Why Should Healthpreneurs Use Social Media?
You might not like to read this, but writing social media content may be more important to your business’s success than the content you write your blogs, newsletters, and maybe even your patient education resources. Your clients come to you because they trust you and your ability to take care of them. Client and patient loyalty come from feeling understood, heard, and engaged. Social media is one of the main tools people use today to connect, engage, and find answers.
Posting content on social media, when done correctly, can:
- Boost Your Visibility
- Build Engagement
- Attract New Customers
Writing social media content is a bit like trying to hit a moving target. The big platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) constantly change their algorithms for determining what you see on your feed. Social media marketers can barely keep up with the constantly updating algorithms and social network trends. Blog posts from Yoast, Hootsuite, Hubspot, and SproutSocial are free ways to stay in the know about the latest updates from the experts.
Think Human When Writing Content for Social
You are using social media to connect with your clients on a more human level. To do that you need to know who is your target audience and what language do they speak? Bond with your audience through your content by ensuring that everything you write is created with their wants and needs in mind. Consider these effective strategies:
- Share success stories from satisfied customers. This will help your readers envision their own success as a result of using your services or solution, and make them feel positive about you.
- Read comments from your prior posts to learn what language your audience uses, what problems they need you to solve, and their point of view.
- Avoid criticizing anyone (or any business) publicly. Criticizing others is unprofessional and can backfire. Your negative comments can draw more negative people to your page, hurting any trust or credibility you’ve built with your existing followers.
- Show your audience that you value their time by keeping your content short and simple. Write at an eighth-grade reading level, use headings, bullets, and lists for readability, and use graphics, images, or videos to tell your story.
The Devil Is In The Details
Don’t forget hashtags, linking, number of characters, and the active voice when writing for social.
Hashtags
Use 1-2 word hashtags for ease of reading.
Linking
- Shorten links to keep your content clean, concise, and accessible. Use TinyURL or bit.ly to shorten your links.
- Instagram does not allow external links from its posts.
- Use links cautiously. Focus on links, hashtags, and content that will drive traffic to your webpage.
Counting Characters
You can use character counting tools to keep track of the length of your posts. Each platform has different preferences for the ideal number of characters in a post (see below). There are many free character counting tools available like this one.
The Active Voice Gets It Done
Steer clear of using the passive voice in your writing for better results. Active voice is a powerful and driven writing style. Using the active voice for social media content is important because it is:
- Readable
- Engaging
- Persuasive
- Effective for call-to-actions (CTA)
Breaking It Down By Platform By Platform
- 40-80 characters perform best (10-40 words)
- 1-2 hashtags per post, putting the hashtags in the middle of sentences works better.
- Use emojis (but not too many). Facebook posts with emojis outperform those without.
- 70-100 characters perform best (25-50 words).
- 1-2 hashtags per post at most. Best to focus on content for character count.
- Use images. Media improves engagement by as much as 55%. Pay attention to resolution, size, and ALT text all of which impact how your images appear to viewers and how long they take to load.
- 130-150 characters (65-75 words).
- 5-10 hashtags per post, placing hashtags in a comment or at the end of a post.
- Use the “return” key to break up content for easy readability.
- 50-100 characters perform best (25-50 words).
- 1-2 hashtags per post; using hashtags at the end of the post works best.
Don’t Be Shy- Ask For Engagement
Call-to-Action (CTAs) are those action-oriented statements peppering all good social media content that remind your readers to actively engage.
Stop your readers mid-scroll by adding in one of the following CTA’s:
- Ask them to like or share your social media posts
- Ask a question they can answer in the comments
- Direct them to another piece of content
- Send them to a landing page
- Direct them to your website
- Get them to subscribe to your newsletter
- Ask them to connect with you on other social media channels
Don’t Forget About The Newer Kids On The Social Media Block
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Snapchat
Rising numbers of viewers on these programs, as well as advertising dollars, show that the future of digital marketing is largely visual and video is here to stay. The experts at Hubspot tell us that users recall 65% of the visual content that they see almost three days later.
Words still have meaning and power, but you can super-charge your content by sprucing up its appearance with images, hashtags, emojis, videos, and images. Today, writing social media content requires us to say more with less in unprecedented ways. Use visual images and the tips outlined here to make sure your social media content does what you need it to do for you.
Not sure what social can do for you? I can help you write engaging and health-inspiring social media content to help grow your business and connect with your patients and clients. As healthpreneurs can’t do it all by ourselves and part of staying healthy is knowing when to ask for help.
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