Chiropractic Rescue Plan » Twitter Marketing http://www.chiropracticrescueplan.com Just another WordPress weblog Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:25:51 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Chiropractors, Here’s What You Need to Get Current With Your Marketing http://www.chiropracticrescueplan.com/internet-marketing/chiropractors-heres-what-you-need-to-get-current-with-your-marketing/ http://www.chiropracticrescueplan.com/internet-marketing/chiropractors-heres-what-you-need-to-get-current-with-your-marketing/#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:39:46 +0000 Dr. Dan http://www.chiropracticrescueplan.com/internet-marketing/chiropractors-heres-what-you-need-to-get-current-with-your-marketing/ For those who have been following this blog, you know that the premise I operate from is that the chiropractic patient of today has changed dramatically, thanks to lightning fast information exchange courtesy of the internet. Not just emails, but Twitter posts, FaceBook comments, Yelp, and of course, online news sites.

The result: the Good, [...]]]> For those who have been following this blog, you know that the premise I operate from is that the chiropractic patient of today has changed dramatically, thanks to lightning fast information exchange courtesy of the internet. Not just emails, but Twitter posts, FaceBook comments, Yelp, and of course, online news sites.

The result: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the chiropractic profession are in broad daylight for all to see, including your current and potential patients. The miracle stories, the good PR coming from the sports world and other positive chiropractic human interest stories are competing with the stroke comments, chiropractor insurance fraud stories (who among us hasn’t read such an article in our local news?), and witch doctor comments. Yes, some of the Bad stuff out there isn’t true– after all, anyone with a heartbeat can post anything online. We can cry foul when these things occur, but by that time it has influenced a lot of minds. This is the information age, and we’re in a fight to win over the minds of those who need our services.  And everyone knows the old adage that bad news spreads more quickly than positive news.  So, you’ve got to operate as your own PR agency.

In 2010 and beyond, chiropractors should consistently put out positive PR for their practices. And you’ll need to do it via the internet, because the internet and its many veins is a huge well of influence at this moment in time. This means you’ll need to set up:

  • a website. Not just any ordinary website, one that is conversion optimized, incorporating all the psychological triggers that keep visitors interested.   A self-playing welcome video is a nice, powerful touch as people are used to seeing video online.   If you currently have a crappy site, get rid of it!  It could be costing you a lot of business.  You have three (3) seconds to convince the online shopper that you are worth looking into.  Nothing scares away a visitor more than a website that looks like it was made in the 1990s; or one that takes too long to load because of fancy flash animations (I do not recommend flash for chiro websites).
  • An email opt-in box for your website visitors.  This is a special graphic visible on your site that gives visitors an option to receive email promotions from you.  Here’s an advanced one that I use, but there are more simple ones.  Make sure you offer something of value in exchange for their email; like health tips or a free eBook on exercises and stretches for the office worker, etc.
  • a blog. Place the blog inside your website; i.e. www.yourwebsite.com/blog. Post daily to your blog. It should have an RSS feed, which enables your patients to subscribe to your blog and receive posts in their email or feed reader. The blog posts will essentially make your website bigger (more pages) and will drive it higher in Google’s natural search.
  • SEO activities (search engine optimization).  You’ll need to learn how to get your website ranked naturally in the major search engines.
  • Google AdWords listing.  Get your site on the top of Google by paying for it initially.  Be careful, you need to know what you’re doing here, or you’ll be wasting money on clicks.
  • an automated e-newsletter delivered by an email marketing software such as GetResponse. The system takes the emails you gather from your website visitors (see email opt in box above) and sends them monthly newsletters (that you write ahead of time) that promote your services, with a link pointing back to your site or an appointment sign up form.
  • a Twitter identity. Don’t use your personal Twitter account to promote your business; create a new Doctor identity. Tweet every day, with your website URL in your tweet (Tweets now show up on Google search results, so obviously use the word “chiropractor and chiropractic” in your tweets).
  • a FaceBook Page. This is your online presence on the huge, 300 million member FaceBook. You’ll post news about your clinic periodically, and link your FB page to your Twitter account so that when you post something on your FB page, a tweet to your list is automatically generated.
  • a YouTube branded channel.  It’s like having an online TV channel for your clinic, for Free.  You’ll make short videos of things like a short commercial of your clinic; how to stretch, how to lift, how to set up your workstation ergonomically– you get the point.  You’ll include your clinic phone number and website URL in your videos.  These videos get indexed in the Google search results.  Don’t sweat video; it’s real easy to do.  The lazy (but good enough!) and easiest way is to use this: Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black).  You point, press record, stop, and plug it into your computer’s USB slot and edit the video.  Then, upload it to YouTube.  You can literally put a video on YouTube in less than 30 minutes from start to finish with the flip phone!

