Is Social Media A Must For All Businesses?
Does delving into social media for your healthcare organization feel overwhelming? We get it. New territory, new strategies, new anything can feel like a lot. But let’s be clear: You don’t have to be on social media. It’s not a requirement. And if you feel like you’re being forced to participate, there’s a good chance that will reflect in the quality of your content.
That said, I do think you’re missing out on some important opportunities by completely eschewing social media. They include:
- The opportunity to show different sides of your organization’s brand
- The opportunity to talk about the things that matter to your and your clients
- The opportunity to conduct low-cost tests that can influence your marketing strategy
- The opportunity to create a community outside the business
- The opportunity to drive revenue
And there are plenty more, depending on the focus of your business and the needs of your clients. So, no, you don’t have to be on social media, but it’s perhaps more important to say that you don’t have to be on all social media.
Unless you’re an organization that employs a social media team (or offload the work to an agency), then you probably don’t have the capacity to have an effective social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, SnapChat, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Discord, and the numerous other online communities there are out there.
What’s more important, in our opinion, is that you choose one platform and you build the best possible strategy around it. But which one should you choose? Well, let’s talk about it.
What Social Media Platform Is Right For You? It Depends.
As is the case with any project, we need to establish goals. What do you want to achieve through your social media?
Is this a way to engage with current and potential clients?
Are you trying to educate the public?
Would you like to build a community?
These are very different goals, and depending on the organization, we would recommend entirely different social media platforms.
If engagement with current and potential clients is your goal, then a platform like Facebook is likely the best fit.
If you want to provide public education, then TikTok or X are strong options.
And if you’re interested in building a very specific community, then Reddit or Discord are good options for investing your time and energy.
Your goals, the people whom you hope to reach, and your creativity are the primary drivers of what social media platform is best for your organization.
So why not just share the same information across all platforms? Because the platforms themselves are built to share information in very different ways, and the people who use them tend to have very different expectations of how content should be served to them.
With that in mind, let’s go over some of the most popular platforms and discuss their distinctions, so you can choose the best social media for your healthcare organization.
The Nuances Of Social Media For Businesses
Facebook’s longevity and features make it a platform where users engage in their community. In this sense, community could mean friends and family, or it could mean anything from a local to a global personal interest.
Businesses have taken great advantage of the Facebook platform to tell people-driven stories about the issues that matter most to their clients. In this way, it’s the perfect vehicle for cutting through the noise of your competitors and connecting with your audience in a more personal way.
Some of the best ways to create engagement with your Facebook audience include:
- Client success stories
- Team announcements
- Breakthroughs and advancements
- Community involvement
- In-person and virtual events
TikTok
TikTok opens up a world of storytelling that no other platform can match, due to the many ways users can edit and present video.
Though it’s impossible to predict what will resonate with a large scale audience, TikTok requires a different creative approach than platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn in order to break through. The best advice we can give is to keep your storytelling clear, succinct, and informative in order to keep viewers engaged.
Some of the best ways to create engagement with your TikTok audience include:
- Demonstrations
- Reenactments
- Quick tips
- What to expect overviews
- Validate information
- Debunk misinformation
While LinkedIn has for many years been the premier platform for professional networking and recruiting, it’s been evolving in our post-pandemic world by becoming a venue for workers and employers to have an all-new conversation about work in the 21st Century.
Remote work, personal branding, innovations in technology, and more are discussed on a day-to-day basis on LinkedIn. There’s never been a better time to have genuine conversations about the world of work than right now.
Some of the best ways to create engagement with your LinkedIn audience include:
- Surveys
- Sharing interesting content from colleagues or business pages
- Showcasing your business’s brand values
- Feature training and development accomplishments
- Engaging directly with other peers and organizations
- Highlighting community service projects
Social Media Is A Tool — Use It Like A Craftsperson
Social media is rarely an overnight success story. It takes patience, commitment, and consistency in order to achieve your goals.
At Formada, we focus the majority of our social media efforts on LinkedIn because it’s the platform that possesses the right balance of professionalism and personal storytelling that best serves our audience and our brand.
We recommend that you follow the same four basic tenets that we do when we devised our own social media strategy:
• Be Human — It’s social media. And while “digital” marketing is our business, building strong, trusting relationships is what makes our business so successful. We tell human stories. How can your organization create real human connections through social media?
• Be Curious — We don’t know all of the answers. No one does. So we never let pride get in the way of our curiosity. We want to learn as much as we possibly can, so we interact with as many people and businesses as we can in order to learn, connect, and improve.
• Be Consistent — Content marketing, like blogging, lies at the heart of our brand strategy. But we don’t publish whatever we want whenever we want. Our content is carefully considered and consistently published week after week in order to increase predictability and engagement.
• Be Courteous — We’re grateful for every like, share, and comment that we get — even the ones that we might not agree with. Again, we don’t know all of these answers, and a healthy dialog encourages continuous improvement.
Want to learn more about how you can get the most out of social media for your healthcare organization? Formada can help! We offer consulting, social media management, content marketing, and so many more tactics that can help you engage more of the people you need in order to grow your business.
Contact us today for your free consultation! We’d love to help you achieve your goals.