As we’ve discussed in the past, the single most important step you can take to save time on social media is to have a strategy.
- Why are you using social media?
- Who is your audience?
- What do you want to achieve?
Once you can answer these questions, it’s easier to generate fresh content – or to brief a company to create content on your behalf – and use time-saving shortcuts such as Facebook’s scheduling tool to post in batches.
To help you, we’ve put together 25 quick content ideas to grow your social media presence without taking too much time:
1. Post Tips That Will Appeal To Your Audience
This might be a quick tip about preventing sun damage or skin ageing, or advice about cleaning your teeth, for example.
2. Come Up With a Weekly Topic
Something that works well is to have a recurring weekly topic that you post about on a specific day and accompany a catchy hashtag.
When you use a hashtag, people can click on it to bring up a list of all the posts that include the same hashtag. This is a powerful way to show people your old content on the same topic. For example, if you’re a dentist you could post advice about having whiter teeth on #teethwhiteningwednesdays. If yours is a facial aesthetics clinic, you could try posting skincare advice on #skincaresaturdays. Just remember to check who else is using these hashtags – if anyone – and that you would be happy for your content to appear alongside theirs.
3. Share Pictures From Your Clinic
People will love to see pictures from your clinic and of your staff.
If it’s a team member’s birthday or someone in the team has run a marathon, raised money for charity, had a baby, etc., your audience will delight in sharing the good news. Alternatively, you could take close-up photos of your equipment, artwork on the walls, technology within your clinic, and so on for a snapshot of what makes your clinic different from others.
4. Workplace Shares
Following point three above, you could ask people to share shots of their workplaces and kick-start the post by sharing an image of your immediate surroundings.
You might show a picture of your treatment room or surgery where you’re about to see a patient or give a glimpse into your staff room.
5. Create Some Inspirational Memes
According to Wikipedia, a meme is defined as ‘an activity, concept, catchphrase or piece of media which spreads, often as mimicry, from person to person via the Internet’. In this case, we’re talking about creating a meme – preferably featuring your branding and web address – that features an inspirational quote.
This might be a piece of advice from you or a famous quote already in circulation; for example, “Smiling is infectious. You can catch it like the flu. Someone smiled at me today and I started smiling too”. This is a subtle way for a dental practice to promote the importance of feeling confident about your smile.
A facial aesthetics clinic might create a meme of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “Beauty without expression is boring” as this underpins the message that, when people go to that clinic, it values expressiveness and natural beauty.
6. Share Your Latest Blog Post
Each time you create a new blog, remember to spread the word on social media.
7. Link To Old Blog Posts
Because social media moves so quickly and because you may have new followers who haven’t seen some of your older blogs, you can post links to old articles, especially those with ‘evergreen’ content that’s still current.
8. Share News That’s Relevant To Your Audience And Industry
You can set up Google Alerts to send you notifications when new content appears around your chosen keywords or topics. For example, you could set up Google Alerts about your treatments, suppliers, beauty trends, etc. and then share interesting stories with your audience.
9. List Your Favourite Products / Resources / Tips
People love ‘Top Five’ lists – this might be your top five teeth whitening tips, top five treatments, top five resources, and top five most shared posts.
The purpose of these lists is to group together information that will be of value to your audience.
10. Link To Your Services / Treatments
Want to promote a specific treatment or service? Maybe you’re offering a new treatment that people may be unfamiliar with. If so, you could always post a link to the treatment page on your website to tell people more about your offering.
11. Answer FAQs
If there are questions that come up regularly, you could take a moment to answer one on social media.
12. Ask Your Audience Questions
A great way to boost engagement is to ask your audience questions.
What treatment would they most like to have? What is their favourite treatment? What do they enjoy doing in their spare time? How do they like to treat themselves? How often do they have facial treatments? The answers you receive may give you valuable information about who your clients are and what they want from your clinic.
13. Ask Your Audience For Their Questions
If you’re not sure what to post, you could always ask your audience if they have any questions about your treatments.
Alternatively, ask them what content they would value seeing from you.
14. Bust Some Myths
If there is a myth that haunts your sector (for example, do patients often mention Lesley Ash’s lips when they enquire about lip enhancement?), then social media offers a fantastic platform to dispel the myth and educate people about the reality.
15. Share Published Research
If an academic study has been realised proving the effectiveness of a treatment or product that you use, let your potential patients know so that they can read the statistics for themselves.
16. Before and After Photos
You will need permission from the relevant patient for this, but social media is the ideal platform to share before and after photos of treatments carried out in your clinic. By sharing these images, you can help to show your audience the kind of results you are able to achieve.
17. Share Fan Photos
Another option is to ask your patients if they will share their own before and after photos.
For example, if a patient has recently completed Invisalign treatment or had dermal fillers, encourage them to share a picture of them on a night out or in front of the mirror at home.
18. YouTube Videos
If you have created a video of a treatment to appear on your clinic’s YouTube channel, take a moment to share the link on social media.
19. Caption Competitions
A great idea for building engagement is to post a humorous picture and ask your audience to comment with their caption suggestions.
20. Predictions
Another fun post idea is to ask your audience for their predictions about how dentistry or facial aesthetics will be different 20/50/100 years from now. What treatments will be invented?
21. #TBT Memories
The TBT hashtag started on Twitter and refers to ‘Throw Back Thursday’, the idea being that your share pictures or posts that reflect an earlier time in your business.
For example, if your clinic has been renovated in recent years, do you have any pictures of how it used to look? You could share these as a #TBT post.
22. Reviews
Got a great review on Google or Facebook? Don’t be shy about sharing it with your audience.
23. Influencer Posts
If there is someone within your industry who you view as highly influential or even a person outside of your industry who you admire for their values, you could always share their content with your audience.
24. Share Your News
If something newsworthy is happening within your clinic, whether that’s welcoming a new member of staff, launching a treatment or investing in training, take a moment to tell your audience about it.
25. Say Thank You
It never hurts to thank your social media fans for their likes, comments and shares. It shows that you value their input and that you wouldn’t have reason to be on social media without them.
Don’t forget to offer a fantastic user experience by responding to the comments of your audience and answering any questions. You are more likely to keep loyal social media followers if you listen and respond to their needs accordingly.
So, there you have it! 25 quick content ideas to grow your presence on social media without dominating too much of your valuable time. Let us know how you get on!
We recently looked at how you can get the best results from using social media to market your business. However, despite the benefits of building a presence on social media, we recognise that it can be a challenge to find the time when you’re already busy running your clinic.
At the end of 2015, Social Media Today published an infographic about how much time and money small businesses spend on social media, using statistics from an earlier survey of 500 small businesses by a company called Vertical Response. The responses from the survey show the obstacles many businesses face.
We recently looked at how you can get the best results from using social media to market your business. However, despite the benefits of building a presence on social media, we recognise that it can be a challenge to find the time when you’re already busy running your clinic.
At the end of 2015, Social Media Today published an infographic about how much time and money small businesses spend on social media, using statistics from an earlier survey of 500 small businesses by a company called Vertical Response. The responses from the survey show the obstacles many businesses face.
- 43% of small businesses spend six hours a week on social media (accounting for almost a whole workday per week!)
- 63% of business owners say that it falls to them to spend one to five hours a week on social media
- One in three owners would like to reduce this time
- 7% of businesses say that they spend more than 21 hours per week on social media
- 55% of small businesses spend one to three hours writing a new blog post
- 16% say that writing a new blog post takes more than three hours per post
- Finding and posting content – or coming up with fresh content ideas – takes the most time
If you need help with any aspect of your digital marketing, call us at Cosmetic Digital on 0115 9140 640.