“The management of a business page through Facebook or Twitter requires a few areas to dodge land mines: Have these accounts managed through an email log-in that you have control of (don’t let your social media account move on with a terminated employee), provide social media responsibility to only those employees that understand your practice voice and have been trained in patient privacy, and focus on posts that are valuable, have potential virality (articles, videos, pictures, engaging questions). More posts aren’t necessarily more valuable, and advertise if you wish to have impact (free advertising is a thing of the past). Lastly, remember to monitor the page daily; unhappy comments as well as rave reviews are immediate. Should your practice receive negative comments, contact that person; there may have be an opportunity to rectify the situation and a retraction to the comment.”

“To ensure that you have regular access to content, pick a couple of credible sites from which you can pull articles, images, or videos. If you are using a third party company to update your social media, make sure that they are aware of these ‘approved sites’ to avoid posting incorrect or inaccurate information. This is extremely important in maintaining the integrity of your practice. Additionally, keep in mind that, although your colleagues may follow you on social media, your content should be largely patient focused; post resourceful and educational information that is not only useful, but is also easy to understand. If you are using social media to market to your patient base, your content shouldn’t be laden with medical jargon, but instead contain fun, approachable content that relates to a wide audience.”

While we are not a medical practice (we just spend every waking hour consulting with them), we practice what we preach when it comes to business-related use of social media. We created a company Facebook page a little over a year ago and added Twitter and LinkedIn accounts shortly after that. A little unsure of what to expect at first, we initially adopted a highly conservative approach to what we posted. We were strictly business. Over time, we have loosened up a bit—we discovered our followers delight in learning about us both as a company and as individuals—but all content still must pass our stringent “professional and appropriate” guidelines. We now mix fun and business…but carefully. Before uploading any post—text or photos—we must ask ourselves if the content could be misunderstood or cause the company (or individuals) embarrassment. We’ve worked too hard building our reputation to have it implode because of an ill-advised social media post.

“We have had a social media presence for the last couple of years and now realize we need to be more focused with activity, more regularly, to have an impact on our presence. For 2014, we are forming a social media practice team with an employee with marketing background and an Internet savvy physician to be our posters. Our most active employee-users of social media, myself included, round out the team. It takes a coordinated effort for a practice to continually be aware of what might be interesting to post, helpful to patients, and just plain fun to share in a professional, mission-consistent way.”