00:00:00 Hi, it's Dr. Weitz. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode of the private medical practice academy. Today, I'm here with Wendy Margolin. Who's the owner of spark marketing, and she's the founder of the clinician social media club. I invited Wendy to come and chat with me so that we can get an understanding of how social media marketing fits into your practice. 00:00:22 So welcoming. Thanks for having me. It's so nice to be here, Sandy. I'm so excited to have you, because I think so many physicians here, Hey, you need to be on social media, but I think that the majority of us don't really have a strategic plan for how to use social media in that marketing of your practice. So tell us a little bit, 00:00:47 from your perspective, how do you see social media fitting into a broader marketing plan for a private practice? Okay, good question. So just quickly on one foot, I would say that it used to be that you could get away with not being on social media. If you remember back in, maybe I'd say even oh 9 20 10, you could go to any business, 00:01:14 including a healthcare practice. And they would have assigned from Facebook that would say, we're on Facebook, follow us. Right? And it was this sort of marketing environment where print came first and digital marketing was showing up and finding its place and wedging its way into what was the marketing world, which was pretty much all print. Now we're in a place where it's a digital first marketing world and people are sort of, 00:01:47 there's even a little buzz about, Hey, you should still try out print. It still works in certain ways. So there's a little bit of a, just being open for business, hanging up your shingle that you have, that you exist, that translate into yeah, you pretty much need to be on social media to be open for business these days now, 00:02:10 does that mean everybody has to be on it and you can't have a successful practice without a Facebook page or Instagram page or whatever. No, of course there are many people that are still doing just fine without putting a lot of time into it. But I would say that for the most part, you are going to raise awareness, reach more people where they're already hanging out by being on social media. 00:02:35 And certainly if you are building a new practice, then it's a great way to put your name out there and show that you are, you know, a part of the community where you are building your practice. So I think one of the things that people always want to know is what channels should I be on? Like, because it, you know, 00:02:55 that when you run a practice, there are so many tasks that you need take care of. Social media is something that can be very time-consuming, particularly for people who are not necessarily graphically oriented or people who are tongue tied when it comes to writing those like seemingly fascinating posts. So, you know, do I need to be on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn? 00:03:18 Or can I be on one? How do I make those decisions? Right. Good question. Well, the first thing, and I think we'll probably talk about this in a little bit, is that there are so many ways to save time and physicians should not be wasting time scrolling on social media when you're trying to run a practice. So I wholeheartedly agree with trying to use your resources in the best way possible, 00:03:41 but your practice in general, I think the best way to figure out where you, where you should be is where are the people you're trying to reach hanging out. So there are exceptions to this, but for the most part, if you are working with children, teens, and women, up through their forties, then you are most likely going to want to have a presence on Instagram. 00:04:06 Now, are there other people, there are men hanging out there for sure. But if, if your, if your practice serves women and children, for the most part, they are hanging out on Instagram. Who's on Facebook these days. Well, fewer and fewer people are spending as much time there, but it's still the largest social media network and pretty much everybody. 00:04:30 And I'm sure if you're listening, you're most likely among them. People are on Facebook. So everyone's hanging out there. It is a, it is a harder place to be found, but I do recommend that you at least have a Facebook page there that you're creating consistent content. It is a place where most people are using social media. I do have a Facebook page and LinkedIn is a great place. 00:04:58 It's actually my favorite social media network. I would say, though, for when you were trying to build a practice, it's a great place for collaborating, for reaching other colleagues for networking. And that way, the, the physicians who I see using LinkedIn the most are really trying to create a name for themselves as physician entrepreneurs. So it's not necessarily the best place to reach your audience for when you are trying to build your practice for patients. 