Issue #12 - February 2010

Build Online Relationships to Expand Your Practice

Unless you have been living in a cave for the last few years, you should know by now that the internet is an extensive resource for building your practice and for building lasting relationships with your clients and colleagues. With websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn so easily available to anyone with a computer and access to the internet, you should be taking advantage of what these FREE websites have to offer.

First, if you don’t already have a LinkedIn account, I suggest you sign up for one. LinkedIn is a professional networking website for career minded people to showcase their résumé, portfolio, or business. With LinkedIn you can find business opportunities, share valuable information with colleagues, and keep in touch with what is happening with the Chiropractic industry in a professional setting.

Another important website in the social networking circle is Facebook. Facebook is a website for you to share your life and your practice with anyone in the world. While Facebook is more of an informal setting, it opens up the opportunity to interact with your clients in a casual, no-pressure sort of way. One of the appeals to this website is the number of ways you can promote yourself and your practice to reach the most amount of people.

For example, when you create an account you can update your status to share links, videos, images, or words of wisdom to promote yourself, your practice, and Chiropractic. You can also build a fan page for either yourself or your practice and invite people to become a fan of your work. Facebook even allows for a business profile in the form of a Group where you can send messages to everyone within the group and invite them to upcoming new patient classes or send them promotional discounts, etc. It is an easy, free way to network your self online.

Finally, we come to Twitter. Twitter is a fascinating little website that exploded into a huge social networking spectacle. When updating his or her ‘status’, also known as Tweets, the user is restricted to a maximum of 140 characters or less. You read that right, 140 characters. Not words. Characters. Not only is it fun to read the 140 character tweets from other users, it can also be fun and challenging to create your own.

You may wonder what the point of Twitter is. While this is a valid question, Twitter provides another means to promote yourself and your practice, and to interact with other colleagues, clients, and Chiropractic related businesses or people. You can post a link to your newest article, or to a newsletter sign up. You can show your support by re-tweeting someone else’s post, and they can do the same for you. It all boils down to getting as many people to view your information as possible.

On a final note, I suggest starting a blog. There are plenty of free blogging websites out there such as Blogger, Wordpress, and LiveJournal. You can even host a blog on your own website, if you have one. Fill your blog with insightful chiropractic related information, flyers and marketing for your clinic’s newest promotional offer, and other things to draw the attention of potential patients.

It may seem like a lot of work, but the benefits are priceless. In addition, these ideas are all completely free! All that is required is to sign up and spend the time to network and contribute to your online presence. Everything is moving to the web; don’t get left behind!