Social Media 101 for PTs

Social media can be a powerful way for PT clinics to increase visibility, build trust in their community, and ultimately attract more new patients—but only when you have the right strategy behind it.

In this episode, Neil Trickett, PT and CEO of Practice Promotions, breaks down Social Media 101 for PTs and the key strategies clinic owners need to grow their practice through social media.

We cover:

• How to optimize your social media profiles for search
• Why social media is becoming a search engine
• How Google Business Profile can support local visibility
• Why video and storytelling are essential for engaging content
• How to showcase your staff and patient success stories
• How often PT clinics should post—and how to batch content
• How UTM tracking can measure which posts drive website traffic
• The difference between PR, marketing, and sales

If you want to stop posting just to stay active and start using social media to support real practice growth, this episode will give you a clear strategy to get started.

Want to grow your PT clinic with smarter marketing? Contact the Practice Promotions team at https://practicepromotions.net/!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:03

Um, hopping right into things. So right now, your best um competitor is winning a race that you're not what running in. And it's not really just on skill, it's all on visibility. Um, in today's world, you know, like I said just a second ago, there's so many different channels, so many different opportunities to have your brand in front of people. And social media is a big one. A lot of people are leaning into it in terms of search, which we'll get into in just a second. But it's a huge, huge opportunity to showcase your skills specifically to your audience or to your community, right? Show and tell is the really big thing on social, but we got to get you in search first before you can show and tell, right? And you do all of this work for your SEO keywords and your website and things like that. So we want to make you searchable on socials too, right? And really close that gap. So working on visibility there. Today, what I want you to walk away with just point blank, period, is opportunity to get found locally. And then, of course, send that traffic back to your website again. Like I said, your big beautiful star child is your website. So we want to send them back there. Hopefully, get them back in the door too. Um, number two, content people actually want to watch and how the platforms rank it is also very important. So, video first and why, that's probably not a shock, but we'll get into that in just a second. And then the number one hashtag strategy that's working for RPT clinics right now to increase that visibility. That really is the important thing that we're wanting to promote today. Um, so we'll get into all three of these pillars as we continue along.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

And Miguel, um, yeah, one thing, sorry, I just want to add one thing here uh for our practice owners out there. Being a physical therapist myself, being a former practice owner myself, um, I actually did a great podcast uh the other day here, a group called Movement X. And um we're about stories within our clinic. Just think of all the patient's stories and impacts you have within your clinic on a daily basis. The secret to marketing your clinic is how you can tell those stories that occur every single day in your practice to people that don't know you in your community and get aware of you in your community. So social media isn't just a thing that's nice to do, it's something that's critical to the way that you market your practice and how you really tell the stories of transformations and all those amazing outcomes that you get within the clinic out to the world. Uh so that that's uh it's a it's a mindset shift, and I want to make sure that we're going into this with not just um thinking about the you know the little nuances of the things that will make it successful, but really just the whole premise of why are we doing this in the first place? Why am I going to work with my staff to to you know collect video, to collect photos, to collect stories? Like why should I put the effort into this? Because it is one of the critical things in your marketing is how well uh you are at taking those stories from the clinic and telling them to the world.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

I love that foundation. I think that's a wonderful approach to start us off strong, Neil. Great addition there. So, really stepping into why we do this, right? Exactly what Neil was talking about is one in three consumers now start their search on socials, right? So they want to hear those stories, they want to see your staff members. They just kind of want to go straight to the horse's mouth, right? That's really what they're looking for. So the other two are obviously still on Google. That's not a dominant, you know, Google is king. We're not counting that out. But search is creating opportunity in a different spot. And you need to show up in both places because as we know, there's opportunity for all. So that's really why we're promoting search and the opportunity there.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

A little bit of-seen, sorry, McKenna, I was saying we're also seeing, right, that um in the rise of AI searches, chat GPT, AI overviews, that's scraping the internet, right? That's scraping social media. And I'm sure you see that clinics that are very proactive in their social media and the clinics that are not, that has an impact on their um AI searchability. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 4:23

