Instagram has gained impressive traction during the past few years. It has an incredibly high rate of interaction, making this powerful platform for healthcare marketing the perfect avenue for building an audience and establishing connections and robust relationships with patients, both present and potential. Some healthcare professionals may feel that Instagram accounts should be used for personal purposes and not for professional reasons. However, as per a report published by Deloitte in 2016, healthcare consumers or patients are increasingly looking for more engaging and interactive digital experiences and far greater personalization from doctors and other healthcare providers. It implies that your bottom line could be immensely benefitted if you focus on getting connected with patients or healthcare consumers on predominantly a personal level using engaging digital content. All medical practitioners should realize that Instagram is the perfect platform, to establish and boost their social media awareness and establish a robust social media presence.
As per Techcrunch.com, Instagram has been focusing on its potential as a great source of news, employing its ubiquity for distributing COVID-19 prevention tips and strategies via a new call-out right at the very top of the home screen feed. We know that Instagram is the perfect platform for marketing your medical practice, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instagram boasts of over 1 billion monthly active users, however, 75% of them generally, take action responding to the content of the platform. These features make Instagrammers certainly the right audience for medical practitioners and healthcare providers. Instagrammers are known to be interacting far more in comparison to other social networking sites and they are willing to visit and browse through a clinic’s or hospital’s websites, product pages, or profiles.
Instagram: The Powerhouse Photo-App Just Right for Healthcare Marketing
We know that Instagram is supposed to be a powerhouse photo app for healthcare marketing. If you have witnessed Instagram’s phenomenal popularity and meteoric rise to the status of the top few social media platforms, it is the best time for you to connect with this versatile social sharing channel having a mighty audience. Instagram could be effectively leveraged for healthcare and hospital messaging. Different sectors of the medical fraternity are compelled to follow certain higher standards and policies that uphold patient confidentiality and privacy. However, institutions and providers should look for positive visual opportunities to boost good health and happiness. Here are some effective ways how Instagram could go a long way in augmenting the social outreach of a healthcare provider or clinic. Instagram provides a powerful platform to medical practitioners for storytelling and building trust & rapport with the right audience. Instagram gives opportunities to:
· Respond to common questions
· Present community annual report
· Demystify procedures and places
· Inform or educate patients
· Introduce department, facility, or office
· Meet physicians and medical staff
· Promote fundraising and contributions
· Come across new equipment, cutting-edge products & services, and state-of-the-art facilities
· Highlight special visitors and special events
· Provide Simple “How-to” directives & guidelines
· Share morale boosters and testimonials
Instagram Tips for Promoting Your Medical Practice
Come Up with a Brilliant Look Book of Different Cases
Previously patients would visit your website to browse through some procedures and see their ‘before and after’ pictures. However, today patients are happier to see this fascinating and informative content on the visual platform called Instagram. You may focus on using your Instagram feed for flaunting various procedures. You may consider capturing some before and after shots. If you seem to be a cosmetic surgeon, you may choose to blur out sensitive content to make your realistic pictures slightly more user-friendly. In case, this doesn’t seem plausible, you may post a disclaimer graphic just before presenting the case and sharing it on Instagram. This way you could gain numerous followers. In this context, you may get in touch with a reliable digital marketing company to buy 20 Instagram likes.
Consider Regramming
Just like retweets on Twitter, reposting your or someone else’s content to give it a boost after it is posted on Instagram is called regramming. If you’re regramming the photos of satisfied patients who have visited your offices before, this could be a great way to spread goodwill and a solid marketing move. If the posts you want to share are in patients’ stories instead of their feed, you can also regram them by selecting “add to my story” from the menu. It is worth mentioning that there are some things you must remember- using patient data must be in compliance with HIPAA regulations, and you must obtain their written consent for you to use their posts in case it is brought up in the future.
Focus on Streaming via IGTV
Instagram has long moved on from being just a platform for posting just pictures. In fact, if you don’t know about or are wilfully ignoring the prospect of live-streaming on IGTV, you might be missing out on a huge opportunity to engage with your fans on a whole new medium without much effort from your end. IGTV has been around for a while now, but it is still ripe for adoption, and the medical field isn’t quick to pivot on digital platforms. You can jump on the bus now, and see more people exposed to your services than ever before. This can be especially useful if you are, for example, a cosmetic surgeon wanting to display his work, or a gynecologist posting pictures of the cutest babies, of course, with their parents’ consent.
Engage and Respond to Questions
Medical professionals tend to receive questions on social media regularly, and it might be a great idea for you to make the most of Instagram’s Q&A feature. You can create a video post as a response to each of these questions covering them in as much detail as possible. This will save you the trouble of having to sift through tons of inbox messages replying to the same thing, and also really help out those in need of answers. What’s better is that you can just share the post link to anyone who might ask you these questions outside of Instagram as well, and it will serve the purpose and save you time and effort along the way.
Conclusion
Besides, following the above-discussed tips, you may consider using grid planning apps. We understand that medical practices and clinics could boost their Instagram following by meticulously planning out their grid of pictures a week or a couple of weeks before posting anything. It should go a long way in establishing a robust brand aesthetic that is so vital to all potential followers.
