Platforms like Facebook and Instagram provide a great way to reach new patients and communicate with those already within your online community. In order to make the most of these, you’ll have to focus on your social media organic reach for your clinic.
If you haven’t started using it for your clinic, click here for tips on how to take advantage of these free platforms.
These social media platforms also double as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platforms. Although you can sign up and share content for free, if you have a business account, they want you to advertise with them.
In 2021, Meta (formerly Facebook) generated $114 billion in ad revenue, while Instagram doubled its ad revenue within two years, reaching $26 billion by 2021. This is expected to continue to increase over the next few years.
Some marketers argue that the drop in social media organic reach is to encourage businesses to advertise more. To fight this, there are strategies you can implement to increase your organic reach without paying for ads.
Whether you’re desperately trying to get your posts seen by your followers or thinking about setting up ads, increasing your organic reach is vital for your clinic to grow and reach new patients. This blog will outline how to avoid being affected by the social media organic reach drop.
What is organic reach in social media?
If you’ve gotten this far but are not sure what we mean by organic reach, it is simply the number of people who have seen your content through unpaid distribution, i.e. no ads. It includes users who have seen your posts in newsfeeds, stories or those who have seen posts by browsing your account.
On Instagram, there is an ‘’explore page’’ where with an open (not private) profile, your content can be seen by much more people. In this case, there would be a high organic reach for any post on that page, as you’re reaching many new people who don’t already follow you.
Each social media network has its own algorithm to decipher who each post will be shown to. With ads, however, you can choose your target audience.
How do you get organic reach on social media?
If you play the game, the algorithms will reward you. They want you to show interesting content to your followers. The more likes, comments, saves and shares you receive on a post, the more likely it will appear on other people’s screens. This is because these social media networks see that people are engaging with your posts, and they determine that others may also like them.
If you use bad-quality images or post irrelevant content, you’re more likely to have less engagement. Facebook and Instagram will understand that your post is of little interest and, therefore, it won’t be visible to as many other users.
This is why quality content is essential—not just posting to post!
Why is social media organic reach for your clinic important?
Whether you want to use ads or not, organic reach is fundamental to growing your social media presence.
Social media can help you strengthen your connections and answer queries and doubts from your followers. If you create informative and interesting posts, followers are likely to engage and enquire about your treatments.
And one of the best things about social media is that although creating engaging posts can be time-consuming, it is also free. Who doesn’t love free marketing?
For those hoping to advertise on these platforms, creating organic content serves as the foundation for your ad strategy. You will need a complete and engaging profile so that those viewing your ad feel compelled to click on to find out more about what you offer.
If you’re unsure whether to advertise on social media or with Google Ads, we’ve compiled all the pros and cons of both in this blog post.
Social media organic reach drop
Businesses complain more and more about their posts not reaching even their own followers, let alone other profiles of people who don’t follow them.
Although no platforms admit it, many marketers believe this is no mistake. They claim that organic reach is low to convince businesses to pay for ads. After all, these social media networks are advertising platforms.
Increasing your clinic’s organic reach
#1 Get a strategy
Instead of posting randomly on your social media channels, start by getting a strategy together. Talk to your staff, decide who will do the posting and discuss tactics and what content you should be making. You’ll need your team involved and on board.
#2 Good content with value
As previously mentioned, these platforms rely on algorithms to decide what is engaging and what is not. If you create interesting and consistent content, you will be rewarded with a better engagement rate and, therefore, a better organic reach.
Explain the treatments you offer and show the results prospective patients could get from the treatments. Ask your current patients what kind of thing they would like to see on social media and answer FAQs that you tend to get.
Use your own pictures and show your followers what they can expect from coming in for an appointment. Show your staff in the photos. This will help your future patients imagine what their visit will be like, and it helps them get to know you better.
#3 Connect with your community
Follow people within the same niche and those in your local area. As a healthcare clinic, most of your patients will probably be local, so it’s important to be well-known within the area.
Share people’s content that you find interesting, which will spark an interest in your patients. Like and comment, and always reply to other people’s comments. This helps create a sense of community!
#4 Post regularly and at the right time
The social media platforms have an analytics page that you can check out to find out invaluable information such as the time your followers are most active, the posts they engage with most and even the gender of your followers. This can help when choosing which treatments to post about!
You should also try and post consistently depending on what you and your team can manage. Use stories on Facebook and Instagram to show sneak peeks into the clinic and have some fun with the content! If your followers can see that you enjoy working there, they will be more inclined to visit!
Best practices for each network
Each social network is different. They have different algorithms, and you can share content in different ways. It’s important to understand how each works to be able to take advantage of each element that each network has to offer.
On Facebook, you can share a range of different content. You aren’t restricted to just photos or videos. Use this platform to share interesting blogs you’ve published on your website or articles from other sites that you think your patients will be interested in.
Post pictures from your clinic and explain how treatments work or accomplishments that your clinic has achieved, such as awards.
This social media network is primarily used for sharing photos and videos. Of course, you can post images and videos with text in them, but you’ll need to track whether these do well on your analytics.
Share authentic content – photos of your staff at the Christmas party, updates on a refurbishment you’re doing, and before and after pictures. With just a tap of a finger, your followers can like, share and save your content, so make sure it’s something interesting that reaches them on a personal level. Stay clear of stock images, as they can be spotted from a mile away!
Instagram’s reels have a higher organic reach. Use this to your advantage and post reels with trending songs or audio clips to get more visibility. Users can even find your videos by searching for videos made with a particular audio. Those seeing your reels this way may not be interested in your clinic, but if more people engage in general, your reels will be shown to more of your followers!
Tiktok
TikTok is a social media network for short videos. You can upload clips of your staff at the practice, how a treatment works, and videos that show the results from one of the treatments. Tiktok is all about trends. If your posts include trends such as dances, or popular sound clips, you’re more likely to reach a larger audience.
Spend some time on Tiktok to see what’s trending to get some inspiration!
Should I advertise on social media?
In a word, yes. You can fight the drop in organic reach all you want, but nothing will be as effective as advertising on these platforms. Once you have some solid social media pages set up, you can look into advertising. This will help you generate new patient enquiries and increase brand awareness.
We’ve made it easy for you by giving you tips to help you run profitable Facebook campaigns.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
Now that you understand more about organic reach and how to increase it, you should also realise the importance of not relying on just one social media platform or one form of marketing. Diversify your marketing strategy by using different platforms, ads and Google Ads to increase the number of new patient leads you will receive.
What does Ignite Growth do?
We are the advertising agency for clinics. We help clinics and practices market their businesses through paid ads.
We have years of experience working within the healthcare industry, setting us aside from any other advertising agency. We also offer complete area exclusivity. This means we won’t work with more than one clinic in the same area. If you’re interested to learn more about how we help clinics like yours get new patient enquiries, book a free call with one of our team members.
