The importance of having a social media presence is truly unmatched by many other medical marketing strategies. Along with content development and distribution, on-site and off-site optimization, and link building, social media has become a fundamental aspect of marketing your medical practice. But where do you start? Most physicians knew that they must have a Facebook page, but don’t know the first thing about starting one. So, let’s break it down to the bare minimum.
Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are more than just something to do in your spare time, they are essential in the world of medical marketing. Building your business brand on social networks is a key ingredient to increasing your overall search engine rankings.
For quite some time, search engine experts and medical marketing consultants had an inherent feeling the social media played a role in their overall search rankings, and yet no one could prove this for sure. However, in December of 2010 the two biggest search engines confirmed this feeling in an interview with Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land. Read rest of this entry >>
“On any given day, more people are posing health questions to Google than posing health questions to their doctors.” — Google’s chief health strategist, Dr. Roni.
Google’s influence over an individual’s personal health decisions is a golden opportunity for medical marketing. The above quote should sound like music to any medical marketing strategists’ ears simply because of the immense possibilities that it provides.
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 83 percent of Internet users have looked online for health information recently. New data released by Pew show many people are now using cell phones to search for health information — 29 percent of cell phone owners age 18 to 29, and 17 percent of cell owners overall. It’s the first time Pew has surveyed health searches on cell phones.
Social media has been around since 2004, but medical professionals have not been as quick to embrace the technologies as other professions.
Why should your practice consider social media as part of its medical marketing toolbox? Statistics show that Facebook has grown by 145% since last year; of these users, 55% are women. Twitter boasts close to 30 million users; 54% are female. Why does this matter? Women, over the age of 25, make 80% of the healthcare decisions for themselves and their families.
Individuals have turned to the Internet in droves (more than 90%) for researching information and for locating goods and services. Just because you’re embracing social media to promote your practice, you don’t have to toss your traditional medical marketing. Use a combination of the two.
Here are a few reasons to integrate social media into your medical marketing campaigns: Read rest of this entry >>
A press release can do more for your business than you probably realize, especially in our advanced digital era. Technology can take a simple few paragraphs, and, if optimized effectively and marketed towards the right audience, can blow them into a traffic generating juggernaut. Media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have created new opportunities for medical marketing and PR agencies to reach a fresh audience and connect on a more local level.
So, what does social media have to do with your medical press release? More than you ever knew. Medical marketing in Arizona is all about relating to your target audience. In order to relate, you must inherently know your audience, know the demographics, the interests, the topics that spark discussions and create social “chatter.” A press release in the digital era must not only be optimized for that audience, but optimized for search engine visibility as well as social media dialogue.
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