Ep #285: 5 Ways to Strategically Use Social Media to Grow Your Business

Hi docs, welcome to The EntreMD Podcast, where it’s all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I’m your host, Dr. Una.

Hi docs, welcome to The EntreMD Podcast, where it’s all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I’m your host, Dr. Una.

Hello my friend, welcome back to another episode of The EntreMD Podcast. As always, super pumped to be in your ears. Thank you for listening. Thank you for coming back week after week. Thank you for sharing and reviewing. And if you haven’t done any of these, it’s a nice time to do it because I already told you thank you.

But today, we’re going to be talking about something that is a lot of fun, and it’s social media, right?

Social media is one of those things where entrepreneurs in general are like, “Eh, I don’t want to do that.” And there are a lot of physicians who are private people and they’re like, “I don’t want to put myself out there.”

Actually, I had a conversation with a friend of mine. And we were doing something that is a project I’m working on for 2023 and she was taking all these pictures and time lapse videos and things like that. I’m like, “Please don’t put me on social media.” And she looked at me kind of quizzical. She was like, okay, I was like, “Yeah, because I’m not on social media a lot.”

And she looked at me like I lost my mind, right? Because, yes, I am on social media a lot. But what I meant by that is my personal life, my projects I’m working on behind the scenes and all of those things, they’re not on social media, because I’m still a very private person, right? And so my business persona is on social media a lot, right? That person is on.

So even if you’re a private person, you can be private and you can dominate on social media. You may just go like, I don’t know what to post, it’s a waste of time I’ve done it and it doesn’t seem to be doing anything for my business. Today I’m going to be showing you five ways to use social media, to strategically use social media to grow your business.

Now, this business could be a private practice, you could be a coach, you could be primarily a speaker, you could have some other service based or product based business, does not matter. These are five ways you can use social media to grow your business.

So number one, number one is creating shareable content. Creating shareable content. I want you to think about a time when you are on social media, you saw a post, there was even no instruction on there asking you to share, but you clicked on this Share link. In fact, some of them you even went to share it and it was not shareable, right? Because the way the person set up their privacy settings it wasn’t shareable. And you posted in the comments make this shareable, right?

But think about if that were your brand. Something that you did on your own page for your business and things like that and people are sharing and sharing and sharing. That’s an opportunity for new people to find you, right? That’s an opportunity for people to see you in your zone of genius and decide, hey, I want to work with this person, right? So you actually have turned your raving fans into part of your team by creating shareable content, okay?

Now, when you think about shareable content, it’s things like, you know, things in the news, things that are hot topics, things that are current affairs. And so at the beginning of the pandemic, you run a private practice, anything on COVID. People don’t know, people are asking questions, so people share and all of those kinds of things, right?

Think about things like common questions. You think about the questions your clients ask you, your patients ask you, and you have to answer them over and over and over and over and over again. I’m a pediatrician, right? And so for private practice, questions about poop come up all the time. Questions about the cold. Questions about how to manage fever. Questions about, you know, my child is cross-eyed, is that not normal or not? There’s a whole lot of these things that come up again and again, again.

And if they’re coming up for your clients and your patients, then be rest assured that it’s coming up a lot for their friends and for your other ideal clients that are not clients yet, right? And so you answer those questions, that’s shareable content, right?

So I want you to imagine somebody who is a coach, for instance, and let’s even use this podcast episode. And they’re like, “Oh my goodness, now I know how to use social media to grow my business.” But maybe that person has seven other friends or they’re in a group with 1,000 doctors who are physician coaches and all have the same struggle. And they’re like, “Oh my goodness, you have to go listen to this podcast episode right now.”

And so the more you answer questions that are in the minds of your clients, your patients, the more shareable your content is, right? People are just like, “Oh my goodness, I want to share that.” It could look like posts that are your convictions, right?

So you’d hear me talk about how we’re not one trick ponies. You hear me talk about how of course you can build a six, seven or multiple seven figure business. You will hear me talk about of course we can build the most innovative, most impactful, most profitable businesses, like any other entrepreneur.

