Opticians are one of the most respected professions in the world, but many opticians don’t know what social media can do for them. Social media provides an excellent opportunity to reach out to your customers and build relationships with people who may be interested in becoming your clients. The key to success on social media is having good content that promotes you and your business. This article will show you some basic tips to get started using social media for your opticians.
Know Your Business
In order to promote your service, you first need to know everything about it, not only from your point of view but also from your patients’ side. What does this mean for you? First, you will need to consider how they feel and what they need.
Your message needs to be clear and concise, provide:
- Assurance
- Acknowledgment for their pain and condition
- Security and safety
- Ongoing information
Explain your services in your posts without wordiness and by giving exact solutions to problems your audience may encounter.
Get Rid of Distractions
In social media, distractions are everywhere. You have to make sure that your posts are not cluttered with irrelevant things like images, videos, and other links. Make sure that your posts are relevant to your industry and target audience. Also, try to keep your posts short so that users won’t lose interest before reading through all the points you want to convey.
When sharing pictures and videos, make sure to keep your posts short and concise. Visuals must confirm and slightly expand on the post content. Your viewers won’t have enough time to read two posts in one.
Be Mindful
In healthcare marketing, being mindful is a priority. While an audiophile may want to share with everyone about their new sound system, your clients will most probably be keeping anything related to your services to themselves.
You need to make them happy to share and give you reviews because otherwise, you will fall behind your competitors. So, take note of your potential clients’ privacy settings. If they are set to private, then respect their wishes. Always ask permission before posting anything related to their condition, stay at your clinic, and any discussions about treatment you may have had with them.
Avoid memes and jokes on your page, you may attract a lot of followers and likes, but the people who actually would pay for your service are usually not the ones to joke about their condition. Instead, keep informing them and educating the others about the different conditions discussed during your consultations.
Avoid Plagiarism
Plagiarism is never okay. Don’t copy and paste someone else’s work. It makes you look unprofessional and even worse, unethical. And if possible, avoid creating any kind of content that could lead to copyright infringement.
Copyright infringement is often overlooked when it comes to social media, but it should never be ignored. Never use anyone’s picture or video without asking their permission. Always check whether the image you are using has already been posted online somewhere else. If it has, don’t use it. Otherwise, you might end up putting yourself into legal trouble.
If you still can’t find relevant content, you can always create your own content. But remember, you should always credit your sources. Recently, users have started catching pages red-handed when they use others’ creations without properly crediting them. You don’t want your business to become famous because of such actions.
With opticians, it’s vital that you make sure everything you post is actually checked by a medical professional. Any claims and statements must be proven because you risk problems for false advertisement in the medical and healthcare industries.
You know well that people’s health comes first.
Use Keywords
Keyword research helps you determine which keywords would best describe your product or service. Choose the ones that relate to your niche. For instance, if you are selling eyeglasses, include words such as “eyeglass,” “glasses” and “frame.” Keep in mind that you cannot use too many keywords. Excessive keyword stuffing means you’re trying to trick search engines into ranking you higher than others.
This practice has been proven to backfire over time. And yes, keywords are not SEO-only, social media platforms have used keywords from content and hashtags for a long time. They also include them as alt text (editable on Instagram for example) within images, too.
Useful keywords are, of course, those related to your practice such as optics, glasses, dioptre, and lenses. However, you may also want to look at awareness day tags and mental health awareness days. Many people feel anxious and unwelcome when going to a doctor’s office. By choosing the right time to comfort them, you will earn their trust and respect.
Reaching Out to Professional Marketers
Professional marketers such as Prevention Digital can research your ‘niche’ (field, industry) and provide quality insight into the way your audience relates to your services. Are you reaching the correct people or are you wasting your efforts on others, who are not really looking for your expertise?
Healthcare marketers are rare today. People who are experienced in both the healthcare field and in digital marketing are essential for niche businesses to prosper in the social media jungle. With awareness of terminology, hashtags, research, scientific resources, as well as the right knowledge of audience accumulation, a dedicated healthcare digital marketer can solve your issues with the ratio between your audience and your clientele.
