Jack Dorsey sent the very first Twitter message at 9:50 pm on March 21st of 2006. Ever since, Twitter has become a vital means of communication for many and has grown into the one of the most popular social networks online.

Twitter is such a hit because it’s so easy to use. Unlike other social networks, you don’t need to set up detailed profiles or author 500-word posts on your profile. You simply Tweet up to 140-characters, which then leaves you plenty of time to focus on your practice while still taking advantage of the massive potential on Twitter.

Growing your tribe of followers on Twitter is also a snap.

Twitter to Promote Wellness Services

In this post we will show you how to set up an effective marketing campaign on Twitter that will significantly maximize your exposure and bring new wellness business to your practice.

It Starts with Your Twitter Account

Your profile is the place where potential followers go to learn about you and what you have to offer. It’s just a simple one-page outline that includes a short bio and your website address, so potential customers will know where to go if they want more information about your practice.

Set up your page so that those visiting it will be motivated to follow you. It’s vital that you make it work for you. You can do that by including a direct link to a specific page on your website that includes and offer or valuable content. Don’t make the mistake of trying to push your services or products immediately from this page. The most effective campaigns begin with establishing in the community as a leader in the delivery of a particular wellness service, and you do that by offering valuable incentives. This allows you to be able to keep in touch with them and build a relationship with them so that they will come to you services in the future.

Make sure that your brand comes across on the Twitter profile page. Be authentic and friendly and offer something valuable based on your niche service. A picture of your face is also recommended as it helps establish trust with your followers.

Important – Twitter is the Top of the Funnel, Not the Bottom

Many businesses seem to forget that Twitter is a social network and most users Twitter users follow others to learn about their expertise and passions. They generally don’t sign up for Twitter and follow you for special offers, so be smart and build your Twitter relationship first.

One way to do this is to create a newsletter focused around your wellness specialty. Then set up a simple landing page that offers the newsletter or a report. For example, “Five Different Kinds of Massage – Which is Best for You?”

Your subscribers will then receive instant access to your report once they confirm their email address.

The next step is to build relationships with your subscribers, and you do this by following up with additional free content and resources. Resist emailing them promotional-based offers until you’ve established a rapport with your readers and connected with your audience. People need to trust you and see that you offer professional, relevant information that they are interested in. Building trust and proving that you can deliver quality information takes time, but if you can deliver results before recommending your services, it will only make your recommendation far more effective when you eventually do promote something.

To get the most potential, make sure that you include a direct link to your squeeze page right on your Twitter profile account and then once you’ve established a following, you can start posting updates on your website so that you can begin directing traffic there.

Growing Your Follower Base

It may seem strange to create a squeeze page and blog first and then going looking to find followers on Twitter but it actually makes good business sense. It is far easier to establish a following within Twitter when you have something to offer.

Not only that, but if you are just starting out on Twitter and people see that you don’t have many followers, they might be hesitant about following you themselves. But if you have established a website, blog or squeeze page and you have somewhere to direct your followers, it makes it a whole lot easier to achieve the success you are looking for on Twitter.

Don’t Be Shy, Tweet Often

When it comes to tweeting, don’t waste time worrying whether your tweet is pithy or interesting enough.. Once you have become an active member of the Twittersphere, you will find it much easier open up and provide your followers with creative Tweets and you will also be able to respond to ongoing discussions from those who you follow and who follow you.

So, in the beginning, post what’s on your mind. Think of it as joining a conversation at a party. If you worked with an interesting customer, tweet about it. If you had a success, tweet about it. If you found an interesting blog post about something pertaining to your wellness services, tweet about it. If something made you smile or angry today, tell them about it. Consistency is the key and posting often enough so that you become comfortable how to use Twitter is very important.

Once you’ve posted your first Tweet, it’s time to start following people on Twitter so that you can build up your Twitter presence and encourage people to follow you in return.

Just as you would in your offline business, you need to develop a reputation on Twitter as someone who is interested in helping others, while developing your own Twitter presence.

Finding People on Twitter

The great thing about Twitter is how easy it is to quickly locate other people who are involved in your target market or industry. You will be able to find people who share an interest in nearly every topic and subject online, no matter what niche you’re in.

