Engaging With Patients On Social Media Networks
Communication between patients and providers is a pillar of good patient engagement strategy, and social media is presenting new opportunities to promote that. With social media platforms your practice has a chance to position yourself as an authority within your health care specialty.
“Although social media is not the most appropriate platform for direct patient-physician communication, it can be used to remind patients to ask questions,” HIMSS explains in an information brief.
The overall presence of your practice on social media will go a long way in making the patient feel involved in his own healthcare. Through involvement in various campaigns and seeing different daily health tips, patients may feel more empowered in maintaining their own wellness.
Social medial also holds a lot of promise in developing a sense of community. By connecting patients with other patients at the same care facility or receiving guidance toward the same health goals, social media can help build a network of people supporting each other toward better health.
Above all, a robust social media presence holds the promise of improving patient education and health literacy. Because a healthcare organization would be posting to such a public forum with the potential of a large audience, social media can inform massive amounts of people of healthcare information.
Having a strong presence on social media can be time consuming. We would recommend signing up for a social media posting software, take note of your most asked questions, post those questions on your social medias, and only check and return messages and comments at two specific times during the day.
Measure, Evaluate, And Adjust
Every effort that is put into helping your hearing health practice grow into a thriving business needs to be measured, evaluated, and adjusted.
- Set realistic goals, measurable goals that you would like to see come to fruition within certain time periods.
- Measure those goals against time and money spend, where is the most return being seen across all growth efforts, where are you seeing the least return on your efforts?
- Adjust with your findings, shift more time or spend (if you have chosen to work with someone and put advertising dollars or work with an affiliate partner) on the efforts you are seeing the most return from. Shift your strategy on the efforts you are not seeing the performance you had hoped for, run a new test strategy, or decide to not continue with those efforts.
Despite some challenges associated with regulatory realities and the relative newness of social media, medical practices should not shy away from using these platforms to achieve their business goals. The longer medical practices wait to engage with patients on social media, the harder it will be for them to catch up to others who are gaining expertise in best practices.
Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. For monthly insight sent straight to your inbox sign up for our newsletter.