A hundred percent. I was on a walk with my husband last night and I asked Siri something and it took me to Chat GPT. And it took me right there, right? And so you don't even realize how integrative those AI systems really are. But, you know, think if you're in pain and you're asking Siri, you know, hey, what's the closest physical therapy clinic near me? And it is sending you to Chat GPT. That's exactly the direction and exactly the reason why you are kind of wanting to kind of keep that as a main focus, right? So our devices are integrating it, even if we don't even realize it. So a hundred percent. So a little bit of homework that I want you guys to do, not right now, but just tonight, if you have the opportunity. But go look at three of your competitors, right? Take a little bit of a scope, a land. Most are absent, most are generic. Almost none of them are using local hashtags. And one thing that I really want to promote today, too, and kind of again work on that mental shift, is hashtags are the SEO keywords of the social media world, right? Those are really what's going to help you with increased visibility. So making sure that we're approaching that hashtag strategically and not just kind of word vomiting in that hashtag, too, is very, very important. You have to put yourself in the mind of the consumer, the mind of the patient, and then also the mind of where they're at with maybe whatever condition or service they're though that they're looking for, right? So we'll talk a little bit about that once we start looking at some content. But just for example, shockwave therapy. No one is going to be looking at shockwave unless they've already been educated on that specific term, right? So we want to promote laser therapy. We want to promote other keywords or other hashtags along with shockwave therapy that really help promote the education and gather in every opportunity for visibility for what those people might be searching with, the niche words or the general terms, right? We really want to create a cohesive mix of both of those so that we're capturing good visibility there. So, kind of stepping into pillar one again, getting your profile as a search result. What are some things that, again, you can do right now that will make your profile stand out better and have more opportunity for visibility? Make sure your cities are in your bio. If you are servicing multiple areas, make sure that's in your bio. Um, there's an opportunity for you to tag a location, make sure that's your largest location, right? Your biggest geographical area. That's gonna be where you really want to focus on mostly for that one. Um, but of course, name the conditions that you treat, the services, maybe new services that you're trying to promote or educate, fill gaps on. Um, primarily one link straight to your site, right? People are kind of lazy by nature. So if you have too many links, it might kind of create some confusion there. So one link directly to your site is always the best opportunity. But Instagram does have room for five at this current moment. They actually increased it. So maybe recruiting is something that you're really heavily promoting right now and you want to link it back to maybe the careers page on your website too. That's really wonderful. Maybe you are doing patient newsletters and you want to link it back to your patient newsletter page. That would be a really wonderful resource as well, too. But all of that will be discussed, you know, if you were a part of our patient engagement program based on the goals that you're really wanting to promote there. But that link is always an important part because that's gonna get you pretty easily from step A to step B. Um, and then one thing that I also really encourage people is your Google profile is a channel too. Some people count out that Google My Business profile as a social media channel. And it isn't in a traditional sense, right? But it does have an impact. So we'll talk about that in just a second, too.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

And McKenna, uh, Anna has a question here. She says, um, do you not recommend a Linktree type link on the channels that can take them to multiple links?

SPEAKER_01 8:36

So you absolutely can use a Linktree link. And we actually utilized those over here at Practice Promotions for a while. Um, but it completely depends on if you want that additional step of taking that user there. Um, it does inhibit a little bit of our data. So again, depends on what you're comfortable with there. Um, if you do have five links specifically, I would say skip the step and just put it on Instagram entirely so that the patient didn't have that extra opportunity to kind of click into that external browser and then navigate again. It's just an additional stepping stone. But if you did have more than five links, it's totally available to you if you need it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

And I would say too, like just just you know, kind of um look at the the process that you want a patient engaging with your uh social media doing. So, you know, if it's a new new person, where do you want to take them? Yeah, and make it as simple as possible. Sometimes we like to just make things too complicated, and then people are like, I don't know what to do, and they might go to a completely wrong, you know, party website. But the typically, if they're gonna click on a link, they want to find out more information about you.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

So take them to somewhere simple. Uh maybe it's maybe it's just your homepage, right? Or maybe uh I think a great suggestion what you had to make, Kenna, was have your homepage and then also have your careers because ideally, maybe uh a prospective physical therapist or PTA might be you know checking you out, and that's an easy win. Get right into your careers page right there. But yeah, I like what you're saying and make it as simple as possible. Don't get too complicated.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Absolutely. Look, we know the human race, you know, we don't want additional steps if we don't have to do it, right? So just trying to lean into that audience experience will you know help us determine what's the best route when it comes to there, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

And Mekna, as far as clinics, what are what platforms are you typically seeing the best possible results with? Is it, is it TikTok? Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram, LinkedIn? I mean, what are we what are we looking at here?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Wonderful questions. So I like to say Facebook is your community, right? That is your bread and butter. Those are your patients, those are your community members. Yes, you absolutely will be reaching new audiences on there as well, too. Um, but really talk to your community on that because that's what we want to promote. On Instagram, that's really where we're talking to the explore page, where we're really trying to promote more hashtags, get you guys seen visibly there, maybe look into some more um surrounding communities and dabble in some hashtags there and see how you're kind of doing on that. LinkedIn is obviously very um important. Maybe if you have a lot of physician referrals that come through your clinic and you want to make sure that your physicians are staying really heavily up to date on that. Um, that's definitely not one to count out, actually. LinkedIn has been doing incredibly well for some of our clients, especially ones that are very engaged in the PT or medical space or things like that. But again, it's not gonna be necessarily the patients that are LinkedIn. So that's really more so like your medical providers, your medical partners, your community members, PR over there, right? Facebook and Instagram is gonna be more patient-centric. And then, of course, your Google My Business profile is going to be hopefully new people looking on there. Um, some current patients obviously navigating to find you guys and, you know, different things like that. We do promote TikTok as well. We do have a few individuals who are promoting on TikTok, which obviously is for the masses, right? We don't want to count that out. Um, but we do have opportunity for that as well, too. But and you know, there is room for opportunity and for virility, but I also want to set the foundation of sometimes virility is not going to get you actual people in your community back through the door. So you kind of have to have a vet balancing act of that, right? Is it really big PR that we're looking for? Is it building that community and that network that we're looking for? Okay, so now we get into some of the fun stuff, which is like a little bit more of the show and tell, right? So some actual clinics that we're working with, just kind of showing a little bit about what we've been um communicating just a bit with. So on the left here we have therapy fit PT. Some things that I really wanted to highlight here, they serve as three main cities and they have that all within their first bio. So if you're a prospect and you're coming across this page, you'd know right then and there, oh, they're in my city. That makes sense to me. That's probably not gonna be too far. So immediate attraction there. I might continue to read. Then they have four conditions listed. Oh, I'm actually a woman. I actually am looking for pelvic floor therapy, and that's something that they're promoting. That's also ding number two in my brain of why I should keep reading, right? Because all of those little touch points are what keeps a human's attention. And then they do, of course, have that link straight to their website, which for me, two dings. That third one would probably lead me back to the website to see a little bit more. Movement specialists, something that I really think is powerful on their website is they have their services first, which look wonderful, but then they also have 620 plus five-star Google reviews. To me, that would be a trigger in my brain. Oh, let me go look at those, right? Maybe I was just exploring Instagram, came across something, and then I saw that I'd want to read those Google reviews. So then maybe I'd go to their Google My Business profile, read some of those reviews, and then navigate a little bit through that into your website and things like that too. So all of that bio matters because it's immediately going to be what your audience sees as they're pulling up your profile. So, as much attention you put into your homepage of your website, I want that you to put that into your channels and make sure that your Facebook banner looks professional, your profile picture looks really high resolution. Um, maybe you're highlighting your services and conditions right there in the highlights tab at the top, and that your grid looks consistent with your brand, your audience, and the community members that you're really trying to reach there.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

