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Google+
Google+ is a social networking site that has a range of different features that you can use to connect with patients and other healthcare professionals. Your contacts are separated into distinct "Circles", quickly separating personal and professional content and ensuring that you only share what you want with who you want. "Hangouts" enable you to host seminars and presentations that patients can attend via group video chatting. "Huddle" extends the Google+ functionality to mobile devices and enables you to amalgamate individual conversations into a combined group chat. This could be used to host question and answer sessions or to record patient outcomes remotely and at the patient's convenience.
Note: To make Hangouts even easier to use they have recently been added to GMail
Practices with a registered address will now appear positioned on Google Maps with the automatic creation of a Google+ Local page. Signing up to Google+ enables you to claim these pages, which will optimise your chances of being found when patients search for services in your area.
Whilst Facebook is often the network of choice for personal networking, recent developments mean that businesses and professional services can quickly reach a large and appropriate audience. Facebook allows you to create a specific "Page" for your practice with all the relevant information such as contact details, location, services offered and even reviews from patients themselves. Users can "Like" your page, at which point they will see any updates integrated into their newsfeed, which can be shared amongst friends and contacts. In addition, you could create events and send invitations to patients or carry out polls, questionnaires and answer questions directly on your "wall".
Setting up a Twitter account for your practice enables users to follow you and view 140-character "Tweets" which can contain information about you and your practice. Patients can publicly tweet you, or send you a private "direct message". In addition to practice-related information, you could look to tweet health advice or share relevant pictures, videos or online articles.
Pinterest is an image-based social networking site which enables users to create online "pinboards" to share images. Groups of therapists are already starting to make use of this to "pin" images and infographics relevant to their field, and you could pin images promoting health and well-being relating to your practice.
Whilst this list is not exhaustive, we recommend picking and choosing a few key platforms to focus on.
If you're ready to take the next step with social media to promote your private healthcare practice start by focusing on a couple of the platforms listed above. With the right practice management software software, commitment and professional expertise your reputation will spread.
WriteUpp provides web-based practice management software for individual healthcare professionals and small practices. Visit their website for more details
