The Direct Care Way

Tips on Marketing with Social Media

February 07, 2023 Tea Nguyen, DPM Season 1 Episode 52
The Direct Care Way
Tips on Marketing with Social Media
Show Notes Transcript

I use social media as one marketing tool for my Direct Care practice. I share some tips on how to get started, where to get inspiration and some tools to help to reduce overwhelm.

I mentioned:
- common questions people are searching https://answerthepublic.com/
- freelancers fiverr.com or upwork.com
- hiring virtual assistants https://www.onlinejobs.ph/

Your next 5 days in content creation

  • How To ...
  • Misconception about your industry...
  • A cool tool you use or product you recommend
  • Behind the scene of your business...
  • Fun fact about you, the business or your mission

The repurpose and repeat for the rest of the year!

Need more? Consider joining my coaching program to take the guesswork out of building your dream Direct Care practice teadpm.com


Dr Tea:   0:01
Owners of a direct care practice are more likely to experience higher job satisfaction than the insurance based practice. And it's no wonder why direct care is independent of insurance. Patients pay the doctor directly for their expertise. The doctor gets full autonomy in how they care for patients and how they get paid. They have chosen this path with a love of medicine. This is the direct care way.

Dr Tea:   0:24
By listening to this podcast, you may even start to believe that you too can have a successful direct care practice. Come listen with an open mind as I share my personal journey and how I pivoted from an insurance based practice to direct care right in the middle of the pandemic, and the valuable lessons along the way. This podcast may be the very thing you need to revitalize your medical practice. I'm your host, owner of a direct care podiatry practice Dr. Tea Nguyen.

Dr Tea:   0:52
Hey there, welcome to another episode. This is number 52 tips on marketing with social media. I've talked about the importance of social media for my practice on a previous episode, I'll put the link below for you to reference because there are some details as to how to go about starting your social media for your business. Social media has been a huge tool for my practice, and my self confidence. I am currently actively on Instagram, even Tik Tok, and sometimes Facebook. So those are my three places that I use as a marketing tool. It's free. And I'm going to help you get through the hump of starting with social media or really how to even create content. In this episode.

Dr Tea:   1:36
The first time I was asked to be on camera, like in front of a legitimate camera with a professional, I was asked to talk about my services and me and I was nearly in tears throughout the entire process. And you can tell it was a totally awkward experience. I was frozen. I kept mumbling I kept asking to redo it. And it was really awkward. And that's going to be most people, people who haven't been in front of the camera on the regular. And, you know, feeling the way I felt in that first experience actually made me feel worse, as I continued on with the recording. So how can you overcome that awkwardness of that first time in doing anything? Well, first of all, just realize that's a normal feeling. If it's something that you don't do regularly, yeah, the first couple of times you show up, it's going to come off really weird for you and on the screen. But I'm gonna give you a small tip.

Dr Tea:   2:30
This is really, really simple. It's not easy. But it's simple. How you overcome this awkwardness of being on the camera is that you keep showing up. And you keep showing up for the people, you know, you can help. If you show up for yourself as yourself that makes it a little bit harder to send out your message as to how you can help other people. But if you show up as if somebody was calling you on the phone, a friend of family, somebody you love, asking you a question, respond in that way respond in the natural way that you speak in the cadence that you speak it and that's how you can start overcoming that awkwardness, that discomfort of being in front of a camera. What really helped me in the beginning was committing to posting one video of me talking for 60 seconds on my phone every single day for 30 days.

Dr Tea:   3:23
What this does is it forced me to show up exactly how I was that day. And I did get to the point where I was tired of editing. So I had to speak a little bit faster to fit in what I wanted to say, in that 60 seconds. And I did it really, really messy. I did it in a way that was conversational, and almost matter of factly. Of course, you don't have to show up perfectly pristine and looking curated that actually makes you less relatable and not real. And people want real content. They want to know that you are a real person that can solve their real problems. So the best way to overcome awkwardness is to keep doing it. However you show up. Yes, it's going to be weird. Yes, it's going to be messy. Yes, it's going to be imperfect.