00:05:33 But if you are trying to reach colleagues, then it's a great place to be creating content. And it's an easy place to still get noticed. Whereas Facebook is a bit more challenging these days and as is Instagram. Well, and I think, you know, one of the things that you're alluding to that people kind of need to sort out is who are you trying to target in this social media presence, 00:06:01 right? And some of it depends on your practice. If you are really getting most of your patients by self referral, meaning somebody finds you and calls you and says, Hey, I want to schedule an appointment. And things like Instagram, Facebook can work very well. If you are somebody who gets patients only by referral from other physicians, then things like LinkedIn, 00:06:25 or actually being connected to all of your colleagues on Doximity can actually drive that awareness of who you are. And so you have to have some sense of who am I trying to target in, in doing this. Now, one of my questions for you about Facebook and Instagram, you know, everybody talks about, you know, eyeballs and the algorithm and, 00:06:51 and how do I get my posts seen? Because even if you post on your personal page, you know, you, I frequently find that hardly anybody sees the post, even if it's like, you know, some amazing posts of, you know, a trip that I've been on, on my personal page, somebody will tell me, oh, I've never seen that post. 00:07:12 How do you deal with that? Is there a way to beat it? Yeah. Good question. So it's not that, you know, a lot of times people hear, oh, the algorithm and beat the algorithm, the algorithm hates me or whatever. I w it's not really about, there's like this, there there's this force that's out against any of this of us. 00:07:34 It's just a reality of there being sectioned, incredible amount of content being created every single second that makes it harder to be found, which is why it is a little bit easier to still get noticed on LinkedIn, because it's not as crowded a place of content creators, but Facebook and Instagram, Twitter as well. We didn't really talk about Twitter are all are places that there's a lot more content. 00:08:01 It is harder to be found. That doesn't mean that it's impossible. You mentioned get your personal page versus your business page on Facebook when you were asking. So there are two different things. Your personal page is obviously that's just the one where you're posting with your friends and you have to friend each other, and then your business page is a public page. 00:08:23 Now there is a way to sort of get around that where you can use your personal page to connect with colleagues, but not have them see all your personal information. And I could send you a link after we get off that you could put in the show notes if you want, but there is a way to create lists of audience lists in, in Facebook and the way that most people use that is that you will, 00:08:49 if you post something you could select, if you want it to be public or dressed among your friends, or you can even get a little tricky, like let's say, you're making a surprise party for your mom and you want everyone except your mom to see, like there is that setting that you could do it with posts for your audience. But the way to use that in as a physician, 00:09:10 when you're building your practice, let's say you want to friend people who are colleagues, people in your community, let's say any kind of referral source, but then you don't want them to see all your family photos, because it just could be a little bit weird, or even, I know if you're a pediatrician, you get to a, a sort of a very friendly level where you might actually be friending some people in the community cause you mutually live there, 00:09:35 but you're the doctors that's weird. So you can have people in a separate group. So it could be, you could just mean it, whatever you want, you could mean it business. You could name it practice. And those people, you only post them when you post your feed, you could select practice or you could select friends except practice. So there's this way to sort of use your personal profile in a way that lets more people see it. 00:10:03 Now your practice business page, where you post, that's obviously public, it's totally your business face of the practice. And that's always public. The, the algorithm really is not favoring. Those that spend that way for a few years. So that will likely not get noticed without putting a few dollars behind it. You mean in terms of buying Facebook ads to drive people there? 00:10:35 Yeah, except that I actually think a Facebook page is very useful for people who are already in your practice or if somebody calls for an appointment because you can actually put forms on you're attached to your Facebook page. You can give updates. For example, when we had a hurricane and we were going to close, we actually posted on our Facebook business page, 00:11:00 Hey, we'll be closed because of hurricane Katrina. And we'll let you know when we're in a reopen. So it can be another form of communication and you can encourage your existing patients to actually use your Facebook page. It can also be a way to share content with people that are already interested in you. So, so to your point, yes. Maybe you're not going to get eyes that are not already interested in you, 00:11:28 but it can be a way to communicate with the people that you already have in your practice. So yeah. Talk about Facebook ads though, for a second or Instagram ads, do they work? How much like should people actually be spending money on them? How do you figure out whether you should spend money on them? Sure. Good question. So I, 00:11:51 I would just, if, if I could add on to the point that you were saying before, I will say that if you are in a more rural area, it, Facebook pages are still operating. Like they were for I'm in Chicago. So the way they were for us back in, you know, maybe 20 11, 20 12. So I still see a lot of engagement on my clients who are in rural areas because there's just more of a sense of community. 