Earlier this month, we broke down a quick primer on how PT clinic owners can get started using social media to better market their physical therapy clinic. Today, we’re going to take a deeper dive into the world of social media best practices to identify the four most common types of posts your social media channel manager should be incorporating into your clinic’s social media publishing mix.
The Four Types of Social Media Posts
Every PT clinic will need to find its own unique voice, which means each PT clinic will have its own style in how it portrays itself on social media. That said, in general, there are four main “buckets” of posts that your social media channel can turn to for inspiration.
1. Brand (or Space) Awareness Posts
Social media rule #1, not every post you publish needs to be about your PT clinic. In fact, publishing only posts about your clinic can be detrimental to your audience and engagement building initiatives. Mix up your posts with consumer-friendly articles or fun videos that have relevance to the PT space.
These articles could be pulled from sites like APTA or MoveForwardPT, or they could be sourced from more general sources (celebrity news as an example). The idea is that you share 3rd party content that provides value, education, or entertainment to your audience.
2. Clinic Marketing Posts
These are posts that inform and educate your audiences about your specific services. This is where you sell yourself. If your clinic website has a blog, your marketing posts are how you drive awareness and readership of your most recent posts.
On top of driving awareness of your recent blog posts, you can use marketing posts to communicate a host of other marketing-related messages including:
- Hiring a new staff member
- Receiving a new training certificate
- Investing in new equipment or services
- Adding additional therapies or classes
Be sure to link (as often as you can) to specific pages on your website where people can learn more about what you’re posting.
3. Testimonials
If you want to legitimize your practice on social media, you need to publish patient testimonials. 92% of consumers around the world say they trust recommendations and earned media more than any other form of advertising.
We’re not saying you need to hound all of your patients day and night for hundreds of blurbs and publicity shots, but taking the time to solicit a couple testimonials a month can do wonders for using social media to drive new patients.
4.Promotional Posts
These are your sales posts. Posts created with the sole mission to get somebody through your doors. Promotional posts might be in the offer related (Buy 1 Therapy Massage Get One Free), or they might be geared towards a specific class or training session.
Remember, if you are going to run a promotional post, you need to include all core pieces of information including:
- The specifics of the promotion
- How long the promotion is good for
- Any legal protection or limitations
General Post Best Practices
No matter the type of posts you publish to your clinic’s social media pages, remember to always follow these best practices:
- Use images or videos on all posts (a stock image is almost always better than no image)
- Keep your posts clear and succinct, only try to communicate one message per post
- Try to elicit some form of emotional response from your audience, you want to pull your audience into every post
Stay tuned for Part 3 of our ongoing social media for PT clinic series.