If you decide to embrace social media, you should do so wholeheartedly

Mandeep Mudhar, Numark’s director of marketing, considers the pros and cons of three main social media platforms

Much is written and said about the positives and perils of social media when it comes to driving business growth. While social media has been readily embraced – and is growing exponentially – in facilitating personal connections and keeping in contact with friends, there is still suspicion about its true value when used in a commercial setting.

Within pharmacy, quite rightly, there may be further cause for concern about the use of social media because of our obligation to keep patient data private and confidential. It is wise, therefore, for independent pharmacists to restrict their use of social media to marketing their service and promoting their brand awareness.

Before you go any further, you need to acknowledge the risks; you are not in control of the speed at which good or bad news travels with social media. If someone posts negative comments about your business there is little you can do. Reacting defensively to a negative post can actually cause harm to your business and therefore you must accept to ride with the highs and lows of social media.

Some contractors may decide to steer clear of these channels altogether, but to do so fails to harness one of the most powerful communication media and build a relationship with their community. If you decide to embrace social media, you should do so wholeheartedly as dabbling in an ad hoc way will be time consuming and largely ineffective.

If you decide to proceed, you should have a clear strategy integrated with the rest of your marketing plan and be clear what you will use each of the social media platforms for, how you will use them to promote your work, what you want to achieve and how you will measure it.

The three most common social media platforms used in business are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Let’s look at each and what benefits they could bring to your business.

Facebook

This platform has the ability to create communities of like-minded individuals, promote services you provide and publicise offers that can be linked back to your website. It is a powerful tool to promote events held in your pharmacy, such as a blood pressure testing service, or linking your pharmacy to a public health campaign such as no smoking day. Asking your staff to ‘share’ information about your event with their friends can quickly create a community of interested parties. People can then be invited to your pharmacy event, thereby potentially growing your customer base.

Facebook can also be used as a rallying call to your customers to use your repeat prescription management service, for example, or for educating them about the rules for nomination if you have concerns that a competitor is being overly aggressive in targeting patients for signing up to EPS. If someone ‘likes’ your post, their friends will take more notice of the original post and therefore give you a great opportunity to spread your message.

Twitter

With a limit of 140 characters, there is only so much you can say on Twitter. The prime objective should to be to keep your message smart, action oriented and interesting. You can use it to remind your customers about your flu vaccination service, for example, or it could highlight a great offer as a call to action to visit your pharmacy.

Messages are likely to be retweeted and the word will be spread if it is something either exciting, innovative or that resonates very strongly with the recipient. For example, if your customer benefited from their last flu jab, they may want to make sure their Twitter followers know about it. You can also use this platform to promote your website, but again, unless you have something really special on offer on it may not generate much traffic.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is increasingly being used by commercial organisations to create business links and exploit them, in the main, for employment opportunities. It is widely used to advertise for vacant job roles, to connect with other businesses and people.

You can use LinkedIn to promote your business’s values and cultures, link your website address to it and promote your services. You may want to consider using LinkedIn to target major employers or businesses in your locality to promote services such as flu vaccination. You could use it to connect with senior personnel in commercial companies. Imagine the power of an HR director telling their employees to visit your pharmacy because you are providing a great health promotion service. Healthy staff means less absence and higher productivity!

If you do use social media in your business, then have a clear plan as to what you will use each platform for, identify clear aims and most importantly, embrace social media fully. Some of the tools are sophisticated and if they are a cornerstone of your marketing strategy it makes sense to seek professional advice. Used correctly, social media will be an important, cost-effective way of reaching new customers and engaging with existing patients, and a great way of communicating your personal brand.