Editor's Note: Part 1 of this digital exclusive appeared in the August issue and covered email, Facebook and Twitter.
YouTube
YouTube, a video sharing site founded by Google back in 2005, is now one of the most popular video sites on the Web. Millions of videos have been uploaded and shared, ranging from movie trailers to amateur videos of cats - and everything in between. You can learn how to crochet, play croquet or repair your plumbing; and you can get your own presence on Youtube and share your own videos for personal – or business – use.
Anyone Can Share Content
Anyone with an Internet connection can share content on YouTube, whether an organization with a large budget or an individual using a smartphone with a good camera and video capability. It is available in nearly every country and more than 50 different languages. For you, this can serve as an incredible resource for watchable content and marketing potential.
How to Use YouTube
Just create a YouTube account. If you want to learn how to do something, just input the subject, and dozens of lessons will pop up with instructors of all levels of expertise, whether it is how to learn to play guitar, paint a picture, pick a lock or even how to kiss properly.
YouTube can "learn" your preferences; for example, say you look for videos that help you learn how to play the guitar. The next time you visit YouTube, if you're signed into your Google account, YouTube will automatically serve up more videos that teach you how to play the guitar. This feature helps YouTube personalize what it shows to users so it can offer a more relevant user experience.
If YouTube can do all that for you, imagine what it can do for your patients if you're providing the content. YouTube can become your top marketing device, so definitely start playing with it now and learn what you can do with it.
Pinterest has become one of the most popular sites on the Internet, with 12 million (mostly female) users. It is an image sharing facility, best compared to an online scrapbook. Users find images, designs or content on the web, create a "pinboard" or a category, and then post that content to the website.
It's simple to get started. An invite must be requested from Pinterest to join. Once accepted, users can log in with their username and password, or with either a Twitter or Facebook user profile.
The Basics of Using Pinterest
There are several main categories at Pinterest including Everything, Videos, Popular and Gifts. Within the category "Everything" are dozens of sub-categories, ranging from Architecture to Other. "Videos" shows the most recent and popular multimedia, "Popular" shows you what's currently trending, and "Gifts" is a very useful breakdown of merchandise saved by the community, filtered by price.
Images and other content (infographics, videos, slideshows, etc.) can be saved to an individual's profile and organized into greater collections. Most users organize their collections via themes, i.e., "wedding," "DIY," guns, art, cooking, recipes. Individual collections, as well as the greater community at large, can all be viewed on the main page.
If a user find something hey like within another collection, they can save it to their own page. Each user can find other users to follow within the site. Once followed, all the content from that user then shows up within your personal Pinterest flow of images.
Finding images and other content to save to the site is made easier by specialized browser buttons: a Pin It "bookmarklet" for those looking to save content to their Pinterest page or for webmasters who want to encourage their readers to save content from their website.
The Impact of Pinterest on the Web
Pinterest's growth has been phenomenal and shows no sign of stopping. Content is shared not only on the site, but also on Facebook and Twitter, which makes its reach even more all-encompassing. When a pin is saved, it shows up on Facebook and Twitter, if you want it to, so you have a huge potential audience that can see your pins.
Pinterest is primarily about content, both creating it and curating or sorting it. For example, a bride planning a wedding an collect menus, dresses, flowers, and potential music in one convenient place, and then share everything with members of her wedding party. A store can reach out to its customers by uploading new releases, commenting on followers' profiles, and sourcing new material.
As a chiropractor, you can easily share "pins" of images that display chiropractic quotes, posture instructions, top tips to relieve neck tension, or even quote cards from celebrities and athletes who utilize chiropractic for maximizing their performance. As you can tell, Pinterest can be an important marketing tool for chiropractic and your individual practice.
LinkedIn is appropriately named, as it links professionals within a network of professionals who want to move upward into a higher echelon of their businesses by "linking up," with the idea of helping one other.
Think of LinkedIn as the high-tech equivalent of going to a traditional networking event where you meet other professionals in person, talk a little bit about what you do, and exchange business cards. But on LinkedIn, you can add "connections" similar to how you'd make a friend request on Facebook; converse via private message (or available contact information); and you have all of your professional experience and achievements laid out in a neatly organized profile to show off to other users.
You can use LinkedIn to promote yourself by hooking up with other professionals within your profession, but you can also use it to connect with professionals who may end up utilizing your services.
Your Future Is Now
Since this article was really for the social media holdouts, I kept it fairly general, but I hope it moves you to play in the social media game. You don't have to use all of these tools and you don't have to use them all the time. Just study them and pick which one, or more, you may want to use to make changes for the better in your practice.
Dr. Bobbee Palmer is one of the founding partners of the Chiropractic Business Academy. Employing the same tools he teaches in the academy, he built a thriving million-dollar, staff-driven cash practice. With more than 18 years of intensive, "in the trenches" chiropractic marketing developments and real-world testing, Dr. Palmer's passion and interest center on developing innovative chiropractic marketing techniques and methods to help DCs serve more of their community.