Those are things that make people go like, “Hey, wait, so I can do that.” You hear me talk about fear, like we don’t stop because of fear. You know what I mean? Like we don’t do that. You didn’t get a business education, it doesn’t matter, we can acquire one, right? And we can go on to do these things. So those are all convictions.

And there are people who that is a driver for. They’re like, wait a minute, right? And it’s easier to share that because like, hey, look we’ve believed all these lies, well listen to what this person is saying, right? So what is that for your business? What is that for your private practice? What is that for you as a coach. What are your convictions, right? That’s part of your shareable content.

And people who identify with that, people who that resonates with, they will be drawn to you. So that’s the first thing, create shareable content. So content is all about going into the mind to tap into the conversations your audience is already having, your clients are already having. And once you get into that conversation with them, everything you produce is shareable. Right?

Okay. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is it positions you as an authority. So you use social media to position yourself as an authority. Now, remember this, it doesn’t matter how good you are. The person who is most visible, and most vocal, most consistent, and most relentless will win. That’s just the way it works.

The quality of the product, like hopefully you have a great product, you have a great service. But if you have a great product and a great service but you’re not visible, right, you’re not consistent, you’re not vocal, you’re not persistent, the person who has a terrible, not terrible but, you know, like a product that’s not as good, right, will run circles around you if they have that, right? Okay.

So you use your social media, to position yourself as the authority. One way you position yourself as the authority is you keep showing up, right? You keep showing up, you’re putting your convictions out there, you’re answering questions, you’re being helpful, you’re giving value. The other thing is showcasing yourself as the authority. You spoke at an event, put that there. Somebody gave a testimonial, put that person’s testimonial up there. You wrote a book, put it there. You were published in a major journal or a major magazine or anything like that, put that there. You were given an award, put that there.

It’s not about promoting yourself in a sleazy type of way. No, it is about positioning yourself as the authority, positioning yourself as the leader in your industry, the leader in your category. You deliberately do this so that when people think about the problem you solve, they think about you.

Okay, so you use social media to create shareable content, use it to position yourself as an authority. Really think about where you had a day, maybe it was Thursday, right? And you decided every Thursday I’m going to post an authority post. And you might say, but I don’t have that many things. Yes, but you can rinse and repeat, right? And so you start looking for those things.

Somebody endorsed you, or somebody said something about you, or somebody in conversation said something after you spoke at an event. You can just clip that up, like this is what somebody said at the last event I spoke at, blah, blah, blah, I love being on the stage, right? So positioning yourself as an authority. Nobody will do it for you, okay? If you are going to be perceived as an authority, it’s because you positioned yourself as an authority. So that’s number two.

Number three is networking, okay? You network in real life, like in person, you can network on social media. And the people you really want to network with, there are many. But okay, you want to network with your referral sources, right? And so think about who will refer people to you, okay?

So let’s use private practice as an example. I use this because sometimes in private practice they’re like, “Yeah, that doesn’t really work for me.” But I want you to think about it, you’re a pediatrician and there are OBGYNs who are killing it on social media. Those are now all your new best friends because you can go there, you can comment on their posts, and all the stuff and start building relationships that way.

You can send them a DM, “Hey, I’m a pediatrician, just five miles from you. Nice to meet you virtually.” And let the conversation go from there. People refer to people they know, like, and trust. And social media is social media, right? And so be social on social media, right?

So build relationships with people who refer to you, okay? Build relationships with them. So in a physician setting, I want to use private practice for this in particular because a lot of times people don’t see how that applies, right? So you have the your referral sources, right, like people who have access to your audience who are other doctors. But you also have access to people who will refer to you who are not physicians, right?

Again, so I am a pediatrician but there may be a woman who is local and is in charge of a group, a local moms group, right? And if on social media we become friends and all of those kinds of things, there are a number of things that can happen. That person could have a podcast, a local podcast, and I come on. I want to, you know, feature you on the podcast and all of those kinds of things.

