Cosmetic Surgery Marketing Online - How to Use Twitter to Increase Site Traffic

If you do it right, your Twitter page will look and feel unique, much like your medical practice. Use a logo, picture of your office building, group photo of your staff, or even a professional head shot of yourself to show your Twitter visitors. This will create an instant personal feel to your Twitter account and will help brand yourself and your plastic surgery office form the very beginning. You can either tile the picture repeatedly as the background image or can format your picture so it is visible in the upper left corner and left side of your Twitter page. This is the area of your picture that will be visible and not covered with the Twitter page components. Click here to check out our Twitter page.

Followers on Twitter are people who have chosen to follow you and your Tweets. This means they want to hear what you have to say. They may have first found you because you followed them and they decided to follow you back. Other times, they have seen what you have been saying through someone you are following. You see, people's Tweets are visible to everyone who follows them. For example, if you have 100 followers and someone you send a reply Tweet to has 500 followers, all 500 of their followers will see your reply. This is a great way to boost your cosmetic surgery marketing. You'll be getting your name out there while providing some valuable information as well as interaction that will help boost your number of followers.

Twitter works best when you take the first step. That initial action is to search for people that you want to follow on Twitter. Click on the "Find People" link at the top of your page. Rather than trying to find people with the mindset of "who will benefit my plastic surgery practice the most," you'll want to concentrate on finding people who are like-minded and interested in your niche. You can find people to follow in every type of niche relating to plastic surgery such as rhinoplasty, tummy tuck, liposuction, products you offer in your office, vendors you use, providers of patient education online, etc. You get the point; get connected with Twitter folks who will be most likely interested in what you do.

You'll probably want to get connected to some local area businesses by including your city name in your search for people to follow on Twitter. You can enter in your local area along with whatever type of person, niche, or business you are looking for. If you regularly receive referrals from certain specialty doctors or hospitals for specific procedures, find them on Twitter and follow them. Send them a direct message as well to privately message them that you have followed them and look forward to their follow back. This is a great way to strategically align yourself with other area doctors and businesses that will result in a mutually beneficial relationship - better yet, they are local! This can result in everything from special events for your patients to better patient pricing for doing business with them. The side effect will be a spike in referrals to your practice. This type of cosmetic surgery marketing is not only smart for your online presence, but it will increase the number of procedures you are booking.

Now that you have some followers and are following other Tweeps (the term for other Twitter peeps), let's get you Tweeting. The first thing you'll want to do is sign up with an auto-Tweeting software or website to help you manage your direct messages, reply to new followers, send out automatic Tweets at scheduled times of the day, and to manage the statistics of your clicks and such. A few free programs out there include:

HootSuite

GoTwitr

TweetDeck

You can also use free software that hand picks followers for you that are most likely to be matched to you and your related niche. This free software is called:

TwitterMatch

To find stories, by topic as well as most popular, that are being retweeted, you can visit:

TweetMeme

The neat thing about TweetMeme is that you can install it onto your own blog or website and a little icon will appear in the upper right corner of your post/article so that readers can retweet your information to their followers. This is yet another way that social networking can make a huge difference in your overall cosmetic surgery marketing results by reaching many more people.

As far as schedule Tweets from the aforementioned tools, the ideal number is around 5-10 per day. You want to add to that about 5 original Tweets containing quotes, comments on something that happened that day, or giving out some advice. Additionally, you should retweet useful Tweets from your followers about 5 times per day. The total number of Tweets for the best cosmetic surgery marketing results possible is around 15-20 per day.

Some people get overzealous and follow hundreds of people per day until their account is inevitably shut down. Don't fall into this trap! Find about 50 quality people to follow on Twitter each day, Monday through Friday. You will have an increase in your own follower number while increasing the number of useful Tweets you receive in your "feed" (Tweets from people you follow).

One More Warning

Something else that can get your account deleted on Twitter is if you repeat your Tweets. A few times is nothing to worry about but accounts that consistently repeat their Tweets are a red flag for a commercial account trying to sell to people. Since Twitter is not really about selling things (though sales can absolutely result from using Twitter as part of your cosmetic surgery marketing), you're better off keeping your Tweets fresh rather than recycled. You can retweet a specific story or page on your site, just be sure to change what you're saying about it in your Tweet.

Take your patients by surprise by getting a Twitter account and using it regularly. Not only can you use your Twitter account to connect with your newsletter subscribers, website visitors, and from your blog, but you will be reaching the mega-sized Twittersphere and promoting your plastic surgery practice in one fell swoop!

For more information about how to promote your plastic surgery practice online as well as expert SEO services, contact us today. We're here to help you succeed on the Internet, no matter how small or large your current plastic surgery practice is.