I would say one thing here too, my kind of that might be a good idea for people, is think about how people are gonna uh be, you know, catching you on social media. So they're scrolling on Instagram, they're scrolling on Facebook, they're there for entertainment, right? They're there for seeing what friends and family are and and other things are happening. They'll come, then they'll, you know, the algorithm will serve them up one of your posts here, and they go, they're looking at the one on the right, which says, Why am I still in pain? Well, I'm in pain. That resonates with me. What are these guys? I'm gonna click on that, and then it takes me to their profile page here, right? On Instagram. So then that's where like I need instantaneous proof, uh, interest. What do they look like? So do their posts look very professional? Like, what is this place? Um, and then like you said, if they've got a high number of reviews up in there, if you have something like what's great with movement, uh, sorry, movement specialists is that there's a um, you know, the owner right there in the image. Yeah, that's beautiful, right? Because it's like it creates that human response. Um, I would say that that that that image is really critical because it's also think about how tiny that is on the actual post when you're like someone's scrolling. So I would I would kind of see if you maybe don't even have your logo, like your your whole name, but just maybe the big logo, right? Yeah. Uh if you have that, for example, because you want it to pop, you want to stand out, be a little memorable and not be tiny little words. So different things like that, I think, go a long way. As long as you're thinking, okay, how do how do I usually use social media? How do I experience it? And how's someone going to connect with me on this?

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Yep, absolutely. And we can help you with your profile images over here for sure. So you're right on the money with that. And actually, one of the main reasons why we do have Dr. Joe in there is because it's the community he grew up in and it's the community that knows him. So it's definitely something that we wanted to promote right there on that front page. If people in the community were to come across him on the Explore page, they would kind of see that additional trigger. So love your thought process there, Neil. So continuing on, traffic one uh or pillar one. So you get your profile seen and searched, right? And then you see the traffic it sends. So all Facebook posts carry a tracking link over here at Practice Promotions. We really do try to lean into UTM trackings. So we'll use some source and some medium codes to really just make us sure that your analytics are showing the socials that sent them back to your website or your request appointment page or, you know, whichever link we did pull in for that uh post. And there's no guessing which post worked. So, in just one second, I'm gonna actually show you a post from one of our clients, New Fit in Austin, Texas. They've been such a blessing to work with. They're so fun. Their team is so authentic, too. You'll see in just a second. But this post alone on Facebook reached over 1,000 impressions, 131 clicks, four shares, and two comments. Um, and it's just a little bit of a fun one. So I'll turn the volume up for just a second.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Oh, I think we can't hear the volume because of your airpods, probably.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Well, probably not, but that's Miss Abigail. She's been such a fun person to work with. You can see here, um, we've got this great professional video going on. We've got our caption down here along with our UTM tracking link. It's a little bit hard to see, but we linked it back to their staff page so that they could read more of her bio and then hopefully request an appointment with her from there. But this one did fabulous for them. We'll keep looking at a little bit of their posts too. Um, but to specifically pull in some of their QR codes as well, too, uh, or not QR codes, hashtags. We really lean into NewFit HQ. They produce the newbie, so that's always a really wonderful hashtag for us to lean into. AXT Wellness, so that local hashtag is really important. Austin, Texas, obviously a big area for us to lean into. Um, but just overall a really strong post that we were able to work on and promote.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

And for our audience, if you don't know what a UTM code, it's basically like a tracking code onto a link. And so that allows then um the the analytics to see, like, oh, this person here actually clicked in uh on this link. They went to the website and then you can measure that, right? So that's what the UTM is really for.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