So these are the minimum things you’ll need to get going.  If you need any help on any of these steps, I can offer you my web consulting services for a modest fee.  Just contact me via this blog’s contact form or give me a call at (925) 788-6253.

If you want to give it a shot yourself, a good place to start is my Internet Marketing guide (70+ pages) that gives you the details on all of the above, as well as a lot more underground stuff that will give you a head start over your competitors.

Dan Perez, DC

]]> http://www.chiropracticrescueplan.com/internet-marketing/chiropractors-heres-what-you-need-to-get-current-with-your-marketing/feed/ 3 Using Twitter to Reach Potential Chiropractic Patients http://www.chiropracticrescueplan.com/twitter-marketing/using-twitter-to-reach-potential-chiropractic-patients/ http://www.chiropracticrescueplan.com/twitter-marketing/using-twitter-to-reach-potential-chiropractic-patients/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:58:25 +0000 Dr. Dan http://www.chiropracticrescueplan.com/?p=159 Twitter has taken the country by storm.  Previously brushed off as a way for teenagers to let each other know what they’re doing by the minute, new applications for the internet platform were discovered this year, and the end result is that there are now over 100 million Twitter users world wide.   It is now [...]]]> Twitter has taken the country by storm.  Previously brushed off as a way for teenagers to let each other know what they’re doing by the minute, new applications for the internet platform were discovered this year, and the end result is that there are now over 100 million Twitter users world wide.   It is now not uncommon to hear Twitter mentioned on CNN and other big news networks, and major companies like Apple.  Twitter played an important role in creating a “real-time” minute-by-minute account of major events that occurred in 2009, such as the presidential election, the California wildfires, and the Iranian protests.  In a nutshell, Twitter enables people all over the world to instantly let anyone who’s willing to listen know what’s going on in their neck of the woods.

In case you aren’t familiar with Twitter, it’s basically a website that allows a user to post a message up to 140 characters long and broadcast it to their “followers”–  other Twitter users who decided to “follow” that user (receive the user’s posts, or “tweets”).  All you have to do to “follow” another Twitter user is to click his Twitter Follow Me icon, wherever its posted.

Once you sign up for Twitter, you log in and you have your own page, which you can customize.   This is where you view the tweets of those you  decided to follow (your tweets show up as well).  Many people choose to follow celebrities like Lance Armstrong and Madonna.   Some people, like the actor Ashton Kutchner, have over a million followers.  Imagine the possibilities of having that number of people read whatever you write!

Twitter continues to evolve.  Features recently added to it include the ability to search Twitter for certain keywords.  In fact, when you first go on the site, it’s a search box, much like Google’s.  Let’s say you live in San Francisco, it’s Friday and you want to try out an Italian restaurant you’ve never been to.  You can go on Twitter and search for “favorite Italian Restaurant San Francisco” and you’ll instantly get a list of recent tweets containing this phrase.

Now, if you’re a business owner and have been keeping up with Twitter, you should be able to recognize the commercial applications for Twitter.  There are two basic ways.  The first one is to  search Twitter for the phrase “good chiropractor” every day, and see if there are any recent tweets containing this phrase.  Most of these tweets will be from people asking their followers for a recommendation for a good chiropractor.  If you have a Twitter account, you can even reply to these tweets.   Tweet something friendly, like “Sorry to hear you’re in pain, our chiropractic office is on 345 Main Street; we have appointments available this week if you wish to come in.”  Have your chiropractic assistant tweet this; in fact, have her do a Twitter search every day, or even a couple of times a day, and respond to those local tweets.

The other approach is targeted tweets.  Since you know that people are now searching Twitter for services, you can tweet phrases that subtly promote your chiropractic office.  Obviously, include the words “good chiropractor” or “recommended chiropractor” and so on, in your tweets.  When someone conducts a search on Twitter for “good chiropractor” your tweet will show up.  You can even test it yourself on Twitter; it’s quite fast!  And, you can even include your website’s URL in your tweets.  It will show up as an active link.

Twitter recently paired up with Google for Twitter searches, so now if someone Google’s “chiropractor san francisco”, Twitter tweets including this phrase will show up on Google’s search results pages.

To summarize, it’s a good idea for chiropractors to use Twitter to look for and attract patients needing your services.  It’s free, and it’s currently popular.  However, the only caveat is that Twitter is relatively new, and how long it will remain popular with the masses is yet to be seen.

Dan Perez, DC

Guerilla Chiropractic

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