What social media should my practice be on?

Posted on by ASCENT: Administrator Support Community for ENT

With so many options in the social media space, it can be difficult to know exactly where you should spend your time and resources. How do you know where you should have a presence? Like most marketing channels, you should go where your audience is.

Know you audience

A key piece of knowledge in marketing strategies is know who your audience is. For some practices, it may be patients who are 65 years or older. For others, it may be adult children in the 30s or 40s who help their parents to appointments. Maybe parents of children who need a specialist. Whomever your audience is should play a starring role in any marketing strategy especially on social media.

Why

Social media is a content heavy platform. Content marketing is great way to connect and build lasting relationships with your audience. Sure, you could post cat videos and gain a following, but posting content that is in line with your mission, values and services will help you build an audience of followers who will either use or advocate for your services.

Now what

Once you have identified your audience, it’s time to find where they are at on social media. Since most social platforms collect data on their users, this information is pretty easy to find and should be revisited every year to ensure your audience matches your social media platforms. Below are some popular social platforms and audiences totals as calculated by Pew in 2016.

Facebook
1.9 billion Users and the best place to reach people ages 18 to 65 and older.

Twitter
317 million Users and the best place to reach people 18 to 29.

Instagram
600 million users and the best place to reach people younger than 35.

Check the audience

So, the next time you read an article telling you to join Snapchat, the first thing you should do is check the platform’s demographics. If they fit with who you are trying to reach, then join. But if the audience is not your audience, take serious look at how much time and effort you would be using in comparison to what you would receive from it.