Using Social Media to Build Your Facility’s Credibility

Social media can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool because your messages can potentially reach a large amount of people instantly. What works for industries like retail and hospitality – exaggerations and big adjectives – won’t work well for those of us in the healthcare industry, however.

Credibility is crucial to your facility’s success in the healthcare social media landscape. Here are three ways to build your credibility:

Create a Blog

A blog is probably the single best social media platform a healthcare facility can use. Besides helping your SEO efforts, a blog with in-depth and informative posts can almost instantly create credibility and trust.

In contrast to a social channel such as Twitter that allows for just 140 characters, a blog can be as long or as short as you want. It can be filled with text as well as visuals like photos and videos. In the world of healthcare, details make all the difference – and a blog is the perfect platform to expand on topics.

Be Consistent

A social channel that last posted content 9 months ago doesn’t look good for any type of business. It can even give the impression that you’re out of business. This especially looks bad in the world of healthcare, as your most recent post may discuss a technology or medical technique that is now obsolete or outdated.

Looking like you are behind the times gives the wrong impression to your viewers and potential patients. Instead, make it a goal to create and post content at least twice a week. This will show that you’re keeping up with the trends.

Participate

Social media isn’t just about posting content and hoping someone sees it. It is about engaging with others.

One way to do that is by joining various health-related groups on networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn as well as answering other people’s questions related to your specialty. If you work on treatments for epilepsy, join and engage with others on various seizure support groups. Before you know it, you will be the go-to person on the topic – and this could lead to a slew of new business.

Building credibility on social media for a healthcare-related business may take some time, but it is definitely achievable. Once a strategy is in place and perfected, the sky’s the limit.