You didn’t get into plastic surgery to become a social media influencer. And yet, it’s likely no surprise to you that channels like Instagram and Facebook can go a long way towards promoting your practice and engaging potential patients.
Of course, you can’t do it all alone. That’s why successful practices often leverage one of their greatest strengths: the team. Whether your team is posting authentic before & after photos or replying to tweets, they can grow your social presence even when you’re busy in surgery or attending conferences.
Here’s how you can include your team in your social media efforts to save time, get fresh ideas for posts, and foster loyalty with empowered employees.
Start by identifying your goals
Whether your team is coordinating your Instagram presence or who will follow up with a prospective tummy tuck patient, it helps if everyone is on the same page. Think of it like a social media consult. Before you brainstorm ideas for posts, start by answering: “What do we want to get out of our social media posts?”
Once everyone is aligned on goals, you can more efficiently focus on creating posts to accomplish them. Meet with your lead marketing or social media team member(s) to identify your top two or three goals. That way, your team doesn’t get overwhelmed and your social media accounts don’t seem all over the place.
To help you get started, here are some common goals for plastic surgery practices and medaesthetic businesses:
- Showcase expertise in a select few treatments you’re most known for or most want to perform
- Give consumers a better sense of your practice’s or business’ personality
- Raise awareness of new or seasonal treatments you offer
- Save time by answering common patient questions in posts instead of 1:1 through DMs
- Highlight the expertise and quality of your entire team, from patient coordinators to surgeons
Train your team on best practices
Giving your team a primer on healthcare social media best practices sets everyone up for success. That includes you, since even social savvy surgeons can still learn a thing or two about engaging potential patients online.
To save time, you can divvy up the resources below and have individual team members report back to everyone with the top three or five learnings they took away. It helps keep things manageable, and you have a way to ensure accountability.
Here are some resources to share with your team:
- Social Media for the Plastic Surgeon webinar (30 minutes)
- 5 Fresh Ideas for Creative and Engaging Instagram Posts
- Social Media in Healthcare: A Surgical Guide for Marketing Professionals
- Social Media Do’s and Don’ts for Physicians
Assign specific roles for each person
Would you rather have a team of generalists, or a team of specialists? Assigning a role to individual team members does more than foster deeper experience with social media. It also empowers each team member and gives them each something to own. Plus, you’ll also know exactly who to go to about a certain social media platform or type of content.
Start by assigning one person to be your lead social media person, whether it’s a marketing manager or a patient coordinator with serious #socialskills. They can be your big picture thinker, quality control checker, and #hashtagmaster. Next, give everyone a particular role to play in your social media machine, based on each team member’s expertise and interest.
Not sure where to start? Here are a few ways you could split up responsibilities:
- By post type (photos/videos of procedures, team and office photos, etc.)
- By procedure (breast augs, rhinoplasties, etc.)
- By social media channel (Instagram, Facebook, etc.)
Create a workflow for submitting posts
Building in a little process here will help keep things efficient and minimize mixups. For instance, even if multiple people are involved with creating content, maybe you and your lead social media marketer are the only ones who can actually post the content. This way, you prevent a free-for-all, and there’s still at least one team member who has the big picture in mind.
Try these tips to help you and your team stay organized:
- Choose a method for submitting posts for approval, such as using social media management software or emailing posts to your lead social person
- Look into Hootsuite, Buffer, or other software that make it convenient to create, schedule, and track performance (kind of like a practice management system for your social media)
- Take advantage of the Instagram and Facebook features that allow you to save posts as a draft so you can review and publish later
Incent team members to accomplish their goals
Even the most proactive or loyal employee appreciates feeling, well, appreciated. That doesn’t mean you need to shower everyone with big gifts or bonuses. A sincere thank you and acknowledgment goes a long way to increasing productivity and inspiring big ideas.
Of course, you don’t want to stop there. It also helps to set and reward team-wide goals, not just individual goals. Camaraderie and collaboration are key to running your practice smoothly, and that includes marketing your practice on social networks. Having some shared goals and accountability to each other can also be very motivating.
Get started by trying these suggested ways to increase participation among your team:
- Set individual and team-wide goals so people have a quantifiable way to measure progress
- Email everyone with highlights from the week and praise the team members involved
- Reward the whole team with a fun outing when you hit key milestones, such as a certain number of likes, shares, or followers
- Encourage your team to share their creative ideas for posts and to pass along to the team successful posts they come across for inspiration
Putting it all together
While converting new patients is no easy task, attracting and engaging followers is a powerful way to spread the word about your practice. So why try to do it all yourself? Work with your team to follow the tips in this article and take your social media accounts to the next level. And if you want some additional inspiration, check out the RealSelf Instagram account. We have more than 134,000 followers so far, and you can bet it takes a team effort.