Twitter is all about building connections and relationships, and Twitter helps you do just that. You will soon be able to engage with your followers and make friends so they’ll be more likely to buy your products or services.

Three Apps That Make It Easier
Twitter is like public texting and texting is done on mobile phones. As such, there are a number of great apps to help you manage your Twitter profile. Here are three we recommend:

• Tweetbot
• Twitterriffic
• Echofon Pro

That’s it for this post about Twitter marketing for your physical therapy cash-based services. We hope this information gave you some foundational information on how to use the giant social network…Twitter to generate some interest in your wellness services.

Marketing yourself and your services online isn’t just about setting up the right website and an occasional blog post. The internet is huge, and you have to know how to utilize it to get the most effective results for your physical therapy private practice.

Currently, a very effective way to stay in touch with current and past patients to is by taking part in social media. Social media is everywhere. People from all ages and backgrounds use it, including the majority of your patients.

There are a number of social medial platforms that you could be part of, but here are the big 3 that you need to know about for physical therapy social media marketing. These three essential social media platforms are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the best social networking groups to become involved in if you own a small private physical therapy practice. LinkedIn is like having your little black book of business associates, and their little black book of business associates, all rolled into one neat little package.

LinkedIn allows you to not only tell the world about yourself and your practice but also learn how other PTs like yourself are solving the challenges of the current health care system. It’s quite different than the other less formal social media platforms.

Think of it as a type of résumé that anyone can follow. You give details about yourself in reference to jobs you’ve had, your current endeavors and a short bio and business portfolio for others to see. Then you ‘link’ your peers and partners to your bio.

You can then see your associates’ ‘linked’ business associates and create a
larger business-based social network based on these assets.

You might be wondering what this does for you and your practice? After all, why would you need to have your business résumé online for the world to see?

Let’s look at this from a different standpoint. If you are trying to get your name out there as a successful business person, you will want to have as many people on your side as possible, because the business world is all about the networking.

The larger your portfolio of people, the more networking options you have available to you. Let’s say, for example, you want to expand your business into a cash-based service. For the sake of the scenario, we’re going to suggest you want to expand into sports performance.

In order to make this expansion, you can reach out to other successful PTPP owners that have not only had success but often times, they will share the secret sauce too. More often you will find like-minded PTs that also want to start cash-based practice, some that have failed, some that are struggling and have found solutions too. LinkedIn in is a fantastic way for professional people to come together.

Facebook

Facebook is more familiar and less formal than LinkedIn.

We tend to think of Facebook as a way of hanging out with your friends, without actually meeting any of them.

As a practice owner, it’s important to know that Facebook is also a very easy and effective way to market your practice culture and stay in touch with select patients that enjoy this social channel. Using this method of social media in a similar way to how you would use a blog is the key to getting yourself out there.

The key to creating a good Facebook page for marketing is not only to make sure your page is up-to-date and accurate, but to keep posting engaging content on your Facebook page. Engaging means content that will motivate the fans of your page to Comment, Like and Share. Take a look at several Facebook pages created by PTs. Without question, photos of your practice culture and involvement in the community get the most engagement.

What’s the point of all this if you already have a blog on your website? Facebook is different than a blog because some people check their Facebook pages constantly throughout the day.

Have you ever watched a teenager play with their phone? These kids are constantly social networking. Not only do they look for cool memes to show off to their friends, but they’re telling their friends what they are doing, what they like, what they don’t like and who they are with. To this point, one often overlooked opportunity is to have your patients review your practice on your Facebook business page. The fact is that Facebook is now the number 2 online review website, passing Yelp a couple months ago.

What exactly does this mean for you as the owner of a private practice? This means that you have to communicate through channels that your patients use. The quickest way to market yourself is to make sure you have a Facebook business page.

There are two things you need for your page. The first is an actual Facebook page for your practice and the second is a profile page for yourself.

Your Facebook profile is the place people are going to start when they’re looking for you, because almost everyone uses Facebook. Not to worry though if you don’t want to personally participate on Facebook. Your Facebook “profile” is simply the account through which you manage your Facebook business “page”.

