Social media is no longer just a way to connect with friends and family or merely a source of entertainment. People now use social media as a search engine to find out more about a product or service, including those from healthcare providers.
Any healthcare practice that underestimates the value of digital engagement and isn’t putting together a marketing strategy for social media in 2025 is missing out on new and repeat business.
If you’re thinking, I have no idea how to use social media to promote my practice, don’t worry. This guide explains how to establish your social media presence and how to engage patients on social.
Understanding the Opportunity
While other industries like entertainment, apparel and retail, and even banking have made significant investments in digital consumer engagement, healthcare is lagging behind.
Yet healthcare consumerism is on the rise, with patients becoming ever more discerning about picking their healthcare providers. Patients are consumers, seeking better experiences, higher quality of care, and greater value.
Take, for example, the phenomenon of ‘vas madness,’ whereby online searches for vasectomies spike around the New Year. Knowing this, healthcare practices could promote special offers around this time on social media or share educational content that acts as lead generation.
Studies show that social media marketing positively affects the image and visibility of a medical center, with 57% of consumers agreeing that a hospital’s social media presence would strongly influence their choice regarding where to go for services, and over 80% of consumers interpreting a strong social media presence as an indicator that a hospital has cutting-edge technology.
With those statistics, it’s not surprising that 12.5% of healthcare organizations report successfully attracting new patients from Facebook and other social media platforms.
How to Choose the Right Platforms
Social media marketing is a vast landscape, with a range of apps used for various purposes. Here’s an overview of the major platforms and how healthcare practices can use them:
- Facebook: With Pages and Facebook Groups, Facebook is primarily used to build a community, where practices can share news and updates. Healthcare organizations should also create a strategy for collecting positive Facebook reviews, as these can help attract new patients.
- Instagram: As a visually-driven app, Instagram is used for storytelling through visual formats like images, videos, and graphics. Many practices leverage the app to share educational content to engage health-conscious consumers.
- TikTok: Video is the primary content shared on TikTok, from short, trend-driven clips to longer, more educational videos.
- LinkedIn: As a social media platform for professional networking, LinkedIn helps physicians build a personal brand and share thought leadership content.
It’s best to choose just one or two platforms on which to focus your health practice’s marketing strategy for social media. When selecting a platform, consider your patient demographic and your practice’s unique needs.
How to Build an Engaging Presence
The first steps to building your practice’s social media presence are:
- Optimize your profile: Complete your profile with a picture, SEO-driven bio, contact information, and links back to your practice’s website.
- Create a content calendar: Plan your content to ensure that it’s published consistently and regularly, with a mix of content types (see more below).
- Keep branding consistent: Use a high-resolution logo for your profile picture, so patients can instantly recognize your practice. It’s also important to stay consistent with your brand colors and tone of voice.
What Content Drives Engagement
If you’re stuck on how to engage patients on social media, it’s best to explore various types of content, such as:
- Educational content: Answer FAQs, explain conditions and treatments, or share general health advice and tips.’
- Behind-the-scenes: Show patients more BTS content, like “Meet the Team” posts.
- Patient testimonials: Share patient success stories and testimonials with their consent.
- Myth-busting: Create a series where your practitioners bust common myths and misconceptions.
- Seasonal content: Align content with the calendar. For instance, you could share how to carry out a self-examination for breasts on Breast Cancer Awareness Month, or how to avoid catching a cold around the Holidays.
Tips for Turning Engagement into Leads
It’s all well and good to gain followers and likes on social media marketing content, but for most health practices, the goal is to convert them into patients. Here are some tips on how to do just that.
- Use lead magnets: Offer free consultations or checklists to encourage patients to sign up.
- Use clear CTAs: End content with calls-to-action that explicitly tell the patient their next step. Some examples include: “Book Now,” “Call Today,” or “DM to Schedule.”
- Leverage ads: Instagram and Facebook Ads are useful for local targeting.
- Retarget website visitors: By enabling Meta pixels on your website, you can retarget people who have previously been on your website with specific ads. Those people will already be familiar with your practice and may be more likely to convert into patients.
Ensure Compliance and Reputation Management
To stay compliant, make sure to consult and follow HIPAA guidelines when posting on social media. For instance, you should never share any Protected Health Information (PHI). If you’re sharing content about a patient, even if they’re not directly featured in the content, you should always obtain their explicit written consent.
It’s also best practice to regularly monitor your online reviews to manage your practice’s reputation. Do your best to address and handle complaints and always respond professionally.
How to Measure What Matters
To understand how your content is performing, you’ll need to track its metrics.
- Use tracking tools: Social media marketing tools tend to offer engagement analytics for individual posts as well as overall performance. Check your Meta insights, Google or LinkedIn analytics, and TikTok Studio to see how your content is performing.
- Choose your key metrics: Some posts may serve to engage your community, while others are about expanding your reach, so your key metrics may vary with each post. The most important metrics are your reach, clicks, conversions, watch time, and engagement rate.
- Use A/B testing: When running ads, improve their performance through A/B testing. Make small adjustments to ads, such as the visuals or the copy, to see which one performs better: ad A or ad B. Then, invest more ad budget into the better performing post.
When to Partner with a Specialist
If you’re not generating leads and gaining new patients through your social media, you don’t have the time to create content, or your content isn’t performing as planned, it may be time to partner with a healthcare marketing specialist.
It’s important to go for a marketing agency that knows healthcare, as generalist agencies won’t be able to offer the same results.
Want to see how a marketing strategy for social media can transform your patient pipeline? And learn how to engage patients on social? Let’s talk. Get a complimentary consultation tailored to your practice.
