Social media marketing is an important component of a successful marketing plan

If you think that your website is the only tool you need to attract new patients, allow us to introduce you to social media marketing. Each month, billions of people flock to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. If your practice doesn’t have a social media presence on one or more of these platforms, you’re simply missing out on all these potential patients. Let’s explore some of the most popular social media platforms and how you can use them to market your practice.

It’s important to be on the platforms where your patients are

The social media landscape is vast, so it can seem overwhelming to start promoting your practice using social media marketing. Thankfully, we have good news for you. You don’t have to be everywhere. You just need to be where your patients are. As a result, you should be thinking about who your audience is and what your specific marketing goals are. These considerations will help you select the best platform for you.

For example, let’s say that you have a fertility clinic, and you’d like to attract more IVF patients. Start by picturing what type of patient typically pursues in vitro fertilization at your clinic. At the most basic level, you’re probably thinking of a woman in her 30s to early-40s. This means that Facebook is a great platform to use for social media marketing in this case.

Why? Because ages 25-34 (13.2% of women) and ages 35-44 (9.8% of women) make up the two biggest age groups of female Facebook users. When you consider that Facebook has more than two billion monthly active users, this is a huge slice of the social media pie.

What do you need to know about other platforms for social media marketing?

You now know a little bit about the types of people who are on Facebook, but what about some of the other social media platforms?

Let’s start with Instagram. This is another heavy hitter, with one billion users. However, the platform tends to attract a younger demographic. In fact, 67% of all young adults under age 30 have an Instagram account. If you use our example of the fertility clinic from before, Instagram would be a great place to recruit potential egg donors (women typically under the age of 30).

Twitter and LinkedIn are two other platforms that often come to mind. In terms of users, they both have around 300 million users. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but it’s also nowhere near Facebook and Instagram. As for the user breakdown, LinkedIn tends to attract a higher-income and college educated audience who is typically just looking for career content. In contrast, the Twitter demographic tends to be younger (38% of people are between the ages of 18 and 29).

A final platform that we’d like to mention is Pinterest. The platform’s 322 million monthly active users are mostly female by a ratio of three women to one man. Most of the people on this platform are seeking inspiration and helpful content about topics ranging from home décor to health and fitness.

Turn to Catalyst Healthcare Marketing for help with your social media

Now that you know a little bit more about social media, you might be looking for someone to help you with your social media presence. Catalyst has several social media experts on our team who would be happy to assist you. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you.