to building an online following and reaching potential patients. That’s why many doctors’ offices invest in social media advertising, which can help your practice get in front of prospective patients in your area.

You can advertise on a few different social media platforms, including:

  1. Facebook
  2. Instagram
  3. LinkedIn
  4. Twitter

No matter where you decide to promote your office, avoid making your campaigns too specific.

If you create a hyper-targeted ad campaign at the beginning, it will limit your campaign’s potential. You’ll assume what features make up your audience, versus using the platform’s data to refine your campaign accurately.

5. Post content frequently

If you want to see the most success with social media marketing for doctors, you need to post content frequently. People in your audience follow many of their friends, family members, and other businesses. You need to post content frequently to ensure they see your content.

You want to keep your doctor’s office in the forefront of their minds. When you post content frequently, you get them to engage with your page and think about your practice.

It is important that you consider your platform when you post content. Each platform has an acceptable posting frequency. This frequency will vary depending upon which platform you use.

On platforms like Facebook, it is best only to post three to ten times per week. If you post too often, you’ll clog up your audience’s news feed. This will cause your leads to unfollow your account.

With platforms like Twitter, it is more acceptable to post frequently. You can post dozens of times throughout the day. Twitter’s feed makes it easy to post frequently and prevents your doctor’s office from overwhelming your audience.

When you post content frequently, you will engage your audience better. This will help you reach more patients for your doctor’s office.

6. Engage your audience

One of the unique features of social media marketing is that you connect directly to current and potential patients. This enables you to build a relationship with them and engage your online followers.

Engagement is important because it helps people build brand recognition. When leads interact with your brand, they learn more about your business and become more familiar with it.

A great way to engage your audience is by creating posts that encourage engagement. You can create social media posts, like polls, or ask questions that get your audience to interact. You could create a poll like, “Do you get a check-up every year?” and invite your followers to answer the poll.

Engaging content is a great way to get your audience to interact with your page. You also want to encourage engagement by interacting with your leads.

When one of your followers’ comments on your post, comment back to them. Thank them for their comment and create a dialogue between you two. It makes your audience feel more valued by your business.

If your followers leave a negative or positive comment, you should take the time to address them. You can thank people for their positive comments and address anyone with negative comments. This will help you build a better relationship with your audience.

7. Monitor your pages regularly

One of the biggest challenges for any medical practice is finding the time to keep the business running. Social media isn’t something you do in your free time—you have to constantly post new content or respond to followers. As a medical professional, you’re likely too busy to do it all by yourself, so make sure someone in your office is doing it on a regular basis.

The job can be done by one person in a small practice or a few people in a larger setting. This person will be responsible for curating content, posting comments and replies, and measuring social media activity. He or she should know enough about social media to handle all of these responsibilities. If no one in your practice fits the bill—or if you don’t want to take time away from their normal responsibilities—consider hiring a social media management agency to do the job.

How WebFX makes social media for doctors’ offices easy

Social media marketing is a great opportunity for your practice to connect with leads that are interested in your office. You will build a better relationship with these leads that will help you nudge them towards conversion. At WebFX, we have years of experience creating social media marketing plans that work.

We’re a full-service digital marketing company that specializes in creating customized social media plans. We have a team of 500+ experts that will bring their knowledge and expertise to your campaign. Our award-winning team of social media gurus will help you create a campaign that works for your doctor’s office.

If you’re looking for results, we know how to drive them. To date, we’ve driven over $10 billion in sales and over 24 million leads for our clients. We focus on driving success for our clients first.

Our clients love the work we do, too. In fact, we have over 1,100 client testimonials from a variety of industries. Check them out to see what it’s like to partner with a top social media marketing company like WebFX!

Attract more patients with social media for doctors

If you want to build a better relationship with your patients, social media marketing is a great option for your doctor’s office. At WebFX, our team of experts can help. Contact us online or call 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about how we can help your practice grow.

We look forward to taking your doctor’s office to new heights!

We Drive Results for Medical Practices

  • 230+ health industry experts
  • Renowned for our communication and transparency

Get a Quote

dots background

top clutchco digital marketing company medical 2024

background shape

Explore our health & wellness case studies

Read our case studies for a more in-depth look at our results.

Merrimack Valley Psychological

2X

Revenue in 6 months

Hurst Pediatric Dentistry

540%

Increase in leads

Healthcare Administrative Partners

7%

Increase in email subscribers

Your
Business

IS NEXT

Get a free proposal
today!

Solving key challenges for medical providers

Our website isn’t driving enough traffic

Our expert SEO specialists, copywriters, and digital advertisers will help you increase your website’s rankings when your target audience searches for your treatments online, so you can continuously drive traffic and revenue for your practice, hospital, or business.

Website icon.

We’re opening a new location

Set your new hospital, brand, or practice up for future success with a range of digital marketing strategies that get your new practice in front of potential patients or B2B buyers.

Marketing icon with flame.

We’re not attracting enough patients

Get a steady flow of new patients to your practice, hospital, or brand with expertly crafted strategies that provide a seamless, engaging user experience for your website visitors, encouraging them to become patients.

Branch icon of a storefront.

We have high patient turnover

Offer new treatments or services and need to get them in front of your potential client’s eyes? Our range of revenue-driving digital advertising and marketing services have you covered and reach the people who need your facility the most.

Target icon with archery arrow hitting target.
TO TOP