Many people think that social media marketing just needs one post to go viral, and then you’ll be rolling in engagement and growing like gangbusters. Others think that there are secret internet codes to follow, or that quick posts here and there will give you linear social media growth. It’s really important to understand that social media marketing requires strategic effort, consistency, creativity, and above all time.
According to Social Media Today, many business owners surveyed said that they didn’t feel like their social media marketing took hold for two years. That may seem like a long time to wait, but it shouldn’t be discouraging. Social media marketing is still worthwhile, and great way to communicate with your patients. The point of discussing this is to get people to change their mindset about the purpose—and the reality—of social media marketing. If you think it should pay off immediately, then of course you’re going to get discouraged. If you realize that social media engagement is like growing a relationship that requires time to build trust and familiarity, then it becomes more apparent why this kind of marketing needs time and care.
If you are feeling like your social media efforts aren’t gaining traction and engagement with your fans, here are some things to consider.
Are your pages easy to find with your business name, location, keywords, and contact information? If your social media pages are under your personal name, but nothing is connected to your practice name, that can be a big reason that no one is finding your social profiles.
Are you posting consistently, inviting people to join the conversation, and responding quickly to comments, reviews, and questions? It’s not enough to just have pages and expect them to drive traffic. Sometimes it makes sense to set up a page and not really use it if you’re waiting to see if the platform gains traffic, or if it’s like Google+ where you want the Google business listing but see that the social side of the platform is being phased out. Otherwise, in the case of sites like Facebook, you’re not really going to grow at all or gain people’s attention if you’re not consistently on the site, interacting with people, and using real life invitations to drive digital engagement.
Is your content interesting? Content curation (posting other people’s content to your site to help inform your readers) is one best practice of social media marketing, and so is posting about sales and promotions. But social media pages go wrong with they only post about one thing or another. If every post is self-promotion, people will tire of hearing of it. If every post is a link to someone else’s site, you may be missing important web traffic for your own site. Make sure you’re posting interesting content that is varied in topic and media.
Finally, if none of this is working and your engagement is still low and slow to gain additional fans, consider paid advertising. Some industries and markets are very competitive, but few practices take advantage of the inexpensive and effective paid advertising options on social media.
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