To be effective and maximize your return on investment, social media content should be specifically designed to drive consumers to take a next step towards booking a consultation or treatment.
We’ve previously shared concepts for how to generate ideas for social media content, including thinking in terms of different formats and using conferences as prompts to create and stockpile interesting content.
Here, we’re going to get specific about some sources you or your team can visit to understand which questions potential patients need answered to move them along in their journey.
RealSelf
Consumer questions on RealSelf should be your first stop for sourcing content for social media. Of course, you should be answering their questions directly on RealSelf so that the askers, and other users, can benefit from your insights right on the platform. But you can also repurpose those answers to provide great social media content that addresses issues that you know for a fact consumers are curious about.
You can repurpose your answers to RealSelf Q&A in multiple ways, including:
- Unspool them into a number of microposts. Social media is a space for shortform content, so one in-depth answer can source multiple social media posts about a given topic.
- Edit them into one or more videos. You can appear on-camera or use a tool like Wavve.co to combine an audio track with an image, allowing you to easily create a piece of standout immersive multimedia content to engage current followers and attract new ones.
- Pull out key quotes that can stand alone. That one sentence in your RealSelf answer that hits hard can become an impactful piece of text art. Tools like Canva make it easy to create styled, text-based images that are optimized for Instagram. Just don’t forget to attribute yourself and name your practice directly on the quote.
Quora
Quora is a platform where registered users can ask questions on all manner of topics and get answers from the forum’s community. These topics run the gamut from business and technology to sports and entertainment: in fact, it was usage by technology and sports luminaries soon after its 2009 launch that put this forum community on the map. Aesthetic treatments aren’t the sweet spot here, but there are aesthetics-related conversations taking place on Quora that can be a valuable supplement to RealSelf Q&A in terms of generating ideas for social media topics.
Here are a handful of topics that contain discussions about aesthetic treatments that you can browse for social content inspiration.
- Breast augmentation and implants 15k followers
- Plastic surgery 69.4k followers
- Cosmetic surgery 80.7k followers
- Liposuction 13.1k followers
- Tummy Tuck 6.4k followers
- Rhinoplasty 905 followers
- Facelifts 284 followers
Search engines offer online users an unprecedented opportunity to ask questions that they may be too embarrassed to ask live, and even in other forums. Many purchase journeys begin with online search, making it a great place to discover the top-level questions consumers need answered about treatments before proceeding with their booking journey.
Google’s search autocomplete feature is a handy way to get at some of those questions. To use it, simply start typing a search query in Google, then see what suggestions their suggested search feature comes back with. Use question terms like “is,” “does,” “why is,” “why does,” “how is,” or “how does,” followed by a procedure or other key term.
These results are an excellent place to start in order to generate social media content that answers questions potential patients are asking from the safety of their computer screen. Again, your content should answer the question, telling the user yes/no/maybe, and then telling them why.
Like Quora, Reddit is an online forum, albeit more sprawling and less formal than its more buttoned up counterpart. Reddit users are among the most engaged on the web, spending an average of 15 minutes and 47 seconds on the forum daily.
The culture of Reddit, where topic threads (called “subreddits”) can go on at length, holds promise for unpacking not only top-level questions, but also for uncovering some narrower and more precise questions about cosmetic procedures. These can help you produce social media gems that address and answer those questions. You should know that Reddit has a reputation for harboring some of the more obsessed, and even unsavory, elements of the web, but aesthetics-related subreddits might still be worth an occasional gander for some differentiated inspiration.
Subreddits are organized, by default, in terms of what Reddit deems “hot” questions. You might find some interesting prompts here, but don’t be put off if the discussions aren’t inspirational right off the bat. Here are some additional tips for sorting discussions in Reddit forums that might reveal some promising social media content ideas.
- Newest. Use this filter to see whether any interesting topics have been posted that haven’t had time to amass the volume of responses needed to be deemed “top” or “controversial” responses.
- Top. While “hot” accounts for the velocity of upvotes—how quickly a post is being upvoted (similar to Twitter’s “trending”)—“Top” simply accounts for the total number of upvotes a post has received. This filter defaults to 24 hours. You can toggle it to see what top posts in the subreddit have been over a longer period of time.
- Controversial. You might find inspiration to develop content that answers questions that divide Reddit users. This can be a great place to explore for potential “mythbusting” social media content.
You can also use the “View” toggle to select the “Compact” view, which will let you more easily scan Reddit questions. Lastly, an exact match keyword search for a procedure or other aesthetics-related topics on Reddit’s homepage can turn up conversations that Reddit users are conversing about outside of aesthetics-specific forums.