00:12:17 Everybody knows people when you tag them, everybody in the community sees it. So there is that. And absolutely it is a great place for people to show up. It's a little bit like your website, like the same way they will go to your website. Not everybody's great about saying, you know, when there's a snow storm or something that you're opening that you're opening late on the website, 00:12:41 but they'll put it on their Facebook page. So it's definitely a public page that people will go to, to find out the latest and greatest about your practice. So about ads, my favorite way to use ads for healthcare businesses and your practice are two great videos where you are just, you know, you can do a live video. It's, they're hard to do at first if you're not used to it, 00:13:11 but once you get in practice of doing this, it gets a lot easier. So to create videos, a great form of content, and I know we'll probably talk about ideas for content, but creating videos, either just yourself with your phone, where you are just putting it up in front of you and you are going over some frequently asked questions and some issues that people are calling your office about, 00:13:35 and you're doing a quick video. It could be one minute, it could be two minutes. And then if you put that on your Facebook page, a few people will see it, not a ton, but what, what can happen is that if you boost that, so you put a few dollars behind it and I know everyone's first question will be well, 00:13:53 how much, and you really can just play with it because it's, it's not like a all or nothing game here with an ad, the way it used to be in print. Like if you wanted to do an ad in a community newspaper, there was a certain price for entry just to get in there any size here, you could put $5 behind a video and it will show it to $5 worth of people. 00:14:17 And $5 worth of people is different for every single one of us. You don't really know until you try it, but once you put the $5 behind it, then, you know, okay, $5 gets me 500 more views of people in my community. So if I put $10, then I can get, you know, a thousand views on this video. 00:14:38 And you can do that, you know, once a week, it just keeps you at the, the like forefront of people's minds as a go-to source about the topic that you are able help them with. And so to that end, you know, I think let's talk about content and what should people be putting out there to attract, you know, new, 00:15:05 new business, whether it's a new patient or whether it's a new referral source, you know, you see a spectrum of posts ranging from like inspirational, have nothing to do with anything to, you know, very specific medically related posts. What works for content? How often should we put it out? How long should that post be? I mean, there are these people who are prolific writers and you just sit there and go, 00:15:31 that's not me. I feel so uncomfortable. You know, give us a sense of what what's the ideal post, Right? Okay. Yes. I wish that there were some easy answer I have for you or like do this and it will work. But the truth is that it really depends on you. How much time you have, how much help you have, 00:15:53 how interested you are in spending time in these spaces, which is probably not, not very for your audience, but some people do find it to be like a creative, fun outlet. You'll find those people usually like dancing on tic-tac about like the vaccine or something and more power to them if they want to do that. But that's, that's not your typical person who's listening to your podcast. 00:16:18 So, so I would say that, you know, tested out what I recommend to people is what do you think is manageable for you? So I would rather see someone post two or three times a week to the designated channel that you've decided to put your energy in because that's where you think your audience is hanging out. So two to three posts there, 00:16:40 I'd rather see that happen consistently over a month, then, you know, okay, we're going to dive into social media and then you are doing a bunch of posts for two weeks or something, and you've decided to get on there daily and you burn out. So really I would say focus on consistency so that you're doing it over time, focus on batching. 00:17:04 So your, your, you could do your whole month all in one day and, and get help where, where you can so help to me, it looks like you, as a doctor are the subject matter expert. You are the one that's putting your, your personality and your expertise into the content, but you do not need to be the person who's like making it pretty or look branded and, 00:17:32 and spending time on Canva and all those things. That's something that an assistant in your office can help you with. That's something that a virtual assistant can help you with. It's something that you own your own practice. You can pay your kids to help with, and then they can buy their Starbucks and their sneakers with pre-tax dollars. But that's another conversation, 00:17:57 but there, there are definitely ways to, to get help where, where you are spending time in, in the area where you are the expert, but not wasting time on things that, that just aren't crucial to your practice. Well, and I think to that end, you know, one of the things I want to point out is, you know, 00:18:18 I'm sure you've heard about the three A's right? Y Y Y do you know patients or doctors refer to you? Why, why somebody get him to come to see you when there are the three A's there's affability, there is availability and then there's ability, right? So the things