Struggling to conjure up fresh and creative social media content ideas for your chiropractic office?
You don’t have to look further than Google’s “People also ask” search feature to see that you’re not the only business owner stuck in that particular boat.
It’s an increasingly common problem as brands fight to be heard amid the sheer amount of social content being published every second. Then there’s the content production time involved, which is especially hard on smaller business owners who don’t always have the necessary time and resources to keep up with the social media Joneses.
As much as platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter can benefit a business, they can also pose a major challenge when it comes to generating a continuous flow of engaging content.
These days, it’s not just about educating and entertaining your audience either. It’s about creating an experience rooted in storytelling, developing an emotional connection, and nurturing values and passion. It’s a difficult balance to strike when the idea well has run dry and you’re pressed for time.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help.
In our blog post on how to rock your local inbound marketing strategy with social media, we covered everything you need to know about optimizing your social profiles for local search, lead generation, and engagement. In this post, we’ll not only help you combat your idea problem but also help you be impactful within the limited timeframe you have each day to serve your social media audience.
Let’s get to it.
Okay, mea culpa.
Although our intention is to help you succeed at social media in just 10 minutes a day as the title of this post promises, it’s also important to be realistic about expectations and what you can achieve in that time.
The reality is that you need to set some time aside each week or month to do some additional preparation. While our recommended approach and prompts detailed below should allow you to generate ideas off the cuff and implement them immediately, there are times where you might want to research what’s trending, look for questions people are asking about chiropractic, create some image posts, and write your copy ahead of time so that things are quick and easy to publish during a busy week.
This brings me to my next point.
Through our own testing and observations, we believe the fastest way to produce social media content that’s impactful, creates an experience, and facilitates real-time interaction with potential chiropractic patients is through video. More specifically, Facebook Live video.
It allows you to take the ideas you have as an expert in your field and extemporaneously create content wherever, whenever. You can literally pick up your phone, tap a few buttons, add a brief but compelling video description, and go live.
The only prep work you might want to do a minute or two beforehand is think of a quick introduction, jot down a few bullet points so that you have a framework to work from, and decide on your close and call to action.
This format is also incredibly easy to repurpose for other platforms. Whether you transcribe it for blog posts or written social media posts, cut it up into sound bites, create image quotes, or use it as content in your emails, a single video can take care of your content needs across all social media and publishing platforms.
Besides eliminating the time and expense involved in curating or outsourcing content creation, video also boosts your brand building efforts. Your face is out there; people can see who you are and how you interact with others. They gain a sense of your personality, see your offices, and get a feel for how you conduct your treatments. This can help them feel more comfortable with you before they even take that first step through your practice doors.
So how do you come up with content ideas for live video or other formats?
When we look at social media content for a chiropractic office, it’s usually divided into two categories: 1) personal and 2) professional.
The personal side is the most relatable to the consumer who is going to want to know who you are as an individual. Healthcare is a very personal choice, which is why word-of-mouth is usually the main way doctors are able to grow their practice. The prospect already knows, likes, and trusts the person recommending you, so there’s a transfer of confidence to you in this situation.
Since you don’t necessarily have a referral in this case, it’s crucial to build credibility and trust even before patients book an appointment. They don’t know who you are, they don’t know your practice, and they don’t know what makes you tick as a person. Curiosity about the answers to these questions is human nature, so you should make sure you’re answering them.
On the professional side of things is where value plays its role. This is all about your chiropractic care and how you can help patients improve their condition, find pain relief, and make their life better.
It’s important to keep in mind that people aren’t interested in an inauthentic doctor experience where there’s this separation between you and the patient. It’s a relationship. It’s a community. Therefore, you want to represent that in your social media content. The personal and professional go hand-in-hand because if you can show that you’re a human who is caring for your community through chiropractic, they’re going to connect with you and be more open to listening to the professional side of what you do.
The other key thing to remember is that you produce content to impact your community so that you can move people towards the products and services you offer. Within this, you need to have a clear call to action that tells them what you want them to do so there's no confusion. Social media marketing is not just to be personal without a point. It's to be personal and professional so that you can drive people towards a call to action that will get prospects in the door and talking to you about what's going on in their lives. This puts them in a position where they’re better able to decide whether or not chiropractic is the right fit for them.
With that said, what kinds of videos can you create to establish your brand, demonstrate your products and services, and create an experience for consumers?
To answer this question, we recommend that you start by being more curious about yourself, your practice, your patients, and the world around you. Start conditioning yourself to ask questions from both a personal and professional stand point that will allow you to solicit an answer you can develop into social media content.
