Ask different social marketers what they consider most important to social media campaigns and each one will give you different answers. To us, there are 3 pillars of social media that us physical therapists should stand on: brand, audience, and content.
Building your social media presence with these pillars in mind will help your campaigns be more on-brand, targeted, engaging, and therefore more successful.
To paint you a better picture, allow me to discuss each of these pillars.
The 3 pillars of successful social media campaigns:
Branding.
Think of all the social networks your physical therapy clinic is a part of as extensions of, well… your clinic.
So, regardless of who runs your social media — whether it’s you or someone you hired — everything about your profiles should resonate with your brand’s values, voice, and style.
Heck, I’d go so far as to say that social media should reinforce them because this is how you captivated your audience in the first place. It’s also how you will gather more. Stray away from your brand’s personality and you just might lose some of your audience.
For example, let’s say your PT clinic is pushing sustainable practices. Your message resonates with other eco-conscious people who, in turn, follow you on social media. If your brand’s posts suddenly drift from its Earth-friendly ideals, a good chunk of your audience will likely stop supporting you.
Your audience.
A study from Sotrender shows that 80% of marketers only reach 5% of their target audience because they set parameters that are too broad. This means that most campaigns and paid ads are reaching people that don’t necessarily have an interest in what brands have to offer.
Ultimately, the results of these campaigns are less than ideal.
This is why a clear target audience should be one of your brand’s pillars on social media. Being as specific as you can be with your audience’s persona saves you money on paid ads while also increasing the success rate of every campaign you run.
That being said, you can always adjust your buyer’s persona. There are plenty of tools available that give you insight into your audience, including those already offered for free by popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Use this data to adjust the characteristics of your buyer’s persona accordingly.
Your content.
High-quality content is the currency of modern-day marketing. The more of them you have, the better off your business will be.
Notice the stress on “high-quality” because posting just about anything you want likely won’t work.
In particular, your posts have to be tailored to your target audience while also remaining on-brand. They also have to be of value to your audience by being entertaining, insightful, or by striking an emotion.
For further reading: 9 examples of interactive social media posts.
4 more reasons why the pillars are crucial to successful campaigns
1. They help to create meaningful content so much easier
If you know who you’re making content for and how it’s supposed to come across, the entire content creation process becomes so much less stressful.
Think of it like this: If you bought a cabinet from a random seller on Amazon, assembling it is so much easier if you had instructions, right?
The pillars we just discussed are essentially that. Instructions. You’d still be able to make content, sure, but it would be so much more taxing if you didn’t know your audience and didn’t have a clear message.
2. Content plans become more streamlined
If you didn’t know this yet, a content plan is a compilation of topics or keywords that are relevant to your brand.
Many tools can help you build this, including Neil Patel’s Answer The Public. The problem, however, is that many of these topics are either too broad or way off base.
Knowing your audience, your brand’s message, as well as the type of content you want to make can help you narrow down these topics to only the ones that are relevant to you.
3. Knowing your audience and defining your brand creates consistent content
If you want to add a 4th pillar to the ones we just mentioned, it would be consistency.
Of course, that includes consistency in your posting on social media. You can’t just post any time you want and expect your audience to be all ears every time.
However, consistency also means representing the same message to the same target audience across all of your brand’s social networks.
There may be differences in the way you present your brand depending on the platform, but your brand’s personality and values should always shine through. Creating your content according to the pillars help ensure that.
4. Your audience knows what to expect
When your audience knows what they’re getting, you also take them along for the journey. And, along the way, you build a relationship that ultimately leads to sales.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the 3 pillars of successful social media campaigns give you more direction which, in turn, increases the chances of you achieving your goals.
The pillars include solid branding, knowing the ins and outs of your target audience, and creating high-quality content that bridges the other 2.
That being said, we would love to handle your physical therapy clinic’s social media marketing needs. Let’s talk about strategizing, advertising, implementation, and everything else in between. Give us a try!
