Using Social Media To Promote Your Eye Care Practice

Does your practice have an active social media presence? Social media marketing is essential in today’s digital era to establish trust, build a sense of community and raise visibility of your eye care practice. Through social media, you can reach potential new patients while maintaining relationships with your existing patient base, as well as to connect with other practices, industry associations, institutions and wider networks. 

This article provides an overview of the advantages of using social media, suggests interesting and useful content and offers original ideas for promoting your products and service, while adding value and elevating your practice’s reputation — all with an emphasis on eye care practices!

The Benefits Of Using Social Media

Social media marketing should be a key aspect in your marketing efforts. Planned, quality social media management can help you:

• Reach new audiences and grow your patient base
• Develop relationships within your community and build trust with followers
• Provide a cost-effective and personable way to promote your products and services
• Establish yourself/your practice as an eye care expert, while educating followers 
• Create additional channels for potential patients to find you, while boosting traffic to your website and improving your overall online presence

It’s important to note that these results are not guaranteed — you'll need a marketing plan to provide consistent, original, high-quality content. 

Establish Your Social Media Plan

Creating a profile on the major social media platforms and occasionally posting photos is not sufficient — to benefit from all that social media offers, you need to start with a solid and strategic plan. Here are some tips to get started: 

• Carefully consider which social media platform(s) will be most effective in reaching the audience that will help you achieve your goals. You don’t need to join them all — it’s better to concentrate your efforts on one or two platforms that will deliver the most value. Some considerations about the top networks: 
  • Facebook continues to be the most popular social media network, reaching the majority of the population. However, with 50-59 being the age range with the most usage, it can be difficult to reach younger audiences. Facebook offers targeted advertising capabilities, the ability to schedule posts in advance and an easy-to-digest insights performance dashboard.
  • Instagram has a large percentage of users in both the 18-29 and 30-39 age bands, providing a great way to reach both young and middle-aged audiences. If you set your Instagram profile up as a ‘professional account’ you will be able to take advantage of the same advertising and performance metrics as Facebook, in the Meta Business Suite.
  • TikTok and Snapchat reach the highest number of 18–24 year-olds. With TikTok having more active monthly users, the time spent on the channel is almost double that of other networks, at nearly 54 minutes per day!
  • There are many other popular platforms for businesses to consider, including: X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Threads, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
• Once you determine which network(s) are best for your practice, build out your profile by populating the fields, such as: profile photo, bio, location and contact details, business category, links and any others.
• Commit to being consistently active on the platform(s) you choose. Develop a posting schedule — this could be twice a month or twice a week — just be sure to stick to your schedule. Do not post excessively as it could lead people to discontinue following you.
• Get inspiration from your competitors’ profiles and see what’s working and what’s not. While it’s okay to get ideas from others if you get stuck, make sure your content is original and true to your brand.
• Develop your ‘voice’ — try out different post styles and see what generates the most engagement. Do your followers like light humor or do they tend to interact with informative and professional posts? Do graphics or real, in-practice photos garner more engagement? Consider how you want your practice to be viewed.
• Network, network, network! Support other businesses in your local community by following them and liking, commenting and sharing their posts — they will be more likely to return the favor and engage with your posts. Connect with colleagues’ practices, industry associations, professional organizations and those respected in the eye care field that align with your practice.
• Monitor your profile growth and audience engagement through the analytics in the platform, or in your own record keeping. It takes time to build and grow your social media presence — consistently posting and engaging with your online community will yield results but will take patience and time.

Create Relevant And Quality Content

When posting on social media, be intentional about the design and content of what you share. Below are a few design ideas and suggestions to keep in mind: 

• Great visuals are key to capturing users’ attention, which can lead to them reading your content and taking the action suggested in the post. Here are some of the various types of content to post: 
  • Educational Content can be extremely effective when done right — you need to catch readers’ eyes, but not provide too much think about — just enough to be intriguing so they will keep reading or click on your link.
  • Short-form Videos yield the highest ROI for social media marketing. Think Instagram Reels, TikTok videos, YouTube shorts and live videos.
  • User-generated Content is highly popular but can be tricky in the healthcare environment — listen to your patients and followers to generate ideas for the type of content they seek.
  • Trendy Content can take the internet by storm — rather than immediately hopping on the bandwagon, ensure that said trend fits within the culture and branding of your practice and will maintain a level of professionalism that a medical practitioner requires.
• Make sure your content and visuals align with your brand. Include your logo wherever possible and stick to a consistent color scheme to build brand recognition.
• Keep it simple! Social media is designed for quick scanning and clicking, so be careful not to overwhelm your audience with too much heavy text. If you need to share a lot of information, it’s better to write a blog post and share the link in your social media post, or to link to the informational page on your website — this will also help drive traffic to your website.
• Use understandable, conversational language rather than clinical optometry terms. 

Don’t Just ‘Sell’ — Provide Value

Beyond the ability to market your products and services, social media allows many additional opportunities for your practice to shine. To grow a following, you need to curate a well-balanced feed that includes more than advertisements — helpful information, brand personality and fun ways to interact and engage with you — are also needed. A few ways that you can add value to your account and grow your online presence naturally are: 

• Be informative. Many eye care practices post quick eye health tips, interesting facts and statistics; others keep their community informed by sharing links to helpful articles or new studies. These types of posts will help position yourself and your practice as an expert in the field and people will start turning to you for answers, help and advice.
• Share stories of success. Share how you have helped your patients and changed their lives for the better — case studies will help build trust in your practice. Inspiring stories encourage people to share and engage with a like or a comment.
• Shine a spotlight on your team members. Staff spotlights can help humanize your practice and show that you are community focused. Posts like these can also help your team members feel special and valued.
• Ask questions to encourage engagement and learn more about your online community. This can be a great way to gather useful information and help your audience feel heard and valued. For example, you could post two pairs of eyeglasses and ask your community to comment on which they like best.
• Use quotes from your team members and patients. Share positive reviews that you receive — this helps personalize your posts and builds trust for prospective patients and others within your community.
• Respond to comments, questions and direct messages in a timely manner — don’t leave your clients or potential clients hanging! Even if the reply is letting them know they need to call, and providing the phone number, their request did not go unanswered.
• Get creative with promoting products. For example, you could create a regular theme, like ‘Frame Fridays,’ where you post a photo of frames from your optical — or ‘Teachable Tuesdays’ where you educate your followers about an eye condition or an instrument used during an exam. 

With a variety of creativity, education and FUN in your feed, you’ll keep your followers coming back for more!

Social media is fast-paced and continually evolving, if you need help with marketing your optometry practice on social media, reach out to PECAA’s Marketing Business Advisor, Shelby Wade. As a PECAA Max member, you can receive expert advice from PECAA’s Member Business Advisors at no additional cost! Already a member? Book a meeting with Shelby here to get started. Not a PECAA Max Member? Contact us to learn how PECAA can help your practice thrive.