So write in your agency analytics dashboard, too, which I'm sure all of you guys are super familiar with. So we'd be able to show it to you right there. So you've got your profile seen, right? Your bio looks fabulous. You're showing up on social search, but now we want to make sure your content is getting seen. So this is what actually is going to give you the best results, not only with the audience, but with the channels as well. Too. Video is king, right? Video is number one on all platforms right now because it is reaching the furthest. That is going to get you the most. Carousels are shortly after that because people swipe and the platforms reward you for that. So um that's number two. And then static posts are useful, but they're just not the workhorse of the algorithm on socials. We run all three on purpose. We'll do a mix of them. We really do promote videos within our monthly content, static posts as well as carousels. So you'll see a little bit of those going forward. Um, but there's room for all of them, and there is good opportunity in doing some um mix matching there. So again, back with our new fit uh partner. So the key really is you film it, we make it work. That's kind of the gist of it. You uh we plan the concept with you, you shoot it in your clinic, we caption and we publish. Um, so this post that I'm about to show you with too Taylor, he's so fun to work with. We had 1.2 um thousand impressions on this one, 42 likes and five comments. So I'll pop into this one. Unfortunately, you're not gonna be able to hear it, which we just learned, but this is actually all about the newbie device and how it's not like a tens unit. So an educational video that he did there. You can see our um caption over here, along with our hashtags, of course. Um, but they're just really fun to work with. You can kind of see a little bit of their page listed. We've got their um location right there, we've got their website up there, um, we've got their geographic location, kind of things like that. But I also do want to highlight, I've shown a lot of videographer content. You don't have to have a videographer. iPhone content does extremely well too. Um, actually, I'll show you a video in just a little bit that actually had 2.1,000 reach and 226 clicks that was iPhone shot. So don't count out your device, right? That's it's really just what you have opportunity to. Um, so following along into Taylor Rehab, one of the reasons why I think this profile is so powerful, too, is we really do a mix of um collaboration here. They really promote their own clinic photos as well as our device photos. Designed educational posts as well as real patient moments. So those graduation moments that we know are so authentic and we really want to celebrate, right? And then video in the mix. So it's one feed, all four kinds of content. And let me tell you, Instagram loves that they do it that way, right? So here you can kind of see some of our posts over here focusing on some tight muscles. Uh, we have the beautiful patient graduation day photos. Um, we've got some fun staff spotlights because we absolutely want to promote your staff as well, too. Um, so just a good mix of education as well as authentic. Look at this, he's stretching out his hips. So all fun things that you can promote on your socials. Um, and we'll kind of help you just make sure that it's got a mix of authority, education, but also authenticity, right? Because we want some of those fun moments too.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

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SPEAKER_01 23:41

So, okay, continuing on. One of the most powerful, powerful things that you can actually tap into is your team, right? So your team is your content. Use them to your advantage. They're right there. Um, so here's a staff spotlight that we put together for this is a um three location clinic over in the New River Valley in Virginia. This was meeting Dr. Heath. And wow, he had some popularity too there. Five comments on this post. It did extremely well on Facebook. We had 19 likes, one share, six comments, excuse me. And Dr. Heath was really popular. So that was really awesome to see. He definitely loved to see his shout-outs on here too. And giving your staff the recognition that they deserve is always a really fuzzy feeling for them as well, too. And that's two birds, one stone, right? Promoting your staff member and also promoting your brand on socials.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

I think too, like McKenna, the way that the world has shifted, uh, and I can speak to this from being a practice owner, right? Because we, you know, we we promoted our uh clinicians within how, you know, in the in-house, right, when people were coming in. But other other than like a short announcement, we really didn't do a whole lot. We were really trying to promote the clinic. Um, the way the world is now is like if you can the clinics that we see are really um doing well, right? Really leveraging social media well, are when they help build the personal brand of clinician, right? So if you think about it, like, okay, how could I make each one of my clinicians a star? And then instead of having one brand for your clinic, you have five stars, right? That or six stars, whatever how many providers you have. And not everybody is like very open and personable in terms of you know how they want to be on social media, but you know, you probably have some rock stars at your clinic that are very bubbly. Start with them, right? And I would just say, like, really lean into that, help them become more popular. That's gonna help you become more popular.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Absolutely. And you know, too, I wanna highlight not everyone loves being on camera, right? So that is a struggle that we deal with. But that's okay. That's why we get creative with voiceovers, that's why we get creative with on-screen text, right? There's different ways that we can walk work around that, that still keep your staff member comfortable, still promote their wonderful efforts with their patients in their community, in your clinics, make them that star and give them that visibility to hopefully new people and things like that. So, no, absolutely, Neil. Love that. So, looking at pillar three, you know, you've worked on making sure that your profile looks good, your bio is looking strong, the content that you're putting out, but we really got to get the visibility in, right? Like that's really the whole game plan for this. And so, how do you make sure that you're showing up in the surrounding areas? And that's really where hashtags come into play. So I know a few slides ago I said to think of your hashtags like your SEO keywords, and I really want you to lean into that, right? If you're talking to your customer success manager about a keyword, you need to be talking to your patient engagement specialist about a keyword. If you're talking to your Google Ads manager about a keyword, you need to be talking to your patient engagement specialist about a keyword because that is a service that's important to you that we need to highlight and we need to start promoting and getting visibility out there to your community on, right? Let's do a full 360 approach. Um, and also let's let your good measure shown if you are doing work within the community. One thing that I thought was super powerful here with Therapy Fit is they joined their Fresco Lakes 55 Plus community for a seminar on shoulder and upper body mobility. They could have just done this seminar and packed up and kept it moving, right? But no one in their local community would know that they did that. They took the time to work with these individuals. Hopefully they prevented some aches or pains from happening, right? Which is always the goal, or fixed some aches or pains, right? Which again is always the goal. So promoting your good measures is really, really important. And don't count that out because your future audience looks at that as a gold star, right? All of that goes along to your reputation. Their act, oh, their website looks beautiful. Oh, their social channels look good. Oh, their staff looks good. Oh, they're actually doing things for their community and giving back. That is another huge gold star that you need to make sure is visible. And social media is the perfect place to promote it, right? You could have just posted these pictures willy-nilly on your socials, but they might not have had the impact that they would have when we kind of were able to put a little bit of strategy into it, right? We were able to design them in a way that was a little bit more screen grabbing rather than just a blanket photo of a banquet room, right? So the image is the first thing that captures them, but the hashtag is the first thing that gets it on their explore page. So that's really the first thing that we need to focus on here. We focused on shoulder mobility, upper body mobility, mobility matters, healthy aging. Those are all more so condition focused. And the variety of them all are important. You don't want to silo yourself just into shoulders. You don't want to silo yourself just into upper body. That's why mobility matters is a good one. That's why healthy aging is a good one. Um, and then of course, the local community tags are really what's gonna make a difference in terms of your audience in your community. Fresco likes Texas, Fresco Lakes Community Wellness. You need to get creative with those and don't be afraid to dabble in a few, right? Just one. Don't be scared of two, maybe three. It's okay. Um, don't, you know, put out 15, but you know, a handful is totally fine there. And if you look at this one, it actually looks so wonderful, just kind of following through on the carousel there. So just thought that was a really powerful post. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