Twitter

In addition to Facebook, Twitter is another social media platform you need to take advantage of in order to tell the world about your practice.

Twitter is different from Facebook in two main ways:

• Your message is limited to only 140 characters
• Hashtags are essential

The first way that Twitter differs from Facebook is that there are a limited number of characters you can use to create a Tweet. In other words, this is the perfect place to speak when you don’t have much to say or you can get your message across in a short, pithy way.

Twitter allows you to send people little messages about what’s going on in your life or at your practice. You can’t get into a long description, so it’s an ideal place to drop quick, informative messages to patients and other followers.

Facebook users have higher expectations than a two or three sentence post. Twitter users know you won’t go into those kinds of details. They will expect to see very basic information.

How does that help you and your practice? For one thing, it’s easy to Tweet. Instead of having to come up with long, informative and interesting posts or blogs, all you have to do is write a sentence or two.

While you won’t generate a bunch of new patients on Twitter, like LinkedIn, it’s a great place to find physical therapy thought leaders…and those thought leaders often share great bite-sized pieces of information; moreover, they share links to valuable information that can better help you manage your practice.

Another reason Tweeting is good for you is, much like Facebook, people can follow you on Twitter. Twitter allows you to follow an unlimited amount of people, read quickly what everyone is up to, respond when you want to, and then move on to other things. It’s all done very quickly, too.

One thing that really stands out from the Facebook social network is that Twitter users use ‘hashtags’ in order to find things that they are interested in.

Hashtags are a way of grouping conversations into more organized methods of communication. Let’s say, for example, someone posted a great tweet with a link to an article about physical therapy business and you need to keep the ball rolling, so to speak, and make sure your Twitter followers are aware of the link to this article. Putting a hashtag (#) in front of the tweet (e.g. #bizpt) will keep the Twitter conversation about this article organized.

Twitter hashtags are also a great way of keeping up to date on the latest Twitter trends. Hashtags are a means of tracking what’s popular. For some businesses trying to market their goods or services, hastags can be very important to know what people are looking for, and a very easy method of tracking those markets.

While at first the concept of hashtags may be confusing to some people, it does get easier. In fact, most television programs now use hashtags frequently, so fans of the show can follow the conversations about the program in real time while they are watching it.

The one thing to remember when creating a hashtag is to make sure your it’s relevant to your conversation or to ensure that people understand the hashtag you’re trying to create, and don’t confuse your followers by using too many hashtags in one post.

If you hashtag your practice, do so in a sentence. Simply put the # symbols before your company name or a keyword that represents the theme of your tweet and a hashtag is automatically generated for you.

The fact is that so few Tweet about their physical therapy problems that in most cases, there’s no way to consistently drive new patient business from Twitter at this time. Nevertheless, Twitter is an excellent place to share ideas and learn from the collective intelligence of this social network.

Help is at hand to show you how to run a successful social media campaign

We can show you how to optimize your social media channels for maximum practice exposure. We can show you how to plan your time and, crucially, how to monitor and measure the results of your campaign, or we can even run the whole campaign for you.

We will help you select the right tools, walk you through the rules and etiquette of social media to ensure maximum visibility, set targets, decide what metrics to measure and help you calculate your Return on Investment (ROI).

We can advise and guide you on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ or YouTube campaigns.

Give us a call at E-Rehab and let’s talk about how we can help you. We look forward to hearing from you.

More and more of the private practices we work with are starting to realize how important social media is for their business and recognize the need to have a presence on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Some physical therapy practices who are too busy running the day-to-day affairs at their physical location, though, might tend to find social media marketing and the technology surrounding it a bit intimidating.

Social media can seem daunting at first but because many small businesses realize social media is not a fad and it’s here to stay, they generally have some questions that they would like answered before they decide to get involved.

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions. Hopefully a question that you might have asked is included in this list:

1. What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing involves interacting with your customers and other users on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

You do this by sharing information, opinions, knowledge and interests. This process allows you to build online communities or networks, encouraging patients to participate and engage with your practice, which will promote their loyalty to you and your brand name.

