Dora Adamopoulos, OD, of eye2eye Optometry Corner, with two locations in Alexandria, Virginia, knew that there was great value in social media marketing for her business. She didn’t want to have a team member squeeze in this task during downtime, and supporting another local business was a must. So one day, Dr. Adamopolous walked into an office down the block to ask who was handling their marketing. She took Lauren Durkee, who was the marketing manager for that company, out to lunch. They hit it off, and Durkee started freelancing for Dr. Adamopolous in 2013.
Ultimately, Durkee founded Lauren Aileen Media and now supports small businesses full-time with two other employees, Daisy and Rands. “I love working with the staff at locally-owned, independent-operated businesses,” Durkee says. “Businesses need the direction of a marketing department, but they don’t have the budget or the time for it.”
Dr. Adamopolous appreciates that support. “When you go through my social media feed, there’s a polished look and it feels like it is from my store,” she says. “Everything is curated with a certain font, color, look and vibe.”
Durkee now handles all marketing for the practice, website management, videos, newsletters, communications, branding of appointment booking platforms, ecommerce and more. Durkee even gets the practice name out in the community in unique ways, such as partnering with local boutiques for events or participating in a warehouse sample sale at the local Westin hotel. She says that working with a marketing team not specialized to one industry allows ideas such as this that are a bit out of the box.
Durkee shared these social media tips for optometrists who are looking for guidance on maintaining their brand on social while keeping it real and feeling authentic.
1. Establish goals.
Before you get started, establish why you’re using social media for your practice, what you hope to achieve with your social strategy and how you’ll measure your success. Some questions to ask yourself are
- What is our goal in using social media for our practice (to attract new patients, educate, etc.)?
- Who is our ideal patient?
- What problems can we solve for our patients?
- What are we known for as a practice?
- What is our voice?
- What words would we use to describe our practice’s “personality”? What are the words you want people to think of when they think of your practice? If your business was a person, how would that person would talk? Would they be really professional? Is it long form or more casual? Some things evolve as a brand ages, but the core often stays the same.
- How will we know our social strategy is working?
- Which social channels do my patients live on?
2. Make a plan.
After establishing the goal and defining the voice, lay that strategy over an annual calendar to determine what content needs to be posted and when. Durkee says that in an ideal situation, by August of 2020, she would have had all of 2021 planned out for Dr. Adamopoulos. But with so many changes due to COVID-19, it is just not possible to work that far ahead. So they have a guide, and they are filling in the more timely content as they go.
- Post one-to-three times per week in your social feeds.
- Pick a topic for each post or a topic for the week.
- Add these topics and post days to a calendar or use a tool like Planoly.
- Pick a day each week to dedicate to writing your posts and stories and taking, editing photos or gathering content.
- Track your social account insights to make sure you’re measuring success.
3. Engage and maintain.
A critical part of using social media for your practice is remembering that you are building a community and you get out what you put in. Be a resource for your followers.
- Dedicate a half an hour a day to engaging with your followers and with new accounts on social, remember you’re building a community. Comment, like, share and engage!
- Make sure your content is meaningful to the people following you. There are a lot of great resources out there for optometry offices, but take the time to customize them to your practice if you want to use something a little more generic. “That can be a great jumping off point, but start with that content and rewrite it,” Durkee says.
- Keep your content 1/3 personal, 1/3 selling/transactional and 1/3 informational. This is so important because people follow people, not brands. Personal posts can introduce your audience to your team and the individuals who they can look forward to interacting with on their visit.
- Keeping your social feeling authentic if you decide to outsource it is easy, it’s all about working with a company that gets YOU and your goals. Make sure you ask them to share photos of you, your staff, etc.
LOOKING FOR HELP?
If you want someone local to your office, Durkee suggests connecting with the local chamber of commerce or small business development center for recommendations. Or browse Instagram and find accounts that you admire and ask who manages the marketing. Save and keep tabs on the pages that you really like for inspiration.
Lauren Aileen Media primarily works in Washington DC area, including Virginia, DC and Maryland, but does work with small businesses across the country, as well. The team collaborates with a photographer local to the business to shoot content that it can bring to life. For more information, visit laurenaileen.com, @laurenaileenmedia on Instagram or email Lauren at lauren@laurenaileen.com.