that really, you know, you want to convey in these posts are that you are a nice, 00:18:42 friendly person, that your practice has up availability, right? I mean, if you're posting and your next available appointment is in six months, that that's an issue, right? Because what's the purpose of your posts. If it's to drive more people to your practice and you have no ability to see them, that's an issue, but really, you know, 00:19:06 the content that you post is your opportunity to show people your ability in terms of a medical content, but also your ability to communicate that information. Because if you're a physician who writes a post that is so medically technical, right, then your community that tells me a lot about your communication skill to your patient, because the person who's reading this probably once an understanding at a level that they actually can digest that information. 00:19:38 So you have to think about when you're posting, who, who your target audience is, and are you communicating the, inform the content to them in a way that's going to convince them that you're both affable and that you have ability. So to that end, you know, I think one of the other things I would like to, to have us talk about is, 00:20:03 you know, understanding the purpose of posting, you know, it, it's great to post, but ultimately right. You, you want people to do something about that post, right? So how, how one of the things I think that makes doctors very uncomfortable is the sense of marketing, of trying to talk to enough clinicians who are like, Ooh, 00:20:26 marketing seems creepy to me. How, how do you advise us to put out content, put out a post that ultimately is includes a call to action, which is that marketing component. Yeah. Okay. Question. So definitely you're always going to want to add some call to action. So call to action could be comment. And let me know if this resonated with you, 00:20:58 let me know if this helped you. We're thinking of offering evening hours, one, one night of the week, which day is better for you Tuesday or Thursday, or, you know, so there are, you can ask a question and that alone could be the call to action that you're just encouraging them to engage with your content. If you shared a video, 00:21:21 you're asking them to share that's your call to action, asking them to share it. So a lot of times the, the purpose of your posts is just to nurture that audience, to get them to, if you, if you want them to see your content again, you need them to engage with it. So comment share, like do something, do something with your content. 00:21:44 Those are all calls to action, but sometimes you're going to want them to actually come in. So it's, you know, we just got a delivery of vaccines. Here's how to make your appointment. And you're giving them a link to your portal on your website, things like that. So you're actually asking them now you're asking them to, to conduct business with you. 00:22:09 You know, so it is, you know, as much as doctors don't want to sell, you're selling your service all the time. You're convincing them to do something that's in their best interest by having a transaction with your practice. So, so it doesn't have to be this sleazy marketing feeling. It just means that you have a way to help them. 00:22:32 You want them to accept that help by coming into your office. So letting them know how to do that, rum minding them, that, you know, now's a great time to get your flu shot. Now's a great time to, you know, focus on making sure that you're getting your, your physical exams, like whatever it is that you are offering, 00:22:56 letting them know how to access that service is, is something that you can do in your social media content. And like you said, about making sure that you are available. So part of that is that, you know, for the, the clients whose pages I manage, there are many, many people who are actually, instead of going to the website or emailing the practice, 00:23:19 they're actually going to the social media page to, to reach you. So part of that is making sure that you have a process. You have somebody, and it doesn't have to be the physician, but somebody in the practice who's checking that somewhat consistently. And you also have like an autoresponder in there to let them know. You know, we get back to you within this many hours. 00:23:40 If you don't hear from us, please call the office or whatever, so that they are able to reach you. And, and before we go on, I do want to echo something that you said, because I think this is a very, very important point. Doctors sell all day, every day. We just don't call it that, right? If I tell you, 00:24:02 Wendy, you need to take Lipitor because your cholesterol is high. And I give you the list of reasons, why you need to take Lipitor or why you need to change your eating habits or whatever it is. And I am convincing you of something. I am basically selling you on that idea. Okay. We don't call it selling where basically just taking care of you, 00:24:23 right? But when you convince somebody to do something, you're selling them on an idea. This is really no different. And so while people, while physicians are trained to think that selling is out of our wheelhouse, the reality is it's actually something that we are trained to do exceptionally well, and that we need to actually embrace that. Now, one thing that I also want to talk about is, 00:24:50 you know, one of the issues with social media is that if you have all of these followers on social media, they, you don't actually have any real connection to them. So, you know, how, how do you, you know, one of my favorite things is trying to figure out how do you actually get these people on an email list? 00:25:09 How do you get them to your website? How do you get them to a newsletter? Do you think that that has a role? And, and do you fear, you know, the loss of the access to those followers, if you simply have them on social media? Yeah. Good question. So we were definitely hanging out on, on rented ground when you are on social media. 