Dr Tea:   4:17
And that's exactly what you need to do in order to get to the next phase to perfecting your message so that it hits your ideal audience, your ideal patient the right way that engages them that encourages them to take the next action to calling you and making that appointment. So now you're wondering what do you actually say on social media? And how do you ensure that you don't run out of content? There's two ways to go about this. You can dedicate a time a block of window of time, maybe a couple hours writing out every single question your patient has, and then you create content for the rest of the year. I tried doing that that was a little bit overwhelming for me. And so what I do Now instead is I just plan the next five days, I create tiny little bites out of this big chunk. And the next five days are going to have these next five topics that you can easily start with right now. Number one, do a how to content, like how to do self care how to make the right purchase, how to find the right doctor, something that people are already doing, as they're typing in the Google search bar. So how to treat a condition at home, how to not make it worse, how to make it better, stuff like that. Just a quick how to and it has to be just one thing, you don't have to cram all this material into one post, people have short attention span.

Dr Tea:   5:43
And to grab them think about what they might be asking number to address a misconception. Maybe in your field of work, there's a huge misconception about what you do. Maybe it's considered comparable to something else. And you're like, No, that's completely wrong. So like for podiatry, people have a huge misconception about what podiatrists do, versus a nail technician versus an orthopedic surgeon. And so you address a single misconception that is aligned with your overall message in the business that you work in for me I did initially is talk a lot about women in surgery, that's a huge misconception that people have, that women can't be surgeons or aren't surgeons, right. And it's relevant enough for me to talk about it. Alright, so number three, talk about a cool tool or an instrument or a product that you recommend. I had talked about a pumice stone the difference between a pumice stone and a foot file, like stuff that people can just go to the store and purchase that will be really engaging because then you're going to start getting comments about well, what about this? 

Dr Tea:   6:44
What about that product. And what you're trying to do is just be a consumer, you know, walk into Target, walk into a drugstore, and look in their foot section aisle, if you're a podiatrist, or look into your skincare aisle, if you're a dermatologist, look at what people are purchasing and talk about that product. Do you like it? Do you not like it? What's wrong with it? What's missing? What's beneficial? You know, what people find really interesting is our sterilization techniques. So if you didn't procedures, show people the difference in sterilizing with an autoclave versus a solution versus a cold sterilizer. Those types of things like it's pretty mundane to us. But it's very interesting for people who don't have a medical background. Number four is something behind the scene. Take them behind the curtains to your practice to your business. What might be interesting, what does your exam room look like? Is it comfortable? Do you have it well furnished? Do you like the artwork that you chose for the office? Do you have a cool coffee bar, take them behind the scene to something that they won't typically see. And that you're going to create those really intimate relationships where people feel connected with you. And number five, share a fun fact about you, if you don't want to put all your stuff out there. Don't Don't put all your stuff out there. But tell people where you went to school, maybe undergrad, medical school, residency training, fellowship, something that's small, interesting, and it really makes you stand out because you're sharing something that seems personal. But it's not that personal, like anyone can search online and see what your background is, right. 

Dr Tea:   8:18
Or maybe you want to talk about what it means to be a mother or father, maybe you married into medicine or you like that you're not married into medicine, like my husband's a general surgeon, we happen to be both surgeons, you know, like, pick something that is fun, maybe somebody that was really interesting, maybe speak another language, that is just one post. So of the five posts that I just shared with you, I am certain that you have something to work with for the next five days. So just repeating, you're going to do a post about how to do something. Number two, some kind of misconception in your specialty. Number three, a cool tool or product that you might recommend. Number four, something behind the scenes with your office, maybe protocol development. And number five, a fun fact about you. So you can see that these topics are not very personal. So it won't feel like you're revealing yourself too much, especially if you're a private type of person. And you might be surprised at how interesting these things are for people outside of your business for consumers for patients. If you find yourself in a predicament where you need a little bit of inspiration, go back to why patients previously saw you in the first place.

Dr Tea:   9:30
What questions were they asking that might even seem a little mundane to you because you answer it all the time. But that's the type of material that people want to know you are their first encounter, but you have a lot of experience under your belt. And so don't overlook what seems to be very simple, very common sense for somebody who had no exposure to the work that you do. This is how you get content material for your social media. I want to share with you a resource that somebody shared with me called answered the public.com If you go into this website, you can type in a topic and search, what types of questions people are asking about that particular topic.

