Connecting with patients is a common concern for doctors in optometric practices. Are you looking for new ways to increase your social media reach? Do you feel like you haven’t increased your fan and follower counts? One way to develop interest and buzz around your optometric practice is to create a social media contest one or more social media platforms. Here are seven steps to help guide you to create an effective social media contest:
Set a Goal: Setting a goal will help a doctor understand why running a contest is beneficial for the practice. Are you interested in getting more foot traffic? Are you interested in greater social media awareness of your practice? Once you know what your goal is, you can tailor your social media contest to track those goals effectively.
Understand Your Audience: You know your patient base better than anyone else. One of the critical points of running a great social media contest is knowing your key demographic. Once you understand which patients your eyecare practice wants to target, you can select the appropriate social media platform that appeals to them. For example, if your practice skews more female, you may want to run a Pinterest contest since almost 80% of Pinterest users are female. Facebook’s largest age demographic ranges from 45-54 years old, but Twitter and Pinterest have a younger demographic. Knowing your target demographic will also help your practice select a prize that would be appealing.
Decide Which Contest to Run: There are so many ways to run a contest. The easiest way is encouraging patients to “like” your Facebook page, or retweet your post from Twitter. If you want more interaction, you can have entrants submit the correct answer to an eye trivia question, submit a post, or share a photo or video about your practice.
Pick Your Social Media Platform: Once you have decided the goal of your social media contest, who your target demographic is, and which contest you would like to run, it’s time to select the social media site(s) you will use. It’s important to realize the rules and regulations for each social media platform vary for running contests. Check out each of the following to help you decide which is best for your practice:
Choose the Right Application: Twitter and Pinterest are not as specific as Facebook when it comes to following contest rules on their site. For any Facebook contest you’ll need to use a third-party app. Wildfire and Strutta are two great apps for Facebook contests, but there are other cheaper options as well. For instance Easypromos will help you run a contest on Facebook.
Promote to Everyone: No matter which social media contest(s) you decide to run, make sure to spread the word as much as possible. Signs in your office as well as putting information on your website, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest Pages will encourage even more people to be a part of your contest.
Follow Up And Determine your ROI: Once the contest is over and the winner has been chosen, you still need to determine your return on investment. Review the objectives of the contest and conclude if it was successful or not. If it was a success, think about running another contest and let your patients know to watch for it in the future.
By applying these seven steps you’ll be running a successful contest on one of the social media sites in no time and you’ll develop a new connection with your patients.