00:25:34 I think we had like a Facebook and Instagram outage somewhat recently as we're recording this. So I posted the next day on my Instagram, like a meme of, of, I think it was like a Seinfeld meme of someone like yelling. And it was like marketers everywhere. Build an email list because your email lists are people that you can access at any point. 00:25:58 Like you said, if there's a, you know, or like, if there's a snow day, if there's a hurricane, depending on where you're located, something like that, that's something you could post on your Facebook page, but you could also email that out. So yes, an email list is definitely important and a, and a piece of the marketing puzzle and social media is a great way to get people on your email list. 00:26:25 So there's a lot of ways to do that. One, you know, you could have a, a certain sort of resource that's related to your practice that is accessible on your website. And the challenge is just trying trial and error of figuring out what it is that they're going to find your audience is going to find most helpful, that they're willing to give you their email in exchange for that information. 00:26:52 A good place to start is by figuring out what people are asking you all the time. You know, so if you have something that in your office, you could probably just right now in the next two minutes, think of the things that people ask you all the time. And those are great sources for your content, great sources of your videos and resources for like some sort of freebie type type little workbook or whatever that you can put together and have on your website. 00:27:24 And people can give you your, their email in exchange for that. Now I have seen people, if you are really love writing, one of my clients has built a massive newsletter in the pandemic and people have just kind of tuned out a lot of news and are just following her because of her email newsletter. And I would say that that's rare. She is an excellent writer. 00:27:49 She's funny. And she does a great job of, of taking all of the data and the information in this scary news and breaking it down into like, just, you know, here's what we, here's what we're taking from this. And she interprets it for her audience. So if you have a great newsletter, you can get people to just sign up for your newsletter. 00:28:12 But it's, that's, that's a high bar that not many people are able to achieve these days. Again, back in the early, I'd say like, or the late, maybe 28, 29, you could just say, sign up for my newsletter and people would, but, but now they're a little bit more cheesy. So figuring out a resource that they want is a great way to do it another great way. 00:28:36 If you are comfortable doing this, you can do a workshop or some sort of like webinar. I have. One of my clients does some they're in pediatrics. So they'll do some parenting workshops on zoom, things like that. And if you or someone in your practice could get on there, you could partner with someone in the community. So maybe you are offering the medical side and you're working with a mental health provider, 00:29:05 or someone in your community are doing it together. And it could just be like a Q and a or something, but when people sign up for that, they will be giving you their email on zoom in order to get into the workshop. So those are a great way to collect email addresses. Well, and, and ultimately not only is it a great way to collect email addresses, 00:29:28 ultimately in order for a patient to want to come and see you in order for a doctor to want to refer to you, right? They have to know like, and trust you. And, and we talk a lot about that and learning somebody's style coming to know, like, and trust them. It's not something that happens in five minutes. You have to basically be out there and show that relationship over and over in order to get people to want to come see you. 00:29:57 Right? And so if you do a webinar, people get to see your style. If you ha you know, if you smile and you're personable, that goes a long way to alleviating the gee. I wonder if this is a friendly doctor, if you are grumpy, you know, and then don't do a webinar, I guess. Well, one of, 00:30:18 one of the last questions I want to discuss with you is, you know, we're, we're telling people all of these different strategies, but at the end of the day, the real question is how do we measure the success of these efforts? You know, because ultimately there has to be a return on the investment. And I don't necessarily mean monetary in terms of Facebook ads. 00:30:44 I mean, there are certainly strategies that we can discuss for how do you measure the success of a Facebook ad? They're actually metrics within Facebook business manager that you can look at. But I think the issue on a daily basis for the physician, who's thinking, oh, okay, I have to now add social media marketing to my already busy existence. How do we measure whether it's actually working? 