And we had a question from Joe too, which is do you recommend the maximum of five hashtags on each post? Uh, does the order of the hashtags matter?

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Good question. The order is less important, I would say. And I would say don't be afraid to go more than five, to be honest with you. It's okay to do more than five. We actually probably do about five to ten on each post. I like to try to do maybe two local, two branded, and then maybe two talking about the topic of that post. So is it a service that we're promoting? Is it a condition that we're promoting, like back pain, you know, sciatica pain, things like that? So don't be afraid to play around with that. And actually, our software gives us insight into what is working. So do we need to decrease your hashtags? Do we need to increase your hashtags? What is actually the best for your specific channel that is available to you in our software as well? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

And uh McKenna Sarah had a question here. She says, is it better to add hashtags in a comment or in the caption?

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Good question. Good question. I would like to do it in the caption itself. Um, I think sometimes if you do it in the comment, it skews some of your data, which is a little bit of a manual effort to kind of remove your comments versus the actual comments that you're getting from your audience. So, in terms of just keeping things as neat as possible, I would keep that just within the caption itself. Um, because even the algorithm of that platform is not going to identify that that comment is you leaving that comment, right? It's just gonna count it as engagement.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

Yeah. And and with the hashtags, what we're looking at here is uh SSO. So we've heard of SEO, which is search engine optimization. And now we have AEO, which is uh um uh, you know, it's like the algorithm um and sorry, answer engine optimization. I'm gonna think of that for a second. Answer engine optimization is those two new buzzwords, right? SEO, AEO. And now we also have SSO, social search optimization. That's what hashtags are, right? So we're optimizing here for visibility in the community related to that, you know, concept, body part, whatever we're doing there, and then the brand part of it too, right? So just think of that. Hey, what are we doing here for social search optimization?