That person may have local meetups and the connection was through social media and then you go to the local meetup and you meet all these people. Like it’s a room full of your ideal clients or ideal patients. That person can have a Facebook group and they’re like, “Hey, would you come to a Facebook live in my Facebook group?”

It can play out all kinds of ways, right? So you’re looking for people who have access to your people, and you’re intentionally building relationships with them, okay? So that’s number three.

Number four. Number four, is using it for community building, okay? Using it for community building. And this is really powerful because when you think about it, if you’re acquiring new patients or you’re acquiring new clients, that is growth. But if you keep your current clients, well that is growth too, right? Okay, so you use it as a community building too so there’s more stickiness to your brand, right?

And so like, for instance, I do a lot on social media. And I have a lot of my current clients who are following me on social media. And they get a lot of value from my stuff, like even other than what I do with them when I work with them directly. And it’s just like this web where I’m always serving them in all kinds of different ways. And they find themselves in my posts, and they’re commenting on their comments in my post. It’s just a community builder, right?

It’s a community builder. So now, they’re more connected to me, they’re more connected to the other people who are in the EntreMD Business School and things like that. You can do that as a coach, you can do that as a private practice. You’re just building this web. So it’s almost like, you know, like a private practice owner, all your people then come and they’re hanging out on your post.

So if you’re doing a Facebook Live and it’s an established time, right, and they get reminders like, “Hey, I’m live now.” And then they start making friends with each other, it’s like the coolest things because people stay with their friends, right? And so it’s a community building tool.

The fifth thing is you use it as a tool to make offers, okay? People say yes when you ask. When you don’t ask, 100% of the time the answer is no, right? And so it is a tool for you to say, hey, I’m doing this webinar. Hey, I am now open, I’m accepting new coaching clients. Hey, I’m accepting new patients. Hey, we have the flu vaccine in, come make your appointment.

It’s just this tool, this platform where you can ask and ask and ask and ask and ask. And as you ask, people say yes. So it’s a tool that you can use, okay?

And so if you think about these five things, you’re creating shareable content, you’re positioning yourself as the authority, you’re networking, you’re building community, you’re making offers regularly, right? If you use social media in this way, it will work. So it’s not about just throwing things on and you’re like, yeah, we post five days a week and stuff like that. Are you strategically using it as a tool for growth?

Now, there are a lot of other ways, other strategies we can talk about. But I think these five are a really great place to start. We can even talk about ads, but I deliberately did not include ads because your ads work a lot better when your organic social media is on point, right? And so we want to fix this first and everything works better.

So now that you have these five things, what I want you to do is to go take a look at this and ask yourself how you can incorporate this into what you do every day on social media so you can kind of 10x the return on investment.

And for you, the investment may be time, and the sense that you’re doing it yourself. The investment may be the team that’s actually doing it for you, like getting your money’s worth, right? That’s the whole idea behind doing that. We’re not doing social media just to do it, we expect a return on investment, okay?

So how are you going to apply this to your business, okay? How are you going to apply this to your business? And the truth of the matter is this, right, if you do it this way it stops being a time suck, it stops being this annoying thing that you have to do. And, of course, you can always give it to a team.

But I can guarantee you that the average person who will run your social media has no idea how to use it to grow your business. They know how to slap on posts, they know how to say, “Do you have five posts a week?” Yes, I have five posts a week. They know how to do that. But they don’t know how to do this.

So if you do this and you understand this, then you can delegate properly. You’re delegating, you’re saying this is a tool. This is not about five posts a week, this is about five posts a week that will grow my business, okay?

All right, so that’s what I have for you. I cannot wait to see you dominate on social media, even if you’re not tech savvy, even if you’re a private person, even if you’ve never really done this before. And even if you’re afraid that you’ll run out of content or your stuff is not good enough, okay?

You can rock this and I cannot wait to see you do it. Of course, as always, if you need help with this, you can find us at the EntreMD Business School where this is what we do, okay? All right, don’t forget to share this episode, and I’ll see you on the next episode of The EntreMD Podcast.

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