00:31:11 What are your thoughts in terms of how do you tell people to measure? Yeah. So what I recommend, and this can be really easy. You can do this just in Excel or something is, you know, if you're coming up with a plan to create content consistently over time, you know, give yourself at least a span of time. So say six months or a year or something, 00:31:33 it's, nothing's going to happen on social media overnight. It takes a lot more time to show some not growth, but, but real concrete progress is not going to happen in a month or two months or something. It does take some time to show progress. But what I would want to see is that you, you just month by month, you're recording how many followers you have, 00:31:58 your, how many accounts you're reaching. So how many people you're reaching, what's your engagement rate? So how many people have done something with your con your content liked, it opened the photo to get a closer look, commented, shared. Those are all ways that they engage with your content. So those are the metrics that we typically follow. So that would be, 00:32:25 you know, followers reach how many accounts are reaching, how much engagement you're getting and how many direct messages, you know, how many people are actually getting in touch with you based on your content. So I would just want to see those increase over time. I'd want to see you reaching more people each month, getting more followers each month, having your engagement rate increase. 00:32:51 So getting more people to comment like, or share your content and seeing that over time, you're gonna know that that you're, that you're reaching more people. You're staying top of mind in your community. And, and you're open for business. You know, what you're doing is working. And I will take that one step further. I think those are things that you absolutely have to track, 00:33:19 but then I think the real thing on that Excel spreadsheet, and it's probably a separate Excel spreadsheet, number one, and number two, it is something that needs to be entered into your practice management EMR. And that is where did that referral come from? Right? It in today's software, there are usually two fields. There's, who's your primary care doctor. 00:33:45 And then there's, where did the referral come from? Okay. And you can basically create a list and that can be a doctor's name. It can be a friend, but it can also be Google ads. It can be Facebook. And then you can run a monthly report of how many people found you through social media, right? So that you, 00:34:08 aside from just getting likes or engagement, that, that in turn translated into somebody actually coming to see you, and then you can actually do patient surveys on a monthly basis, right. Or quarterly basis. However often you can put together the manpower to do it, where you actually ask your patients, how did you hear, you know, aside from patient satisfaction, 00:34:37 one of the questions is how did you hear about us and give them a checklist of, so it may be that they were referred by Dr. Smith, but they may also have seen your posts on Facebook. So you really want to be able to tie in not only that engagement, but does that engagement translate into somebody physically showing up in your office? 00:35:00 I think you just have to take it with a grain of salt though, because like that last example you gave. So if someone mentioned a certain practice and they're the person that refers for you to the practice, that's what you're going to put down. However, they checked out your Facebook page or more likely your Instagram page is a place that a lot of people will check out to see, 00:35:22 like you said, is this someone who's who can solve my problem. And as someone who, you know, is likable, who I would want to go to. So I always say that the, the physicians social media, it's not necessarily a place where people will leave a ton of comments or a lot of likes, but it doesn't mean they're not looking. 00:35:48 I think He left. No, it is absolutely a place that they look you up, which is why asking, how did you hear about us and giving them a, a, a way to check off a number of different places because you're right. They may not have found you initially, but they probably went and checked out your Facebook page and your website before they scheduled that appointment. 00:36:11 And if you get data that tells you, Hey, they're looking there, then it tells you, okay, I should keep posting there because ultimately even if they didn't find me, initially, they are showing up to see what I have. Right, Right, Right. So, Wendy, this was great. I think, you know, you've given us a whole bunch of tips on how to think about social media marketing and how it goes into a, 00:36:38 a bigger plan for people to kind of grow their practices. If you would indeed send me that link. I will post in the show notes below how to separate out the audiences. I think a lot of people will be interested in knowing how to do that. And I'll also post your information in the show notes below. And again, thank you so much for coming to join me today. 00:37:00 Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It was good talking to you and I will definitely send you the link for how to separate your audiences as well as where to find me. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. All right. Thanks Joining me. Please be sure to sign up for my newsletter below, I'll be sending you tips on how to start a practice, 00:37:20 grow a practice, and then add multiple services so that you can maximize your Revenue.