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Yep, absolutely. It's a term that we'll all have to get very familiar with, and God knows in 10 years what the next term will be, right? Yeah, yeah, God knows what the next one will be. On to the next, but a little bit more homework, not to throw all the homework at you guys today, but I do want you to after this, just search your town plus your service, see how you're currently popping up. Some things that I think are really powerful about the ones that pop up for Jacksonville physical therapy. This is just a general one, um, not a specific one for our clients. Um, but one that I thought was really powerful too, in terms of the content that you're putting out, right? If you just search this hashtag, this image right here with this woman doesn't tell me anything right off of the bat. You have to click into it to understand what the content is. But this one with the verbiage that says we are hiring, that is an immediate trigger, an immediate subconscious understanding of what that post is. So if I'm interested in potential what uh wellness hiring in Jacksonville physical or for physical therapy, I'll click on that, right? So, and again, I know sometimes people don't think about is social media the spot for recruiting, but don't count it out, right? There is opportunity for exposing your your um your openings in the social space as well, too. So, you know, search that, see where you're looking at, see how when you're refining your bios, how you could refine your bank of hashtags that you're using for some posts, or um, you know, just take a peek at some of that stuff. So, kind of continuing on on what do we do at here at Practice Promotions to kind of help you keep track of all these things and keep on pace with all of these things? So, what do we do? We really kind of help you figure out what we're gonna fill in for the month too. So we have eight custom posts that we do each month for our clients and in our quarterlies or in our monthly calls, whichever one you're um, you know, you're in that time. We'll kind of fill in the gaps with you. What providers have gaps? What services are you trying to promote? Are you having a lot of people coming in with back pain? Are you having a lot of sports interviews with a specific thing that maybe we need to do some education around? We'll do some analytics on or some digging on what's the best thing for us to kind of promote. We'll build a plan around it. Should we do some video stuff for this post? Should we do carousels instead? It's kind of then dependent upon what you and your staff have available for us, you know, in terms of time in order to submit that content. But we do help you write scripts. That's very easy for us to do. Um, and then of course, the designing and editing. I don't feel like you have to take the editing process on yourself, too, right? If you just send us the raw iPhone files, we can do that for you. Um, of course, we're posting to your Google My Business profile monthly. So that's definitely helping that machine of Google. Like I said, don't count that out. And then, of course, publishing, monitoring, and then reporting back on everything and how it's going. What we need from you is just showing up to your monthly call, ready to have a collaborative conversation, sending us those photos and video files for the content that we planned, and then just approving what we've got, whether it's the artwork or the captions that we've um, you know, provided. So we really try to keep it on a smooth monthly production cadence. Um, and all eight posts are fully customizable. Every single one of them is your call. So if you've got time, let's hop into, you know, some really powerful custom photos or videos. But maybe you're just swamped that month and you need us to help support a little bit more. We're completely comfortable with that too. It's just based off of uh, you know, our collaborative, our collaboration. So kind of, I know I talked a little bit about the importance of Google My Business profiles, right? So your Google profile does send clicks. We post to it every single month. The Google Favors profiles that stay active. You know that. Hopefully, you're getting some reviews over there. Hopefully, maybe those FAQs are staying up to date, right? We're getting maybe some new images over there, but we can also help keep that up to date. That's a big thing that we do see increases within is your Google My Business profile. We had over 10,000 clicks from our posts in the Google My Business profiles this month alone. That is not just people willy-nilly, you know, expanding in this in the profile. Those are actually from our posts. And we had an average of 17% engagement of those posts clicking back through to your website. Because we know the other two of the uh or two of the three are still on Google, right? Google still is the main search area, which everyone is going to. It's really just incorporating um, you know, the socials into your Google My Business profile because one reputation and both places are where people are looking. We're really expanding our opportunity there.

SPEAKER_02 36:49

Yeah, definitely. And you know, a common mistake that I see too is that uh uh practice owners haven't put enough updates into their Google profile. Uh, you should have a ton of pictures video in your profile uh imagery there. That's the first thing people see, of course, then it's your reviews and all that good stuff. But also make sure that all your critical social media accounts are linked in your Google profile. Yes. Because again, Google's Google's looking at that. Google actually looks at not just that you have a profile, but actually looks at the engagement. So if you just barely post now and again on social media, that actually hurts your SEO, your rankings. Uh, but if you're post consistently, if you're getting a lot of comments, clicks, likes, things like that on your uh posts uh because they're more professional, for example, they're more interactive, Google is actually reading that, right? And then Google will um obviously consider you more trustworthy that helps you with your overall rankings in the local market.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Yep, exactly. They actually did an update just a few weeks ago where they included a new button within those posts. So previously that link had to be put into the caption or the body of the text, but they actually have done the improvement to where it's an actual button. You can do learn more, you can click um call to schedule, you can put um request appointment. There's met there's a drop-down with many different options now. And um, whatever UTM tracking code that we're using for that post, we pick that drop-down appropriately. You know, if we're sending someone to a condition page, we'll click learn more, or if we're sending sending someone to your request appointment page, you know, we'll do the um click to schedule. So yeah, we're always trying to integrate our approach with the um, you know, improvements that are coming through the channels, Google My Business profiles um being one of them, too, for sure. So this is just kind of across our clinics nationwide in the last 30 days. Every channel we manage combined, we've seen over 500,000 impressions. Um, and this is on Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business Profile, and LinkedIn. Like I said earlier, those are our main profiles that we're servicing. We have an overall engagement rate of 7.7%. Um, we really try to make sure that our captions are calling them to action in some sort of way, right? That's really the king or the king there is making sure that you're reminding that patient or that audience member what you want them to do. So that's a really big important there. And on Instagram alone, we have a median um engagement rate of 2.9, which is incredibly healthy considering um a 1.2% is what is healthy over there for you know general healthcare. So that's really exciting to see. In the last 30 days, we've had 339,000 eyeballs. Like, think of that, right? Like eyeballs. Like sometimes people don't think about the the audience and actually how what impact that could have. So it definitely shows you the um importance of just making sure that you're showing up professionally, you're showing up authenticity, you know, authentically with your staff members, um, and with people that they would see when they walk through your doors and with verbiage that they would hear when they walk through your doors. That's what we really want to promote on social media in order to make it you.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

