6 Social Media Tips for your Pharmacy

For those that attended the Forum you would have seen the session by social media super star Meg Coffey. For me as a marketer, I was extremely excited to watch her present. She gave some great insights on why social media is important for any business, including pharmacy.

So now that the Forum hype has died down and you’re all back into your routine, I would love to know….how many of you have become more active on social media? Whether you like it or not, social media isn’t going anywhere. According to the 2017 Sensis Social Media Report almost eight in 10 Australians (79%) are now on social media.

As a pharmacy owner, you’re juggling a lot on your plate therefore social media can become somewhat of a nuisance. Yes you must be consistent, have a plan and engage with customers. However the pros definitely outweigh the cons! That is why today I am giving you a swift reminder to really start considering social media as a marketing strategy (if you haven’t already).

As well as this reminder I will share six tips for social media. These tips are extremely helpful in building a strong social media platform for your pharmacy.

1. Have a healthy balance with your posts.

The key to having a strong social media strategy is to understand what your followers want to see and engage with. Of course it also can be used for introducing a new service or selling products however you do need a healthy balance. I use the sum of every 1 in 4 posts for pushing a service or selling.

2. Selecting the right platform for your customer.

Not every social media platform will be relevant to your target audience. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, determine your ideal audience(s) and post on one or two platforms that they use regularly.

Here are some statistics I pulled from www.sproutsocial.com:

Facebook:

88% of 18-29 years old use Facebook.
84% of 30-49 year olds use Facebook.
72% of 50-64 year olds use Facebook.
62% of 65+ year olds use Facebook.

Instagram:

59% of 18–29 year olds use Instagram.
33% of 30–49 year olds use Instagram.
18% of 50–64 year olds use Instagram.
8% of people 65+ use Instagram.

Twitter:

36% of 18–29 year olds use Twitter.
23% of 30–49 year olds use Twitter.
21% of 50–64 year olds use Twitter.
10% of 65+ year olds use Twitter.

There is no point posting something that is clearly targeted to a particular age or gender if they’re not regularly using that platform. So take the time to do some research and look into your customer’s behaviour and interests which that will help with your social media plan.

Meg mentioned in her presentation about the Sensis Social Media Report. Here is the link if you would like to read some social media statistics for Australia.

https://www.sensis.com.au/asset/PDFdirectory/Sensis_Social_Media_Report_2017-Chapter-1.pdf

3. Use visuals on all of your posts.

As Meg stated “93% of consumers consider visual appeal before purchasing.” With every post there are plenty of creative ways to add an image. I would recommend posting 75% of your own content and the other 25% high resolution imagery. However, if you use somebody else’s images do the right thing and always credit their work. This means tagging them or adding a credit in you caption.

There is also some amazing free high res image websites where you can find images to use for free.

Some of the websites include:

https://www.pexels.com/

https://pixabay.com/

https://unsplash.com/

For example if I was mentioning something about winter in my post I could use one of the below images:

4. Be local.

We constantly preach at Peak Strategies that a successful pharmacy will always be involved in its local community. Therefore post about a local event coming up, the footy team wining the grand final and post iconic local spots. People interact with content that is relatable. Social media isn’t just about sell, sell but about also about story telling. I firmly believe it gives a brand an identity outside of the products and services.

At Peak Strategies one of our core values is relationships, to make an impact on every client that we work with. This doesn’t mean for us to generate profit but to help client’s achieve their goals. Social media is a great way to tell this story to clients in a less formal way because even though we LOVE accounting, there is definitely more to Peak Strategies.

Below is a photo I posted on Instagram of our local area in Mount Pleasant, it is aesthetically very pleasing and gives an insight of where we are located. You could easily post content like this to your social media profiles (and trust me with your IPhone you can take some really pretty photos.)

5. Consistency and frequency.

As John always says to me “some things take stubborn persistence” and social media is no different. You cannot expect to post an image once a month and gain followers. You need to post frequently and consistently.

I would recommend at least 4 posts a week for Facebook and 5 for Instagram. That seems quite time consuming however if you’re organised it won’t actually take up too much time. I would suggest at the start of each week spending 30 minutes researching and planning what content you want to use this week. Remember to include the healthy balance theory and look into content that is relevant to your customer (and not just the products you need to sell). Then set up reminders for you to post throughout the week. For Facebook you are able to schedule your posts. There is also great scheduling websites like HootSuite assists with other social media platforms.

Below is an example to show how easy it is to schedule on Facebook.

6. Branding.

With the notion of consistency this also needs to be considered for branding. Essentially every image, status and video must be aligned with your brand- as it’s the message you are promoting online.

Visually your posts should have some form of identity. I always use the same filter on all my Instagram posts and ensure I include consistent hashtags. I also like to use our branding colours, for example any famous quote or announcement I place the text on an orange background.

There is a cool tool called Adobe spark that allows you to create your own graphics for your post. As you can see below I use this for a lot my posts- so then when people are scrolling on our profile that constantly see the colour orange.

https://spark.adobe.com/

In Conclusion.

I hope the above tips give you some clarity on how to tackle social media for your pharmacy. I know, it can definitely seem overwhelming to begin with but if you understand its purpose it’s a great tool. Use it as an opportunity to engage with your customers on a more personal level and I promise that slowly it will build some momentum.

I am looking forward to seeing all of your amazing profiles! Now if you’re still unsure of what to post and how, please contact me on sarah.rendell@peakstrategies.com.au. I can work closely with you to create a social media strategy from mentoring to helping you with post curation.