2. Why Does My practice Need to Get involved with Social Media?

The way that your customers communicate and use the Internet has changed dramatically. Most people now access the Internet via their smart phones and tablets, where the information is literally there at their fingertips. There are billions of people of all ages now using social media, and they expect your business to be there too.

• Increase your online presence
• Raise awareness of your services and treatments offered
• Build loyalty with existing patients
• Build trust with prospective patients
• Increase website traffic through social sharing
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Not only that, but you could also see an increase in your search engine rankings. Likes, shares, tweets and social authority are all taken into consideration in the search engines’ algorithms.

3. HELP! I Don’t Know Where to Start

Marketing on social media sites is not really much different from other marketing campaigns that you may have run. It is a good idea to start with a plan. Write down your goals and objectives you want to achieve with your social media campaign.

With a well-structured plan, you will be able stay focused and not get distracted, which is so easy to do with social media.

4. How Much Time Should I Spend on Social Media Each Day?

It does not have to be particularly time-consuming, especially if you set off with a clear objective about what you want to achieve.

The only time it gets time-consuming is if you allow yourself to get sidetracked by all of the ‘noise’ and activity happening on the site. You can easily have a profitable marketing campaign by spending just 10-20 minutes in the morning and 10-20 minutes in the evening.

5. When Should I Post on Social Media?

The best time is when your target audience is likely to read your posts. In order to determine the best time to post, consider the lifestyle of your target audience. For example, if you want to target people who work, post in the morning when they are most likely be on their way to work and check their messages on the journey. You could then post at lunchtime and again when they are travelling home again after 5pm.

If want to target an audience that is retired or does not work, post mid-morning, mid-afternoon and mid-evening.

With practice and experience, you will soon be able to decide when the best time to post comments for your patients. The secret is to test and to measure the responses and comments that your posts generate (or the lack of them). Over time, you will discover what works best for your practice, industry and patients.

6. Which Social Media Platform Should I Use?

There are a number of popular platforms you could choose from. Facebook is the most obvious choice with well over 1 billion users and more new ones daily.

Facebook is a good choice for businesses as you can target audiences with a variety of advertising options. Not only that, but Facebook is now part of people’s daily routine, and they check their accounts many times a day.

Twitter is another platform that’s part of people’s lives. It’s fast-paced and gives users access to information and news much quicker than traditional news channels.

As tweets are limited to just 140 characters, you need to learn how to get your message across using as few words as possible. It is a reminder of how people’s attention span on social media and the Internet in general is extremely short because there is just so much information out there. People tend to scan information online rather than read huge amounts of it at once.

Three relatively new social media platforms are also becoming incredibly popular.

The first one is Pinterest. Pinterest is a visual platform used to upload and share photos of literally any subject you can think of. It has a huge female following, but is starting to level out as more men are discovering and using it.

Google+ (Google Plus) is starting to flex its muscles now, too. Online giant Google owns it, so naturally it has huge financial backing. Google+ is widely tipped to be the social media channel to challenge Facebook as the king of social networks.

LinkedIn is a business-to-business social media platform, and is a lot more formal and corporate than the other social platforms. It’s an excellent way to connect with peers and network professionally within a specific industry such as physical therapy.

There are many more platforms out there, but these are the ones that are more widely used by businesses.

7. How Much Does Social Media Cost?

If you are a private practice with little or no marketing budget, then the only cost is the time you need to buy out of your busy working day.

If you have a modest budget and would like to increase your practice’s exposure, then you could consider Facebook advertising, which can be affordable and very effective.

We Can Help Get You Started with a Social Media Marketing Strategy

As we said earlier, social media is not a fad and it is here to stay. Your patients are using it on a daily basis. Also, it’s worth mentioning that social media is not just for big brands, either.

You don’t have to be a global conglomerate to get involved with social media. In fact social media platforms give all businesses, no matter what their size, a level playing field. Small private practices like yours can reap terrific benefits from the range of opportunities that social media has to offer too.

The list above is merely meant to present some of the most commonly asked questions, but is not a list of all the possible answers provided.

We hope that this article has provided you with enough information to see how important social media marketing is and how it can reap great benefits and boost business for your practice.[/colored_box]