Definitely. And uh McKenna Joe had a question here. Um, he said, should nearly every social media post have a call to action to schedule an appointment today and link back to the website, or should that be 50-50? He's he's asking what's a good mix for the call to action.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Good question. And so I actually am, I'm gonna say not every post needs to have that, right? Because people will read through it and not everyone always wants to be sold something, right? So I would say depending upon the topic that is being discussed for that, right, is completely negotiable of if we put that um request appointment link in there. So um really, especially if we're promoting a staff spotlight, I like to link them back to their bio on your website because most of the time it reads a lot more. And I really want them to read about that person and get to know that person and not just sell them on coming to see that person, right? Hopefully that bio on your website in that really pretty staff page gets them to take that next additional click without feeling like that it was quote unquote, you know, sold to them in a way. So good question. Good question.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Love that. And and just for our audience here, uh, you know, three critical things for you just to know from a core, you know, uh, like what brings what brings patients into your practice. So there's there's three things. There's PR, marketing, and sales. Uh PR is making your good works well known. So how well are you telling that to the world? Obviously, reviews, testimonials, video, case studies, things like that. This is where social media fits in. It's not really marketing, it's really PR. Uh and then we've got marketing, which is creating want and desire for your services. Uh, and that's basically how your brand's gonna look, how you're educating people, uh, showing them the results before and after transformations, things like that. Your website's part of your marketing. And then we've got sales, which is actually kind of your front desk and the people within the clinic, right? The clinicians, how well how good are they at selling the service, the outcome that you're gonna get for them? So if you're ever wondering, like, what can I do to get more new patients in? Well, take a look at how good is your PR? That's first, that has to be the biggest. How good is your marketing, and then how good is your sales process? So keep working on those three things and you'll continue growing.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Yes, absolutely. So now I kind of just want to open up the floor. We've talked a lot about today, um, you know, three different pillars, but which of these three bat um gaps is biggest in your channels right now? Um, maybe what has stopped you from posting consistently? If we could fill, you know, one gap for you in terms of social media, you know, for your schedule taking something off of your plate, you know, which one would that be? What what do you find the hardest in terms to keep up with on social media?

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Yeah, so you can pop that in the chat or you can unmute yourself. That's totally fine. Just curious in terms of for you, like what are some of the challenges that you have in regards to your social media strategy? Is something that you feel you're really good at? Or is there an area that you feel like you could do better at in your clinic? Yeah, just love to hear that from you. In the meantime, we do have a question from Anna a little bit earlier. She said, Can you speak to people's browsing strategy in Instagram? I think that people used to go to profile pages to look at the copy uh or grid, but now I think people mostly go through stories. And if one catches the interest, then they get to the posts. Do you recommend that people focus on adding stories over posts?

SPEAKER_01 43:34

There's room for okay, that's a fabulous question. That is a great question. And you need to be doing both. So you do need to be doing both. The only people that are really going to be um looking at your stories are your current followers, right? Like a lot of your non followers are not necessarily going to be, that's not going to be popping up on their storyline, right? Unless they are actively engaging with it. But For your followers that are actively engaging with it, that is the number one thing that you should be doing too. Because do your funny behind the scenes there, you know, especially if you're doing like you're having a funny moment in the clinic, put it on there. Um, you know, if you are doing something community-wise and you're getting all these really nice photos taken that we'll post in a second, but you just want to kind of get the word out there, you can do that. Um, that is really for you to have like a little bit more fun with, right? And that's really where you can do your highlights too on your profile. So, really, too, with your highlights, I want you to think about those maybe as like your menu bar on your website, right? So that's your highlight section on your social channel. And the way that you get highlights is through those stories. So you have to story in order to get the highlight. So some of those behind funny behind-the-scene moments, make that a highlight, right? Like staff behind the scenes. That would be a fun highlight for a random person who's exploring to see that and say, oh, that looks like a fun environment. You know, I'm in pain. I'm kind of sad right now. Maybe I need a little bit of cheery up, you know? Things like that are really powerful. Um, but your posts, your actual in-feed posts are important because if you go to that profile and you see that no one has posted on that grid in three to four months, to me, that's stale. You've gone dark, you're not really posting anymore. So even if you're posting those stories, it's gonna be a little bit of like an off-put to me. So there's room for both, there's opportunity for both. Just different content are really what you're trying to promote in that moment.

unknown 45:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:33

And I think social also is a long-term strategy. It's like, you know, don't post something and think you're gonna be an instant star, right? It takes consistency and it takes time and it takes it builds, right? And it's just, you know, all of a sudden one day it starts to take off. So yeah, don't be uh discouraged if you're like working hard at it and you're not seeing, you know, results right away. It just takes time. It's one of those things. Um, McKenna, we did have a couple questions here, which is very similar, right? And and Sarah uh said that I have a hard time getting quality photos, videos of patients uh in the clinic. And Jennifer um wrote something very similar, which is no one on our team likes to be front and center and recorded. Uh, how do you create strategy around a shy staff?

