Archive for November, 2018

Every marketer today wants to make their brand presence felt. That is the reason why social media is being leveraged on a big scale.  Whether one owns an established business or a startup, social media marketing is something that everyone is using to reach and communicate with the customers. Doesn’t it make sense to be in a place where the crowd is? One often comes across some social media marketing activities that fail. While, on the other hand, some Facebook and Twitter pages become popular than the others. Many times, marketers observe that their competitors are doing better than them in social media marketing!

Everybody does make mistakes. How can social media marketers be any different? But the fact is, making too many mistakes can see the followers dwindle and their count drop. Indeed, it does affect the revenue of a business. As with all mistakes, the first step is understanding and becoming aware of them. It then becomes easier to avoid them in the future. Let’s discuss top five common social media marketing mistakes that one must avoid in the coming year – 2019.

1. Undefined goals and targeting the wrong audience. As a marketer, one may be working very hard, yet they may suffer badly if they aim and shoot in the dark. A marketer needs to ensure that they are not targeting the wrong audience. The key to success in social media marketing is to know and reach the target audience.

Most marketers commit one of the biggest social media marketing mistakes, that is, not properly defining their goals. Can anyone win without a goal? Once the goals are set, one can start working on their social media strategy and create a plan. For example, some of the goals that work well with social media could be to improve customer engagement or increase event attendance or increase website visits, etc.

Read more: Five Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2019

Patient engagement via social media and digital marketing are vital for growing medical practices, says health care marketing consultant Jennifer Dally, of Attune Marketing Group in Powell, Ohio.

Speaking at the 2018 annual meeting of the Large Urology Group Practice Association, Dally said the physician-patient relationship is about more than diagnosis and treatment. What patients want most is connection, which “brings peace of mind.” Transparency, active listening, trust, convenience, customer service, and good communication are among the attributes that patients say establish connection, Dally says.

“We expect a certain level of experience in general as a consumer, and that has translated into the health care world as well,” she says.

Attempts to improve the patient experience can be simple. For example, Dally says, when physicians wrap up a patient visit, they can say to a patient, “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

Physicians need to understand that patients already have been on a medical journey before a medical encounter. “I’m trying to give them context of the journey patients take before they arrive at their practice and what could they do to influence that journey.”

She emphasizes 4 essentials for every medical practice: a website; search business listings; social media engagement; and review management. A website must consider patients’ needs, not those of the practice. All websites should enable patients to pay bills online and to schedule appointments, as well as provide a link to a patient portal, she says. Website content should be produced with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. The goal is to have a website rank high on search engine results pages. This determines how patients or physicians find a practice “in the digital landscape,” Dally says. High Google rankings matter a lot, she says.

Read more: Social Media, Digital Marketing Key to Building Medical Practices