It is important to realise that how you and your staff behave online, especially on social media can leave a lasting impression on your patients. Let's take some time to discuss presenting your clinic with an appropriate level of professionalism.
There are two different parts to how professional your clinic appears online. The first part is how your clinic appears via its official social media pages and the second is how and your staff behave on social media.
First, let's take a look at how your clinic is presented on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on. It is important that you develop a professional voice for your clinic which is still engaging. Whoever handles posting on social media for the clinic needs to know exactly what the message they are supposed to be putting across. It helps to have a social media policy in place which will help outline what sort of content should be shared on your official pages.
It is also important that when replying to private messages, comments and questions it is done in a respectful and professional manner. This can be difficult when those comments are negative or rude, but it is very important that you remain completely professional at all times since how you deal with these types of situations is going to have a huge impact on your online reputation.
Another important factor in how professional the image your clinic presents seems is based on how you and your employees conduct yourselves online via your own personal social media profiles. While it is unlikely that you, as a physical therapy clinic owner, are going to bad mouth your own clinic, there may be times when you are tempted to make a flippant remark about a crap day at work or a difficult patient. However, even if posted on your personal profile there is a chance that a patient could come across it which will make you look unprofessional.
The bigger issue comes from how your staff are representing your physiotherapy clinic on social media. Websites like Facebook allow users to state their place of employment which creates a link between your staff and your clinic. That means that if they post inappropriate or offensive content, then it does reflect back on your clinic. This is why it is important to have a social media policy in place to protect your clinic's reputation. Some of the important things that this policy should cover include the following:
Encourage Employees to Air Concerns Appropriately – A good social media policy should outline the procedure for airing concerns. Ideally, you will want to encourage staff to feel comfortable with taking concerns to a supervisor rather than airing them on social media.
Clearly Set Out What is Considered Confidential – Your social media policy should make it clear what is confidential and should therefore not be shared online. Some of the best examples of social media policies outline how employees must not share financial, operational or other confidential information. For example, GAP employees are not allowed to share sales, trends, forecasts or promotional plans on social media.
Lay Out The Consequences of Violation – Your policy also needs to set out the consequences of breaching the social media policy. This not only includes disciplinary action, but should also explain the impact that it could have on the clinic. For example, they need to understand how them posting videos of them engaging in inappropriate actions while in their uniform can make the entire clinic look bad.
Describe The Appropriate Way to Behave Online – Your social media policy needs to outline what you consider acceptable behaviour so that your employs know what is expected of them. However, it must also respect the boundaries between work and personal life!
Name A Responsible Contact – It is important to name a responsible contact within the company who will answer any questions that your employees have about the social media policy. It makes sense for this to be whoever is responsible for the clinic's official social media presence.
In conclusion, the way that you present your clinic via social media pages is incredibly important, but it is also important to put a social media policy in place that will help guide your employees in how they conduct themselves on line since they are representatives of your clinic. If you need assistance in building a strong social media presence for you clinic then why not contact PatientSites.com today.
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