To give you a kick-off point, we’ve put together a list of question prompts you can use to generate your first batch of ideas.
Remember, these are questions related to who you are, why you do what you do, and how this all translates into the kind of practice you’ve established. The answers satisfy your audience’s curiosity while helping people relate to you as a human being and not another business entity.
Here are the prompts:
These are healthcare-related questions based on your expertise as a chiropractor. They help patients understand their pain and health problems better, they help patients understand how to overcome those problems and why chiropractic is the right solution for them, and they explain why you’re the best person to provide treatment.
The great thing about these value prompts is that you can recycle the questions by simply substituting a different health issue into the mix. Whether it’s back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, headaches, sciatica problems, a sports injury, infantile colic, or any number of the other issues you treat, you’ll be able to produce social media content for months without worrying where you’ll get your next idea.
Just as we explore questions related to back pain, neck pain, and headaches to guide patients in comprehending their conditions better, a parallel inquiry into the intricacies of drug rehabilitation is essential. How does addiction affect the body, and what underlying factors contribute to substance abuse? Shedding light on these questions not only aids in fostering awareness but also establishes a foundation for individuals seeking recovery.
Integrating discussions about the potential benefits of participation in 30 day drug rehab programs allows for a more encompassing dialogue, demonstrating the chiropractor's commitment to supporting patients on their journey to optimal health.
Here are some prompts to get you started:
If you’re looking for additional social media content ideas, we’ve also created 30 Days of Fun Facebook Live Ideas for Chiropractors. You can download it for free below.
Not sure how to produce a live video in 10 minutes let alone a quality one?
We’ve written a blog post to help with that too.
In The Definitive Guide to Creating Influential Facebook Live Campaigns That Grow Your Authority, you’ll learn everything from why your chiropractic office needs a Facebook Live strategy and the basics of live broadcasts to the step-by-step process involved in going live and additional tips to optimize your efforts and maximize the outcome.
We highly recommend you work your way through that post for a more detailed dive, but here’s a high-level overview to show you how easy it is:
Using the prompts above or in our free Facebook Live guide, choose a topic you can comfortably talk about within an 8-10 minute timeframe. If you spend some time planning ahead of time, consider sorting your ideas into weekly themes. This lets you focus on one particular topic or area of interest and offers a sense of coherency to your content.
Although our Facebook Live post offers insight into the best times to livestream, you’ll need to figure out when your own audience is generally online. Your Page Insights can be a great source of information regarding the times you get the most traffic and engagement to your Facebook Page.
Spend some of your prep time creating promotional images, social media posts, and email copy promoting your Facebook Lives. This is an opportunity to have meaningful two-way conversations and engagement, so you want people to show up for you.
This process is as simple as:
icon on your Facebook Page’s statusYou don’t need any fancy gadgets or complex software programs to produce a quality video that impacts your community. The simplest videos are often the best. It’s about the value you deliver.
Step 5: Interact with Viewers During and After the BroadcastBe sure to interact with viewers in real-time by welcoming them to your broadcast, fielding any questions they drop in the comment section, and encouraging them to like, share, and leave their Live Reactions.
Once you’ve hit the Finish button to end your broadcast, you can then edit your video to add a thumbnail, choose a video category, and select a call to action button. You can also download and use the video for repurposing so that you’re maximizing the use of your time by creating multiple pieces of content from a simple 10 minute livestream.
For further help on video production for social media, check out our post on how to get more customers for your local business using video.
Okay, so we’ve covered the practical stuff but does the thought of doing live video terrify you?
You wouldn’t be the first person to experience stage fright nor the last. The good news is that there are some things you can do to mentally prepare yourself and overcome your camera shyness.
Here are some of our top tips:
Ultimately, the more you practice and implement what you’ve learnt the easier it becomes. Eventually, you’ll find live streaming becomes second nature and that creating social media content isn’t as time-consuming or tiresome as it once was.
Finding great chiropractic-related content ideas for your audience all starts with one question: what do my prospects want to know?
Training yourself to start thinking in terms of personal and value-based questions will ensure your idea well never runs dry and that you’re creating a steady stream of content for your social networks.
At Ignite Marketing, we truly believe that the popularity of video and the ease with which you can create it these days gives every small business owner an opportunity to compete in the marketplace and grow an online audience with minimal effort. It really can be done in 10 minutes a day, as long as you’re using the right approach and creating the right content.
What’s your biggest struggle when it comes to unearthing social media content ideas for your practice? Drop a comment below and we’ll do our best to help. You can also book a free 15-minute consultation to see how we can help you acquire more patients.
