As a healthcare professional branding yourself and your practice may not be something that you?ve heard about before. It may be a new term for you. But, it?s one that you really need to know and understand if you?re going to use social media effectively to build your practice online. Don?t let this new term scare you. Hopefully, after going through this blog post, you?ll have a clear idea of how you?re going to brand your practice on social media.
First, let’s talk about what branding is and what having a brand for your practice actually means. The loose definition of branding is ?what someone says about you or your practice when you?re not in the room.? So, what do you want your followers and audience to say about your practice when they?re telling their friends and family about why they should follow you? How do you want patients to feel about your practice when they?re coming into your office for the first time after finding you on social media? That?s essentially what branding is. And once you?re clear on these things then you can start to actually build your brand.
Now that you?ve got a rough idea of what you want your brand to look like, let?s talk about the five things you need to do to brand your practice on social media:
1. Use consistent handles across the board: make it super easy for people to find your practice online and on their favorite social media platforms. When you use the same social media handle, aka your username, it?s easy for people to find you on all of the social media platforms that they?re on. I recommend that even if you?re not going to use a certain platform right now that you go ahead and get your handle just in case that platform becomes popular and you want to go start sharing content over there later.
2. Use the same profile photos: another way to brand yourself on social media is to make sure that you?re using the same profile picture on each social media platform that you?re using. You?ll have to determine if this will be your headshot since you?re the healthcare professional people will be wanting to see, or your company’s logo. But, whichever one you choose, it should be the same one that you use on every single platform that you have for your practice.
3. Determine if you will be the face of your practice: this is completely a personal decision but it?s one that you need to make up front as you start to get serious about your social media marketing. So, will you share pictures of you, your life, your family, etc. on social media to help your audience connect more with you? Or, will you focus on sharing the work that you do with your patients? Or, will there be a mixture of these things?
4. Create a color palette and theme: if you?ve had your brand professionally designed, then you may already have this for you. If not, then you?ll want to choose a few colors that you?ll focus your social media marketing around so that people feel like things are consistent and they can come to know a certain vibe and feel from the content that you share with them. The more comfortable you become with branding yourself on social media the better you?ll get a creating a certain brand aesthetic that people can get used to seeing from you.
5. Determine your post style: the final piece of branding your practice on social media is to create a posting style. Think about the kind of content that you will be posting and how you want things to be laid out. Now, you don?t have to stick to this style for every single post but it does make it easier for you to create content and not waste time thinking about what to do next. So, will you do transformation Tuesday and share a message about working with you on Thursdays? Think about these things now so you don?t have to think about them later.
There you have it, these are the five areas you need to think about when it comes building a brand for your practice on social media. I think that it?s important to work through these things before you create more posts on social media. You?ll thank yourself for taking the time to get clear on your brand so that you know the direction that you?re going.?
