Social media have become essential tools for deploying engaging communication in the healthcare sector. What is social media? Why should you use it?

What are the differences between social media and social networks ?

There is some delicacy between social media and social networks, but many people confuse the two concepts. Social media is based on communication. They allow you to publish content and generate engagement to get people talking about you. Social networks, on the other hand, aim to connect users to each other to create communities.

In social media, we mean websites offering content such as forums, blogs and social networks. Social networks are only one part of social media. Among the main social media, you will find : Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram.

What’s the point of social media ?

The main reasons why you should integrate social media into your marketing strategy are the following:

• Increase the visibility and reputation of your company ;
• Reinforce the effectiveness of your natural referencing (SEO): the more links a site has pointing to its pages, the better it will be referenced;
• Improve your online reputation (e-reputation): you can monitor, participate and act if necessary;
• Reach potential customers;
• Increase the commitment of your target audience, while building a strong community…

Social media are nowadays unavoidable. A communication strategy that does not integrate social media is clearly not optimal.

How to build a digital strategy on social media?

To communicate well on social media, it is essential to build a digital strategy. Below are some tips.

Identify your targets

It’s important to identify your target. We are talking about Persona Marketing.

The idea here is to understand what your target audience does with social media. What social media does it use? What are its uses?

It is important to precisely define the expectations and needs of your target audience to communicate well on social media.

Work on a documented strategy

For a real return on investment with social media, it is important to have a documented social media strategy.

Use the right social media

Every social media has its uses, not all social media are suitable for you. To communicate well on social media, it is imperative to select them well.

Limit yourself to a few social media that you can manage effectively according to your financial, human, time and skills resources.

Build a social media calendar

The Social Media Calendar is a tool to plan and schedule all your social content in advance. It has many advantages such as :

• Set objectives for each element of your editorial line ;
• Have a global vision of the content that will be shared on your social networks;
• To know the highlights of your communication;
• Anticipate recurring and seasonal events;
• Set up efficient operations;
• Gather in a single place data accessible to all employees …

Create content and animate

Relevant content, whether text or multimedia, is used to feed your Social Media on a regular basis. Animation through this content tends to increase the engagement of your audience.

Analyse your social media

Studying the performance of your social media is the most important step in optimizing your strategy. Future actions will tend to improve as the analysis progresses, to build an increasingly judicious social media strategy.

Share your tips and questions in comments!

Alexana A.