I recently came across a study done by the Aesthetic Surgery Journal that did a research test to see if the social media presence for plastic surgeons was correlated with rankings on Google’s first page. They then compared that to the medical school and year of graduation with each surgeon.
Their conclusions where that total number of social media followers are more closely associated with higher rankings on Google than medical school rankings and years in practice.
Whether this is shocking or not depends on your perspective. The surgeon with years of experience from a top medical school is getting beat out by the young upstart who are good with Instagram. Top Google placement and engagement with their target audience is more relevant than the degree on your wall.
The old way of finding patients through referrals, word-of-mouth, doctor reputation and academic pedigree is over. Strong social media and thus high rankings on Google is what drives patients to your office.
This begs the question what to concentrate on first? Building social media followers or ranking high on Google because the study is not clear on if new patient leads are coming from social media or Google via the fact that social media improves rankings on Google.
The good news is there is an approach to capture all of the above. Through our AdWords strategy we have seen tremendous results with catapulting plastic surgeons to the top of Google by focusing on the exact patients they want. Only interested in bringing in breast augmentation clients? We can tailor your campaign to find those specific patients you want to target.
Moving up in organic rankings in Google is very valuable but it can take awhile to work. The improvement via social media can certainly help your case but for a complete strategy you should look to our all encompassing SEO package that tackles the backlinks and citations that shoot you up the page.
From the study mentioned above it’s clear you should also work to build your social media following (Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/Twitter). This creates engagement with potential clients as well as allows existing or previous clients to give mass social approval which further enhances your profile.
Part of boosting your followers is creating exciting and fresh content on a consistent basis but luckily Facebook and Instagram allow you to run additional ads which can target your desired client.
Lastly it’s important that you take your biggest fans and move them off social media platforms into something you can control which means creating an email list with constant content.
This doesn’t mean blasting out coupons or specials but it’s a real chance to engage your audience and tell them success stories as well as the benefits to your work.
Put into perspective the purpose of building your social media following, appearing on the top of Google and creating an email list is to grow your business. Very few businesses can survive on referrals and word-of-mouth alone. Combining all of these services will contribute to keeping you busy and building a bigger community.
If you’re interested in our amazing Google/Facebook/Instagram ad campaigns or SEO and content creation send me an email mike@unlimitedgrowthsystems.com and we’ll schedule 15 minutes to chat about how we can help you grow your business.
P.S.
What social media do you currently use?