Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Social Networking and Branding for Chiropractors in 2009

By Matthew Loop DC

Its essential that you brand yourself online as "the" top chiropractor in your area. No time is this more important than in 2009. Not only is it the key to success, but it is perhaps the only way to successfully market yourself and stay afloat in these difficult times. When people know your name, your face, your profession, and attribute credibility to all of these things combined, you have marketing and professional gold that stands the test of time. The only place to create this kind of credibility is the internet.

Some of the best, successful branding you can do for your practice is on the immensely popular social networking sites that you find online today. The more creative you are at softly marketing yourself and your skills, the more you put your name ahead of the rest. This creates a marketing buzz that youll find priceless for giving you the ability to drive new patients through your doors.

One way to really stand out among the rest is to use chiropractic social networking on sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and LinkedIn to your advantage. If you currently frequent social networks in your personal life, you know that you can add people to your friends list that are from your specific area. This can be a phenomenal marketing tool if harnessed correctly.

Whenever you send a friend request to someone on these social sites, you know that theres a link to who you are and what you do. This is going to quite simply draw people directly to your name, face, and website. People will approve of this friendship because they want to know more about you and who you are. Theyre opening the door for you to strike up a relationship with them, and ultimately tell them about your chiropractic practice.

So what you need to do is join quite a few of these social networking sites, and the easiest way to do it is have your CA or marketing director follow through while you go on with business per usual. Hiring someone else to do it or outsourcing the task is going to make it a lot easier for you to see returns on your money and not have to deal with the ins and outs of internet marketing all on your own. That way you can focus on your practice and let other people take care of the rest.

Once you have your profile pages up and running along with friends added to your list, you can then start softly marketing to these individuals. Social networking sites provide chiropractors and other businesses with different avenues to market. You have blogs that you can write in, videos you can post, and there are bulletin systems where you can tell your friends about special offers that you may have within your practice. There are also instant messenger systems that you can contact friends through.

With your status updates, you can keep everyone informed on what youre doing and how things are going in the office. You can constantly inform people as to what services you provide, and how you can help them in their time of need. Quite frankly, with this form of soft but clear marketing, there will be no one else these people will want to see for their chiropractic problems, because they feel like they really know you.

So, today you can start using these social networks to expand your chiropractic marketing in ways you never imagined possible. This way, youre successfully branding yourself to the point where youre the head chiropractic office in your area. When anyone needs a chiropractor, they think of your offices first and foremost. You can even become a local celebrity in due time!

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