How To Start Using Instagram For Your Practice
Does your practice have an Instagram account? It should!
Instagram is home to around one billion users – that’s a lot of eyeballs! Chiropractors have used this to huge effect, helping reach new audiences across the globe.
Whether it’s your physical practice or your online content you’re hoping to promote, there’s a place to build an audience on Instagram.
In this blog, we want to teach you how you can get started with Instagram and help fulfil your goals as a practice manager and health practitioner.
1. Create a clear and effective profile
Without a properly completed profile, it’s going to be harder to achieve much on Instagram. This includes a few key elements:
- An eye-catching profile photo. This is generally your practice logo.
- An account name that is identical to your other social media profiles for your practice (and is close to the practice name itself!).
- A username that is also your practice name. You aren’t able to use any spaces.
- The URL for your website – this will be the only clickable link on your Instagram page, so make sure it gets interested users to the right place! Generally, practices use their website or their latest page for promotion.
- A clear and concise bio that will capture attention.
Take care to convert your account from a personal to a business profile – this is a really good idea for your practice, as it helps connect you with a physical location! It will also open up more analytics, so you can better understand who is accessing your page and when.
2. Lean into your community
While we know Instagram can look overwhelming, you don’t actually need millions of followers to have a great profile – it’s much better to start small.
We also know you care about your community, about connecting with your patients and sharing positive messages about health and wellness. Use all of this on your Instagram!
Connect by using hashtags – this helps users to find what you’re talking about. You might want to invent a new hashtag for your practice or start investigating hashtags that describe your principles and concerns – things like #chiropracticcare or #wellness. It’s a good idea to use a mix of very popular and more niche hashtags, to ensure you’re talking to a good spread of users. You can research this online, or search for tags on Instagram itself. There you’ll see how many followers that hashtag has, and what kinds of content people in that community generally share. This is a great way to understand the landscape of Instagram and figure out how you can get involved.
Don’t forget that you also have tools like the Instagram Live – by talking directly with your audience, answering questions, you can open the door for users to get to know you and the work you do.
After all, the best way to create online engagement is to emulate the kind of connections you might foster in real life. Start by engaging with other brands and profiles you admire, engaging with your viewers, and build that online community alongside your physical practice.
3. Tell a story about your practice
We respond to a story that makes sense to us. What kind of story do you want to tell about your practice?
This means thinking about the narrative of who you are, and what you stand for. Here’s your chance to decide: what will you talk about to your audience?
There are lots of stories you might tell – about health and wellness, about chiropractic and other therapies, about lifestyle more broadly, or any other aspect of the work that you do. It’s up to you to decide what story is most important for people to associate with your practice.
4. Showcase and explain the care you give
One of the biggest efforts you can make as an expert is to educate. People want to know about how they can live better – and you have the ability to educate them on how to make a better life a reality!
Start gathering visual examples of everyday health choices or snapping short videos of the kind of therapies you offer. Instagram is a visual medium, after all, so it’s a great idea to start thinking about what might make for an interesting and eye-catching image that you can share with your audience.
Utilise your knowledge and skills to really help explain the work that you do and how you can help those looking for the care you provide.
4. Consider an extra (external!) push
If you’re not sure how you can make the most impact, look for help. Through working with some of the best chiropractors in the country, we have gained the knowledge and expertise to manage your online profile and make sure everything you post looks and feels aligned with your practice and your approach to care. We can help get you going, so that you can continue to grow your audience and reach new patients.
Instagram does offer paid ads which can provide an initial boost to get your message out there, however, this is not strictly necessary – the focus should always be on creating the best, most valuable and heart-centred content you can. After all, if it resonates, people will follow!
We hope these tips can help get you started on Instagram. For anything else you need, take a look at our other blogs, or get in touch to find out how we can help you build your online presence to find the patients you’re looking for!