SPEAKER_01 46:13

I get it, guys. I get it. And it's just something that you have to force a little bit, but you can also get creative with it, right? So if you want to promote a staff member doing a treatment, maybe we record from behind so that you know their face isn't necessarily present, but you can see the manipulation that's going on or the service that's being provided or something like that, right? It's not a jump in front and do this public speaking type of situation, right? There's different ways that we can approach it, but your staff do have to get involved. And that's just something that you have to condition them to get comfortable with in some sort of way. Um, or else you will have to use stock content and that's not going to do what you want it to do. So you do have to get your staff involved and just start conditioning them, you know, bit by bit on some of it, and they'll get more comfortable with it. Once they get some of the recognition, too, they might feel a little bit differently. They might be excited to hop in front of the camera the next time. Um, but then also too, I do think that there is room for professional photography once every six months. I don't think that that is something to negate in your clinics. Um, you know, set aside a budget for that. Make sure that you're having that professional photography. I mean, like I said, iPhone photography is still well too. Um, but it's a lot easier to have a photographer come in and get a bank of 100 to 200 photos that you can use and um, you know, do that every so often than, you know, sometimes always just working in the moment for some of those things too. So yeah, depends on what you have access to, but we'll work with you in a good plan and place.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

Love that. Yeah, a couple of suggestions here. I love what you said there, McKenna. I highly agree. Um, you know, photography, videography is not a nice thing to have, it's an important thing to have. And you should be budgeting every single year uh for photography. Like you said, every six months is good too. 500 bucks, right? Most most photographers you can add for 500 bucks. Videography is gonna cost you a lot more. That's why doing simple things in the in the clinic with iPhone is fine. Um, but photographer, no, and it's no-brainer, right? Bring them out, updated headshots, clinic shots, uh, you know, patient treatment shots, and you're done in like two hours or less, right? And you've got this whole ammunition for six months or even a year that you can work with. Website, Google, um, you know, um, Facebook, Instagram, you all kinds of things to work with there. Uh, suggestion on uh working with your staff on this, I get it. Not like you have to kind of feel your culture. Some people don't want to do like crazy TikTok dancers. Like if I was in the clinic, I don't want to do a TikTok dance, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:58

Come on, Neil.

SPEAKER_02 48:59

Come on, TikTok dances out there. But um the uh the thing, I think you got to look work with your team where they're at, right? So most clinicians are really happy to talk about exercise tips or some kind of uh advice or tips or recommendations. They do that all day long with their patients. Shoot something simple like that with them, get in comfortable with it, right? And then um, you know, that's stuff that you can use, right? Again, it doesn't have to be funny, silly all the time. It can just be educational, it could be helping them kind of get comfortable in front of a camera. So meet them where they're at, right? Get their participation, and then it's much easier to go into funnier stuff from there.

SPEAKER_01 49:39

Yep, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

Yeah. Um cool. All right, we're gonna go to that one with Anna. And oh uh Maronicia has how many times should you post on social media each week to grow your presence and keep Instagram consistently pushing your content?

SPEAKER_01 50:01

Great question, great question. So social media is a needle in a haystack, right? People are posting things all day, every day. So there's a balance that you have to do. You can't post too much, but you can't post too little, right? So I really like to say a few times a week is really what you need to do, but try to create some consistency around it, right? Like people like patterns. So if you're going to do maybe um a mobility exercise, try to promote that consistently every single month so that people get into the habit of seeing that. But I would say um three to four times per week for an actual like Saturday to Sunday, you know, an actual week. Um, I would say three to four times per week. Um, because if you don't post that much, your one post or two posts that you do will get lost. But if you post every single day, your followers will get annoyed and they will unfollow you. So you gotta do that balancing act, right?

SPEAKER_02 51:04

Yeah, totally, totally. And I would say too, like, you know, it's like um anything when it comes to marketing media, batchwork it, right? Don't just do things willy-nilly and like, oh, I gotta put two posts out this week. So I'll just record it on Tuesday, send it on Tuesday, do it on Thursday, so now Thursday. No, like the way that we approach it is hey, map it all out, uh, even for the month ahead, right? Or even the quarter ahead. Like just map map what your topics, your themes are gonna be out for the for the month ahead. Just record them all out in one, you know, a few hours or whatever you want to do, uh dedicated on that. And then you can schedule these stuff on different uh, you know, social platforms to go out at certain times, and then it's done, right? It just runs, right? So that's the way to really approach your uh social media marketing is batchwork it.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Absolutely, absolutely awesome.

SPEAKER_02 51:54

All right, so we've gotten through a lot of awesome questions here. We're wrapping up on time. Um, is there anything you'd like to wrap up with here, McKenna?

SPEAKER_01 52:03

Yeah, just one final thought is social is how your community really gets to know you and get a peek inside what your clinics are all about. Um, new patients look you up before they ever call. We know that. And you do so much work to get those new patients in the door. So let's continue those good efforts on every channel that they're searching. Um, past patients stay close enough to come back, and that's what really all of this is for is to make sure that you're getting every opportunity that you can with the community that you have. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:37

Awesome. Well, McKenna, thank you so much for giving us amazing insight and tips here and how to improve our social media. I will say again, like consistency is key here. Tell the stories from within your clinic, use your staff, make them stars. There's uh so many good things that you can be doing here. I know it's some work, and that's where we can come in and really help uh your clinic get consistent with this. This is where a lot of clinics, you know, whether you're a small clinic or a large clinic, we even help support different marketing teams uh with their socials and of course different marketing strategies there. But you've got help, right? And I would say that that's something that you should definitely work with in the clinic, but also outsource with the team so that you don't spend a ton of time uh just focused on this. This is what we're for to help you out with that. Um, a little bit earlier on, um, Avery had put here in the chat if you're interested in just chatting a little bit more about what our team can do to help you with social media, uh you can go ahead and just book a quick call, uh, get on with our team, we'll show you what we do for you with our patient engagement system. So thank you and hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

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