Dr Tea:   10:10
For example, if you're an orthopedic surgeon, maybe you can put in the topic as orthopedics and questions that might come up that people are already searching online might be, what do orthopedist do? Do they specialize? How long is the training, so all of the questions that you don't have to really think about is generated for you. Another tip that you can use is to follow your favorite creators and dissect what it is that you like about them. And I'll tell you, my favorite creators are not the people dancing, and pointing to the screen, I don't see myself ever doing that. For me, it's not relatable. If that's the type of stuff that you want to produce, go for it, because there are people who will be interested in that, all you really want to do is putting yourself out there exactly how you are, because you're kind of creating like the pre experience before they get into your office, they want to know who you are, they're gonna look you up anyway.

Dr Tea:   11:05
So you might as well show up exactly how you are. And the people who like you will be drawn to you, you don't have to try to be somebody else, you definitely don't have to show up as a perfect version of yourself either. If you find all this starts to get overwhelming, take advantage of the existing staff that you have, or find a tech savvy family member to help you with social media or hire on a virtual assistant. The virtual assistants I've had has come from different companies. You can google search virtual assistants for social media, people who do specifically social media. I'm currently using somebody from online jobs.ph. These are remote virtual assistants who work in the Philippines and they have a variety of different specialties that you can choose from to be part of your team. I like this option because I give this individual number of hours to work on the things I need accomplished per week. And then you can build up to that this person doesn't have to be full time. If you're not ready, you can start with a couple hours here and there, and then build up to full time. If that's something you think that's going to work for you long term.

Dr Tea:   12:12
There are other ways to outsource without spending a whole lot. Or if you do have a nice budget, you can go to places like Fiverr or Upwork. And look at the things that you want accomplished. Do you want someone to edit your videos for YouTube? Do you want somebody to do your SEO? Do you want them to curate material for your Instagram, there is a lot of freelancing out there that you can maximize so that you're not overwhelmed with all these, what I call smaller tasks. In the beginning, you do want to start with a template so that you create a tone and an expectation for your ideal audience. And then over time, create the protocol so that you can pass on the work to your assistants. So now that you have all of this material together, this is one thing that you should not forget, at the end of every post have some kind of call to action.

Dr Tea:   13:04
Some way for the person who sees it to engage a call to action is what you want them to do after they see your post, it might be like and follow for more. It might be subscribe if you like content around what I'm talking about. It might be in call my office, if you think you need an appointment, whatever it is, have some kind of call to action. And you might be surprised at how people are more driven to do if to do something, if you tell them to do that something that's just how the world works. So at the end of every pose some kind of call to action, there is a soft call to action like like this post, if you want to see more, or a hard call to action, call my office for your consultation. So you see the tone of those two things are very different. You don't want to hit them hard with every post with a hard call to action, because that can come off as really sleazy, and very advertising, you can be very subtle with how you want them to respond to your material.

Dr Tea:   14:01
And I'll share with you my call to action to this episode since he made it this far to the end of the episode. If you like what you heard, please like and share it with a friend who you think would benefit from marketing with social media, or simply as somebody who needs a little bit of inspiration to get started. See, that's my call to action. And if that feels intimidating to you like you don't want to keep pushing a sale after every post, no big deal. Just do it every other post. Ultimately, you want people to interact with your material with a like a share a comment, or even replaying if it's a real or a video. So I hope you enjoy this content today. It's basically social media one on one. If you feel like you want to dive deeper into this stuff, connect with me this is part of my coaching program. I try to help every single physician establish themselves in social media as the expert in their field, so that you can start drawing in more of those cash paying patients. Okie dokie. That's all for now. I'll catch you next week. Take care.

Dr Tea:   14:58
Thank you so much for being here. To me, if you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, please like, share and subscribe so more people like you can have access to another way of practicing medicine, that direct care way. Let's connect find my info in the show notes and send me your questions. That might be the topic for future episodes.

Dr Tea:   15:17
And lastly, if you remember nothing else, remember this be the energy you want to attract. See you next time.